Does anyone actually like Animated Fraggle Rock?

[Drtooth]

I wish I could find pictures of the animated one. I had a lot of trouble, cause the only site I know is down or something. Lemme check... Nope!

Anyway...It is the same problem people must have had with Kermit P.I. and Pigs in Space, the animated series. With animation, you can do more complex things than you could in live action, and it would cost not too much more. If they wanted a complex Fraggle set in the puppet show, it would mean long hours of working, and days, weeks even, for a small scene. In animation, it is still hard, but it costs less money. Mainly because they just whip the Korean animators harder and force them to paint and draw faster.

However, animating live action puppets is basically the antithesis of Puppetry itself. And many changes arise. Though you could see more of the Swinetrek ship in the Pigs in Space cartoon, it defeats it's parody of B-Movie grade Sci-Fi shows that seemed to pop up in the 50's and 60's (Before the William Shatner thing). Plus, even though they do a fine job, they never use the puppeteer voices, and use a bunch of voice actors, instead!

Infact, other than Muppet Babies, the only other successful animated version of a puppet show is Beany and Cecil (from Time for Beany).

 

[statler&waldorf]

From best I can remember, I liked it. It wasn't as good as Muppet Babies though. I loved that show, and still do. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the puppet version of FR on disney or nickelodeon at one point, as reruns in the early 90s

 

[Drtooth]

If anybody cares, I have found some pictures of the animated fraggle rock! They're located at

www.toonarific.com/f/fraggleanime-pics.html

 

[zeldazipple]

This comes from someone who doesn't know the voices...

I really didn't like Doc and Sprocket. Sprocket is supposed to be a real dog. Not some cartoon. Cartoons are not cute like Sprocket.

ZELDA:
I didn't think they did a bad job on Sprocket concidering it was an animated version so there's going to be some differerences. I wasn't expecting them to be excatly like the puppet series beceause back in the 1980's Saturday Morning cartoons had a geberic style to them

Trash Heap looked awful.

So did the Gorgs.

Animated Doozers are boring.

ZELDA: I didn't think the Doozers were that bad, I think they did a very good job at matching Cotterpin, her voice and looks were almost excat. As for the Artect well... his voice sounded almost like Doc's, so I think they probably used the same voice actor for both charecters.

The Fraggles were okay, except Gobo somehow looked too adult, Mokey didn't look as peaceful as the puppet version, and Red was a bit too small. Boober and especially Wembley were good.

ZELDA:

Gobo is an adult, so ofcourse he's going to look older. Well I always thought Gobo was a young adult being in his late teens possibly early 20's. I figured in 1986 Gobo was 18, and in 1982 when the series first started he was 14 and grew up through out the series, and in 1988 he was just a year older, that's how I saw it anyway. I think out of them all Gobo's voice and looks was the closest in the amimaited series. And I agree about Red being too young. In the Animated series she acted like she was 5 years old. I thought Red was around 11 or 12 in the puppet series maybe older but not much older. As for the rest of the charecters I think they all were too young, but then again I think the animaited series was aimed for a much younger audiance probably under 10 as for the puppet series I think probably 6-12.

The scripts were TOO easy. Lousy humour ("AAAH! The deep-deep-dark-dark-deep-dark hole!" "What?! The deep-deep-dark-dark-deep-dark hole?!"), not the depth from the puppet series, no quiet emotional moments that made the original series so unique. Then again if you think about it wasn't all 80's cartoon series lame anyway?

They could have done so much more with it...

ZELDA: And I agree they could have, probably aniami too.

 

[Effralyo]

Johnny looks as really Honey...

Whatever was FR - puppet or animated version - I like it! And, BTW, I find that Convincin`John in cartoon looks even better than in original and further nimbler. Such a Johnny-Honey!

 

[CoOKiE]

I loved it as a kid... so bringing it back now is a great way to see the things i loved then. brings back the good ol days

 

[Blue Weirdo]

To be honest the only episode I've seen completely is the one on the second DVD.

