Well, it's almost been exactly a year since I last posted. I seem to be making a habit of annual DA returns.
I was going to hold out a little longer until Feb 3 so as to make it precisely one year but what the heck.

My last journal entry was hyping about the still-in-the-making Dragonlance movie. On January 15th, it was released. Yesterday, I saw it. Today, I mull over my momentous disappointment.

Despite the vocal talents of Keifer Sutherland and Lucy Lawless, and the much loved storyline featured in Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's best selling DragonLance novels, the film could at best be described as poor, the main reason being appalling animation.

Speaking in terms of style it looks like it was made in the late 80's. By Amateurs. Even then, the style remained inconsistent. ([link] )
Frequently the animation appears choppy, to the point we actually suspected our computer wasn't working correctly, but no, it turned out to just be the actual quality of the movie.

The film combines both 3D and 2D animation styles, but in a manner that fails to impress. The 3D draconians clash horribly with the 2D characters, and the after effects, such as fire, lens flairs and plastic-wrap are overused and appear unprofessional and cheap. If you do watch this DVD, I challenge you to a drinking game. Drink one for every lens flare and two if the lens flair appears in someones eye. You wont make it halfway through the film. Someone in the effects studio obviously thinks lens flairs are highly dramatic and cool.

As if the regular animation wasn't bad enough, they seem to have let the office junior loose on the animation process at some points, because every now and then, something utterly awful appears, like this: [link]


One good reason to watch this film is to laugh at it. I'm not kidding! There was this one point where the heros encounter a unicorn, so I should probably be filled with a sense of peace and hope? I should not, then, be literally doubled, shedding tears of laughter at the fact that one eye was vastly deformed and drawn at a very wrong angle, and that just about every time the heros spoke to the unicorn, the animators simply reused the same low-frame-rate, choppy animation by flipping it and hoping the view wouldn't notice.
So bad.


Oh, I'm not done ranting yet, there's still the acting to dissect. Not the vocal acting mind, that was for the most part good. I'm talking about the actions of the animated characters. Every time someone says 'you', it is accompanied by pointing at whomever the 'you' refers to. Example Raistlin: 'I see you're a knight now' *points at Sturm*.
Then there's the wonderfully expressive faces - often you will find yourself having to pause and rewind just to watch again and laugh at the Robot Chicken style expression animation in some of the less focal characters. But even the key shots often feature ribspittingly comical expressions. Try not to damage any internal organs while guffawing at the amusing head tosses and cape furling, it happens all too often. I particularly loved Tanis's 'because I'm worth it' shampoo endorsement style hair tossing when visiting the elves. Classic.

The story itself has been chopped and rearranged a bit, but I can forgive them that. I'm quite aware of the fact that they need to make changes in order to fit things into a movie length and format. I was more than a little disappointed with the alterations made to the Xak Tsaroth/Onyx portion of the movie, but I wasn't surprised. Apparently, Tracey Hickman argued with the screenwriter about including the whole of the first book in the movie, prefering to do just one segmant. Personally, I think Hickmen was right.

In short, there are two reasons to watch this move: 1) You're a die hard DragonLance fan, and you're not going to be offended by the poor production values.
or 2) You enjoy laughing at bad movies.

If you fit into category 1, well, I for one still managed to enjoy it, despite everything I've said. I suspect my enjoyment stems purely from my love of the novels when I was about 12 years old. Dragonlance was the first literacy trilogy I ever purchased with my own money as my own choice, and as such it holds a special, untouchable place in my fanbase-heart. If you can't look past the glaring flaws, then 'Dragonlance - Dragons Of The Autumn Twilight' will only disappoint you fans who have high expectations.

If you fit into category 2, then you'll just love this movie > My boyfriend hasn't read any of the DragonLance novels, but the production values had him laughing almsot as hard as when we watched Hot Fuzz!

If they release a sequel, I'll be buying it because I actually fall into both categories, and with luck, the preduction team will learn from these past mistakes.

Urk, I talk too much! But then DragonLance is an improtant topic to me, so the movie was something of a big deal. I have plenty of other things I would like to talk about, but I'll save it for my next journal update. Until then, I'll be gradually uploading some of the artwork I've produced during my yearlong DA absence ^^

To my friends, I extend my appologies, I make a hopeless friend. I will not be catching up with my emails and such just yet, nor will I be on MSN for a few days. I intend to catch up with my overly delayed commissions, before I sheepishly knock on a few long dusty doors of buddies to see if I'm still welcome.