Warner Brothers' new "The Tom and Jerry Show" premieres on Teletoon on March 1

[Cradow]

Well, I'm surprised I complain about somethink like, but I wish the outline were a bit thicker like in the old cartoons, if there's even an outline in this, I know it sounds odd but I find it rather difficult to watch this because the lack of a thick outline makes the characters blend with the background too much. as result, it's hard to focus on the drawings half the time, now maybe this isn't a problem if you watch this on TV, but watching on the much smaller computer screen is pretty tough for me, then again I'm color blind so maybe it's just me, but if it's not then I'm suprised no one said anything about this.
aside from this, it looks like they got the energey and cartooney violence/drawing pretty well, at least from the trailer. it really is surprising how little (if any) advertisment this show got, you'd think WB don't even care when the show gets good ratings or not, or maybe they have SO much fate in Tom & Jerry that they don't think they need to bother. how many people even knew abot this show to begin with? if this show would flop I think nobody will be really surprised.

[Mesterius]

The next (3rd) half-hour episode will premiere on Teletoon tomorrow at 8 AM.

[Bradnar]

Just want everyone here to know that I was an animator on this show. I actually just finished working on it a few days ago. I was working on it for just over 14 months. And from what I've read here, I can answer a couple questions.

There are SOME outlines. The character designs had some internal outlines and we needed to add lines when you can't see what the arm, hand, leg is doing, but we were told to minimize the outlines as much as we could. And this trailer is made up of clips from the first few episodes we animated, while we were still getting used to what colours to use - it's better along the way.

I might get in trouble for this, but the reason there was a delay (originally planned to release in November) was there was a lot of communication problems between us and the company that hired us to animate the show for Warner Bros. They would request we change something with Tom's design for example, we'd change it, they'd approve it, then we'd animate an episode or two and then they'd get us to change it again to something else. This kept happening with designs, colours, animation style and other things and things kept getting approved and then not approved, setting production back so far behind. Also, there was a huge worker shortage, so we couldn't meet quota until the very end when another production at our studio had wrapped up.

Yes it's flash. Flash costs about $5000 a minute where 1940's quality animation costs like $30 000 minute. It's sad, but unless a show is guaranteed millions and millions of dollars in advertising revenue, no studio is going to do it. It's the sad truth, but when there was only 3 studios in the 40's and only one place to broadcast it animation companies could do that. Today, hundreds of companies and hundreds of channels - you got to do it cheap in order to make profit.

And the sounds in the trailer and the leica posted here are placeholders. I animated to these sounds and I'm told the redid the sound and music. Not as much as I would like from what I hear, but it's loads better.

Anything else you guys want to know? I really want to see the finished product myself, but I don't have cable. I guess I have to wait until April 9th when Cartoon network airs it. Perhaps it might be easier to find something online then.

[Cradow]

Well, I guess I'm happy I'm not the only one who think something is odd about the crawings outlines, tough it doesn't really fix the problem. I did notice the outline, somewhat, but most of the time overall it just looks out of focus and blend with the backgrounds too much for me.

1940's quality animation cost $30,000 a minute? I'm not sure that's correct. The avarge budget for a Tom & Jerry cartoon was $50,000 FOR THE WHOLE CARTOON, not just a minute, but then again, dollars were worth more in those days weren't they?
I'm not going to comment on there being only 3 cartoon studios in the 40's, I think almost everyone on this forum knows that but Disney, MGM and Warner were deffinetly the most dominant studios at the time, if that's what you meant.

It's sad, but unless a show is guaranteed millions and millions of dollars in advertising revenue, no studio is going to do it.

I can understand that way of thinking, but to be honest, no completely new show is guarenteed to make millions, this isn't any diffrent here, except that this show does have Tom & Jerry's name on it, that should have made it much easier to sell than a completely diffrent show or series that doesn't have any name, recognition or a fanbase. WB did put effort to advertise "The Looney Tunes Show" a while back didn't they? Not where I live to be frank, but I heard more about it on animation sites than I heard on this new Tom & Jerry show. Considering this show seems far more faithful to it's source material than "The Looney Tunes Show" shouldn't it help get people excited about, most classic Looney Tunes fans did not take the new direction of the show too well, to say the least, maybe WB took advantage of the attention the show got to try to push it more (and tick off the fanbase, they seem to do that alot lately with they classic cartoon releases). Also, the Looney Tunes don't seem to sell too well on DVD/Blu-ray if they decide to cancel the Platinum collection after vol 3. Tom & Jerry on the other hand, they sell so well that WB double-dipping the cartoons like crazy, I have absolutley no idea how many times WB has made 100% double-dips collection, but IT'S A TON, and they STILL do it, so they must make SOME profit if they keep doing it and Tom & Jerry must be popular enough to get away with something like that, so why NOT advertise their new show based on these points? My guess is that WB thinks that the Tom & Jerry fanbase only like seeing the same thing over and over again and will not be interested in new cartoons that they never seen before, hence why only the H-B, Chuck Jones and Tom & Jerry Tales seem to appear in the double-dip collections and little else. But if that's the case, why make a new show at all? Is WB just looking for something for their employs to do while they make odd choices? who knows.

[The Dogfather/Toadette]

Did anybody else watch this show when it premiered today?

Basically, in "Spike Gets Skooled", Spike is accused of causing all the messes in the house, and so he gets sent to obedience school while Jerry, without a protector, is tormented by Tom. Afterwards, Spike and Jerry must prevent any other messes from happening...unfortunately, however, in the end they lose as Spike is forced out of the house. (I didn't watch the next cartoon, since I needed to write this review.)

I have quite mixed feelings about this. Luckily, there aren't as many punch sounds as the trailer would have you think; most of the effects are Looney Tunes FX, with a few MGM (especially the old vocal effects) and Hanna-Barbera here and there. (Though at one point the editors snuck in a squeaking sound from the Gene Deitch cartoons!)

The concept itself was promising, the gags were somewhat decent, and there's a neat Tex Avery-style jaw drop from Spike at one point. Unfortunately, the episode is marred by the feeling that it's not really one of the classics at all--the obviously not traditional animation, synthesized music, garish color (so bright!), and the overall attempt to try and fit into modern sensibilities doesn't help. Oh, and the gags themselves would definitely be executed differently in an old T&J cartoon.

The voices really aren't my cup of tea--in particular, I started cringing whenever Spike spoke. (He sounds almost nothing like Daws Butler!)

I would watch the show regularly--just to see how much the episodes differ from the originals.

[ForumDocXV]

I have quite mixed feelings about this. Luckily, there aren't as many punch sounds as the trailer would have you think; most of the effects are Looney Tunes FX, with a few MGM (especially the old vocal effects) and Hanna-Barbera here and there. (Though at one point the editors snuck in a squeaking sound from the Gene Deitch cartoons!)

Oh boy, it's almost the same SFX used in Tom & Jerry Tales except with extra SFX. Why can't they just mostly use more MGM SFX with many H-B SFX like what they did on Shiver Me Whiskers?

The Looney Tunes SFX are very out of place for a Tom & Jerry show like this.

[Takeshi55]

Dogfather, the second cartoon is pretty much the same as Spike gets schooled, but Tom is the one who gets into trouble. Basically, he works for some witches who don't like their things to get touched and in the end, Tom gets turned into a Fly. Though what I dont get, is why Jerry didn't get punished and why that Salamander is there.