I vaguley remember part of another episode involving a Fraggle fools day but I can't recall much of it.

I'd like to see the rest of the series

 

[GonzoLeaper]

I've posted on this topic before and I'll say it again. Cartoons are good!
Yes, I like both the Fraggle Rock live action series and the cartoon series! They were both awesome! I grew up watching both as a child and I enjoyed them both. I also enjoyed Muppet Babies, for that matter, as well as The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, and most every Muppet production. I don't know what everyone seems to have against the animated versions of the Muppets.
I guess it's due to the fact that it's not puppets, but rather animation, but in Fraggle Rock's case, the cartoon was a way of prolonging the live action show after it had ended. And Muppet Babies was a concept that Jim Henson approved of and worked on. I suppose a live action version of Muppet Babies could have been done, but some things do work a little better as a cartoon. And sometimes there is a bit of bowing to pressure from the networks.
Anyway, I've always seen it as ways of prolonging the life of the Muppets and I have no problem adding either series to the library of Muppet production. They're both great!

 

[DerekJ]

I've posted on this topic before and I'll say it again. Cartoons are good!

<sarcastic:> Jim certainly thought so...

Ie., this would be around the same '86 time that Jim was "trivializing" the classic-muppet franchise, as he believed the Muppets were now a "just for kids" distraction away from building the Creature Shop into a major player--
All the marketing was sunk into the Muppet Babies (and anybody want to read anything into that one, Dr. Freud?) cartoon franchise, which he promptly tried to "expand" by bringing the Show Muppets ("Muppets, Babies and Monsters"), and that, ahem, other foam-Muppet show into the Ruby-Spears Saturday-morning fold...

One would have to be a fairly naive or thick-skinned fan not to see Jim "The Muppets would never work as a cartoon" Henson's sudden interest in the Muppets as cartoons as a major snub to his entire franchise of a few years ago--
But "Labyrinth" was still away on the horizon, and the sad lessons of fate were almost on his doorstep.

(And as for FR, well, we know Jim never personally "got" the show in the first place and had never had a clue how to market it from the beginning, so the cartoon didn't come as much of a shock, coming from him.)

I guess it's due to the fact that it's not puppets, but rather animation, but in Fraggle Rock's case, the cartoon was a way of prolonging the live action show after it had ended.

Except that--cheesy 80's Saturday-morning scripts aside--the convention of the network being too cheap to write new songs, and just recycling the old ones out of context comes off as a bit, well, odd:
You start to appreciate that each character originally had his/her own musical style, and hearing Mokey scat-sing one of Wembley's old songs isn't quite as disturbing as hearing Red or Gobo sing one that clearly has bum-ba-bum Gorg rhythms...

 

[Drtooth]

Since I finally saw The Puppet Fraggle Rock (a full episode, at least. I've seen a bit of an episode once when I was really little, and the apperances on specials and stuff) via the DVD, and comparing it with the animated version on the disk, I do like the cartoon, albiet not half as much as I love the actual series... and here's the reasons why:

Firstly and formostly, though there is a lot of great voice actor talent, they just haven't been able to capture the chemestry or even the similarity of their sounds. I mean, Rob Paulsen's Boober is pretty much the best, and Mokey and Red are kinda close, but Junior is WAAAAAAAY off.

Secondly, There are differences betwwen live action and cartoons that don't work well if one was translated into another. Though they were able to do more action scenes (like the cart chase with the Sleeping Slurp), their eyes moving, and stuff like that seemed a bit squeamishg.

Thirdly, the animation wasn't that good.... but this was before computers, so they had to use cels and paint, so I can't really complain too much.

And the biggest problem? The Doc and Sprocket scenes just don't work. It's either the chemestry is all off, the lack of improvisation, or the fact that Sprockett is funnier in live action because he resembles a dog, and sometimes spouts human mannerisms. In a cartoon it's just not as funny, since Scooby Doo, Pluto, et al have been doing that in animation for years.