Insektors: The First CGI series

2D animation at its core aged gracefully. While it's easy to tell when something is done on paper or on a computer, the basic principles are still the same, drawn characters manipulated by an animator by whatever means. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves doesn't reflect the age with which it came out, and it was the first feature length animated film ever, heck, it looks a bit like Pocahontas.

Point is, a drawing is timeless, all that's different is the artist behind it and their vision. CGI on the other hand is a whole other kettle of fish. With it, you could see how much it has evolved over the years. What began as a series of test sequences in a near three-decade long experimental phase, evolved to some cutting edge special effects for 80s films abound, and later got its own life with television, and it doesn't start where you think it does.

Background

The year is 1994, Canadians abound beheld ReBoot, a small production by Mainframe Entertainment that ushered in a new means of animated entertainment. People would be quick to set the bar here, the CGI at the time was... something, and it would surely get better from there (it didn't, at least old CGI cartoons had an eerie quality to them.) But, little did many know that another show not only beat them to the punch getting completed in 1993, but it aired on television a few months before ReBoot did. Only reason it didn't get as much recognition was because in its first year it only aired in France, though it was later dubbed and aired on YTV, with a British dub also existing. It has slipped under the radar, but it is recognized as being an important footnote in CGI history (at least if we're going by Wikipedia.)

The show was produced by Fantome. Very little is known about this company other than that it's no longer in operation. This series is credited to them for sure, but they did have involvement in one other series. They produced the third season of Tales from the Cryptkeeper, and surprisingly it was entirely 2D. Nelvana, the show's prime producer, tended to outsource the animation to other studios, so I don't know how much involvement Fantome had unless they transitioned to another format to expand their horizons. I briefly talked about them in my Tales from the Cryptkeeper review, but I had no idea they had a greater level of significance from that.

Of the talent present, I could only find two I recognize. Of them they're David Gasman, an American actor currently living in France, who I recognize as lending his voice to Code Lyoko. There's also Karen Strassman, who I know as the most recent voice of Rouge the Bat in the Sonic the Hedgehog series.

Animation

I can't be too hard on something that began the CGI bandwagon. The animation here is okay. It has the sensibilities of the average Mainframe cartoon and it seems like a more refined rendition of the average Spark Plug Entertainment production. This was saved by what I assumed to be a much higher budget. One advantage this show has is that it doesn't feature humans, instead just the insects, and for many shows centered around cartoony creatures there isn't a risk to be faced. Let's face it, all people talk about is how the art quality looks, and if the humans look bad in shows like these, then they'll judge it solely on that while embellishing other qualities. They did to Mr. Meaty what the Democrats did to Barry Goldwater and what the Republicans did to Michael Dukakis.

Anyway, off track, I'd be willing to say this is better than the animation in Pet Alien, but then again that show was probably done on a smaller budget (hence why they couldn't even afford to outsource voice duties to Vancouver, Charlie Ad-least stop with the Peter Lorre, Jess Har-dly able to shake Wakko Warner off and Candi Mi-goodness are you just an understudy these days?)

Whatever the case, obviously the animation isn't as good as it was back then, and it'd be incredibly bold to say it's better than the CGI shows from the late-2000s (though ironically this show isn't nearly as stylish as Fanboy and Chum Chum), but it's harmless. From the one episode I've seen, as long as there isn't an opportunity for a meme or a Twitter cap, it's essentially in the clear. Plus I didn't catch too many glitches, so it seems time wasn't a hinderance to the animators.

Structure

The show is basically a light-hearted adventure series, centered on bug-like creatures as they attempt to preserve life in their part of their world, and the big bad obviously tries to complicate that. The version I caught was the British version, and they have the luxury of a funny narrator. This is a plus for me because it's a good way to bring humor to a show they know isn't as remarkable as others without delegitimizing it (which could be done with a number of lazy fourth wall jokes).

This isn't a heavy-action oriented show, so the humor tends to carry it the most. I doubt it'd be fair for me to go into the humor as a whole since I only have one version to go off of, but for the most I've seen, it's about the same as other CGI shows, as in harmless enough, but maybe you should reserve the money toward better writers (still better than Pet Alien.)

Overall

Basically, I wanted to introduce you to an obscure series that laid the ground work for a new medium of television animation. Whether or not it's good will be left up to you, but you could say that I'm doing what few others could, and that's reaching into the far depths of the animation industry and picking the scraps others didn't want, oh, and that this show is better than Pet Alien.