Catch more from Rockman HQ on YouTube
Catch more from Rockman HQ on YouTube

Let me note at the start that this is not a Versus article. It’s a difference of opinion, not necessarily a disagreement on facts, save for one detail that leads to our difference of opinion. I’m mostly using this article by author and commentator Brian Niemeier on his Kairos blog as a discussion point, not calling him out. There’s a difference in approaches, and while I’ve used his commentaries in the past as Saturday Article Link fodder I have done a Versus on people I usually agree with before. That’s just not the case here.
For those of you who didn’t go to read the article, Niemeier–who I’m just going to go by his first name so I don’t have to keep double-checking the spelling of his last name–tries to make the point that switching from animation cels to drawing on the computer, which is still 2D art, has been a bad move for Japanese animation studios to do, hurting the visual side of the product. Now today’s Daily Video makes more sense. While that video was from an American animation studio, the process is the same. It’s also long, tedious, and costs more. Animating on the computer, even with drawing every image, takes less time though I don’t know if it takes less people. Does the animator have time to also be the colorist? My guess is no. They’ll also still need the in-betweener, the ones who do frames between the important ones to keep the process going. It rarely takes less than two people animating even a TV show.
So what’s Brian’s case for going back to cel animation, “cel” being short for celluloid, and why don’t I think that’s the problem? Let’s start seeing his case so I can make mine.
Chronology Xero #1
UMC Ediciones (January, 2019)
“The Awakening”
WRITER: Jonh Curcio
ARTIST: Nicolás Giacondino
COLORIST/COVER ART/ASSISTANT EDITOR: Max Cereijido
EDITOR: Jonh Curcio & Luis Sanchez

It’s a good thing I didn’t try to be funny and call the “terminology” section “technobabble” like I did at this point in the TNG guide. While some of the fake science terms have come up in this section of the guide, not all of it is what we traditionally refer to as technobabble. This is technobabble:
What we’ve actually seen is mostly terms with a hint of technobabble when needed. Technobabble’s job is to make it seem futuristic, learning new science and technology we didn’t have until we went to space, met aliens, and learned how to break the time barrier with a few crystals and explosive materials that could end the universe. As you do. Terminology here has mostly been “we named a thing”. Transporters aren’t real science but they are real in a science fiction universe.
Today we finally finish this section of the guide, but there’s still one more to go before we’re entirely done with this guide and I can give my overall thoughts on all this. So let’s take advantage of the schedule hole and finish the glossary for the original Star Trek.
Knuckles The Echidna #30
Archie Comics Publications (November, 1999)
WRITER: Ken Penders
EDITOR: J.F. Gabrie
LETTERER: Vickie Williams
“King Of The Hill” part one: “Bad To The Bone”
PENCILER: Ken Penders
INKER: Harvey Mercadoocasio
COLORIST: Frank Gagliardo
Espio The Chameleon: “Hiding In Plain Sight”
PENCILER: Coleen Doran
INKER: Andrew Pepoy
COLORIST: Barry Grossman