Trunks - Prelude to Terror DVD

[Ashura]

I think their janitor was also the graphics designer and the voice of Cell.

Man, what a weird character to pick for this joke... since Dameon Clarke is hunky mc-actorman now doing all this stuff in LA.

Oh man, I just noticed...that cover IS redrawn. Oh, how awful it looks. >_<

Which one? Trunks or the Kid Buu one? I think the Kid Buu one looks fine. I don't have the Trunks one so I can't really say, but from just looking at the jpg and trying to judge, I'd say it's actually one of the better of the earliest covers. (That and the fact that it would've looked a lot worse if it were just a screengrab where you could see the nicks in the paint and stuff.)

I do want to say I'm not bagging on Funimation. Everyone has to start somewhere, and for them it was DBZ. It's a learning process, and I think their current packaging is some of the best. I am often impressed with how clever their packaging is and how much fun they have with stuff nowadays. I just think it's really interesting to see what they were doing then vs. now, and try to theorize what their thought processes were at the time.

I'm personally lucky someone took a chance on me when I was a clerk at a supermarket, so I know that whole 'starting from a crappy job' rigamarole. Letting me do design even when I sucked terribly gave me a chance to develop my skills, so if someone there actually did parlay a job as a janitor into graphic design and voice acting, well, more power to them. (I know you were joking, but I still think it needs to be said.)

One thing people should also think about looking at the old Funi covers is the fact that back then... it was nowhere near as easy to design for print as it is now. The tools just weren't as robust.

[JulieYBM]

The Trunks one. I can't believe I never noticed how badly redrawn (and colored) it is. O.o

[KiddoCabbusses]

The Trunks one. I can't believe I never noticed how badly redrawn (and colored) it is. O.o

If it's that hard to notice, can it really be that bad?
This is not an actual attempt to defend the boxart or anything (I think it's rather bland that they'd re-use plain screens from the anime eps, redrawn or not. I could've even gone for goofy 90's American "Dark Age" comic art over that, which I'm certain FUNi would've done if they had the budget based on how they were marketing Z at the time.), but it's almost like people are quickly jumping the "FUNi messed something up" bandwagon just because they recently learned the boxart was redrawn.
If anything, the fact that it's hard to notice makes it a "good" or at least "decent" redraw; just think of half the reason people thought Kai's re-drawn scenes were poorly done - they stuck out like a sore thumb due to details such as different colors, weirdly-drawn eyes, and other such weirdness. In comparison, this DVD has been in circulation for years already and it's only recently that people are commenting on the "Redrawn art", no?

[VegettoEX]

In comparison, this DVD has been in circulation for years already and it's only recently that people are commenting on the "Redrawn art", no?

No, it's just Jacob. We whined about it a decade ago. But also watched our subbed DBZ on DVD legally. So eh.

[Ashura]

The Trunks one. I can't believe I never noticed how badly redrawn (and colored) it is. O.o

It's one of the better animation scenes redrawn at a higher res, and I don't see how copying the cel's colors exactly is badly colored? They could've made it more dynamic and less drab like a lot of the current artwork, true, but the series had a sort of drab color scheme at that point in general. I'm pretty critical when it comes to this stuff in my personal tastes, and I don't think this one is honestly that badly redrawn.

If you look at the later Buu covers, they make a huge point of using a lot better color theory to play up the fanciful, blue-blue skies nature of the series.

I also don't see what option they really had but redrawing certain screenshots for covers? At the time the way the singles were released, there was no way they had enough actual keyart to match the number of volumes in the series. It's a lot easier to find 5 pieces of nice keyart for the Dragonboxes because they're only doing less than 10 of them. Pioneer essentially 'blew their load' using a lot of the art they had on their close to 20 volumes they released.

...but it's almost like people are quickly jumping the "FUNi messed something up" bandwagon just because they recently learned the boxart was redrawn. ...this DVD has been in circulation for years already and it's only recently that people are commenting on the "Redrawn art", no?

I'm guessing other people commented on these a while back? I say this because hopefully I've not come across as saying I think they messed up, because I really don't. I think I've been rather complimentary given my comments on the covers in this thread. Given the budget, time, materials, and technology at the time I think they did about as well as they could have with the resources they had.

Materials are a big issue with projects like this half the time. There's a sort of disconnect with fans sometimes, where they automatically assume that the designer working on any show or video game has access to every single piece of artwork that's available and that's never the case. You can sometimes even ask for specific artwork you know exists from the original license holder and get turned down, be it for legal, resource, or artistic reasons.

[JulieYBM]

Eh, basically what I [just] realized how aboslutely different the picture for the cover looks in comparison to the actual frame it's taken from (at least the one in my head). The blinding yellow really sticks out to me when it comes to that.

[Coycoy88]

I recently bought all the old Funi "Android Saga" Dvd's on ebay, and the dvd menu's on those discs are similiar to the Trunks saga menu's. It wasn't until the Imperfect Cell discs that some actually time was spend on making them. When the menu starts up you see like this.... green,circular, 3-D ring of Cell's tail floating toward you. O.o; If I had a computer, I'd take a screencap. Eh, it's Kinda creepy, but the menu was better built than the previous saga's.

Now about the cover art on the old discs.... some of them you can REALLY tell were re-drew/traced from a screenshot. Examples - "(Imperfect Cell - 17's End), (Kid Buu - The Price Of Victory), and (Kid Buu - Saiyan Pride). But others "look" like scans of HQ animation Cel's. (Examples - "(Cell Games - Awakening), (Cell Games - Sacrifice). Does Funimation have access to some of the animation cel's? Or am I simply mistaken? Lol.

[Ashura]

Yeah, you're right. There's some covers in the Buu arc where it's easy to tell they're not redrawn; it's not that they look bad, but when you look at theym you can see the paint-strokes and how the lines aren't solid.

Does Funimation have access to some of the animation cel's? Or am I simply mistaken? Lol.

They might have some scans/slides of cels and some other high quality things that were given to them in a materials packages... this isn't uncommon in anime licensing and the stuff is mainly used for press art and back of box shots. For instance, the press materials Bandai used for 08th MS Team were hi-res scans/slide captures of a bunch of the cels... without the overscan cut off even. So you could see where they stopped painting Shiro's hand, etc.



To be honest, it's probably more likely that they used the film prints to get higher quality shots (though correct me if they didn't have this back then.)