Thomas And Friends EVALUATED - Part 1

First of what could be more short videos evaluating anything to with Thomas and Friends. Not just the books and TV Series, but fan questions and statements around the franchise.
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[@GP30_Foamer]

Honestly, I actually think Nitrogen animated the engines better than Arc. The way the engines and rolling stock gently rocked as they rolled along is a detail I’ll always appreciate despite how lackluster the era was. In reality, the only people from Nitrogen who didn’t bring their A-game were the writers. Every single other department did their absolute best to make the show as good as it could look back then (despite how poorly it’s aged now)

[@Juanthemtg]

Arc’s animation does have better lighting and facial expressions than Nitrogen in my opinion

[@joshuaW5621]

I never expected the Miller era to have something like this in common with season 1. You learn a lot of new stuff every year, and this is one of those.

[@TheOfficialArtOfAsh]

The reason why the "reusing camera angles" stuff only works in Season 1 is sort of because the episodes are edited to a brief 4 and a half minutes. And those moments are brief so it's not really that noticeable. Not only that, but the sets and backgrounds are far more interesting to look at. In the Nitrogen Era, nearly all the backgrounds, aside from stations are just trees and forestry (like in the Hit era) and that they look so much blander. And another thing to make mention of is how this is the Nitrogen Era, meaning every episode is the goddamn same and uses the same formula, so you're bound to have at least four tracking shots of Thomas just travelling to nowhere for at least 4 seconds straight.

[@RhysIndividual]

In terms of the tracking close ups, they work in Series 1 because of the amount of movement they have. There's the side rods moving as well as the camera sometimes going up and down. It doesn't work as well in the Nitrogen Era because the engines are mostly positioned to one side of the screen and most of the time, you can't even see their side rods so you're just stuck looking at their faces.

[@tudorbrancuturcu5996]

The reason why Season 1 works and the Nitrogen era doesn’t was because in Season 1, the stories were actually good, there was no rhyming (mostly) and the characters were not out of character

[@Thomasfan1811]

Season 13 and 16 were great

[@Silverlink28]

Honestly, I think they should’ve kept it model and scaled back the budget a little bit because that is way easier to do than manually animating every move and every background animation, and every slightest move

[@Silverlink28]

And maybe if they want to be real lazy just plunk the models on a green screen

[@Kingdarrdarr_17]

This video almost made it to 2024 happy new years though

[@EternityKingdomsHeadHoncho]

The way I see it, Arc had the better rendering, lighting and camera angles (especially between Series 19 and Series 20), but Nitrogen had more realistic animation and models (Duncan’s model looks so off because of how Talyllyn-accurate Skarloey, Rheneas, Sir Handel, Peter Sam, and Rusty are). If you want my ten cents on whether or not Nitrogen was homaging Series 1… I mean, it’s entirely possible they were. Greg Tiernan loved classic Thomas (see the accuracy of the model series recreations in Blue Mountain Mystery) and I don’t think he’d miss an opportunity to imitate how the masters did it.

[@thegermanofsodor]

Honestly the biggest issues i have with Nitrogen's overuse of the same angles is 1.The angles they kept reusing weren't even that good cause most of the time they were either positioned so that the engines smoke would cover everything so it just looked bad or they were just really boring to look at. 2.The fact they did it throughout their ENTIRE run, reused angles in the model seasons were always exclusive to the specific seasons they came from, unless they would use stock footage in other seasons, but with Nitrogen they'd reuse angles from all over their entire run, just for example, in a S16 episode there is a angle they reused from S13, over three seasons ago. I can understand reusing animation/angles here and there cause budget and deadlines are a thing you have to consider, but to do it to the extend that the Nitrogen era did is almost unacceptable imo

[@joshslater2426]

Interesting. I never thought about that. I’ve never hated the Nitrogen era, but I like the fact that there’s a symmetry with the beginning of the model series and the beginning of the CGI series.

[@calebc.2290]

Can I just say I like these. I don’t have never use social media, with the exception of this, this is a nice and creative idea, it shouts out other community members on their hot takes and just going off this puts a whole new spin on the nitrogen era. definitely like to see more stuff like this in the future.

[@thesudriana016]

With CGI limitations, not every character all had to be recreated/hand sculpted to return due to then having their own budget issues. But they did what they can with passion when working on Thomas at both Nitrogen and Arc.

[@jaanshersaeed4541]

I wonder what it would be like if Miller still stayed around as Head Writer and Brenner didn’t take over, maybe certain characters like Duck Donald Douglas Oliver Toad Bill Ben etc. would still return slowly though we’d still have the mundane storyline. Fans would probably start being done with the show with the fan base becoming smaller and not as strong as it is like we know, though of course fans would still have respect for the RWS and Classic era though but not as focused on the current state of the show.

[@2007ofmoldova]

Thank god I'm not the only one who noticed that! I recalled seeing those a long time ago.

[@DieselD7101]

Happy New Year, Luke!

[@michaelsoulz8447]

Little off the topic question ??. Will we ever see you give your thoughts about the CGI era in the future. Of course I'm not expecting a full analysis of all series from 13-24 but it would be nice to hear some of your thoughts on the Nitrogen, Brenner and BWBA ERA.

[@sonickreekgamer7625]

That actually makes sense

[@abbeyroadfan94-J.P]

Awesome video Luke

[@giulianodervelociraptorder734]

Happy new year ,Luke.

[@harrisonallen651]

Happy new year my friend

[@Silverlink28]

And also, how does it sound like a good idea to adapt the first eight books of the railway series with no TV show inspiration?

[@Bigbigpoopi]

Imagination. Something NPCs lack

[@Silverlink28]

Ima saying cuz I really want to do this I will probably conjure up a story for the finale though

[@spiderfan2003]

Interesting

[@meciomontoya8440]

Unless you count season 12 2:12

[@TheMagicHistoryLifeProduction]

Ok! Have you seen the nitrogen era? The only good season of it is 13 & 16! But fuck 14 & 15! Also… Season 1 mostly was a start and it was good! So there your answer! Old season good, but nitrogen suck ass! 🙂

[@Thomasmemoryscentral]

Let’s forget that until 1984 aired the first series in the UK before Shining Time Station ran it for the US and Canada years later, Sodor only had a failed 1953 pilot and a cancelled Cosgrove Hall pitch that only went up to a concept drawing. If this series never happened and secured Ringo for star power, Wilbert may have never allowed an adaption to happen until his 1997 death. Milton, Allcroft, Mike, Ringo and Junior all needed their top game to achieve the impossible and they did

[@ThomasTheTankEngineFan]

0:51 because people want a reason to complain Like you