The only really annoying thing that bothers me about this show

[Klunk]

I know this has probably been discussed before in other threads so please don't jump down my throat for giving this its own thread.

I do enjoy the new show but I truly HATE the fact that NO ONE (I mean zero...period) is ever on the streets of New York. No one. Zilch. Nada. None. I guess it's easy to be a mutant ninja turtle in that city since no stealth is needed to hide around in the shadows.

Would it really cost a lot to just look like a bunch of random people are in the city? The flipping shellraiser drives around the streets taking up two lanes of traffic without a car in sight.

I know it's a kid show but I wish they would do something to fix this problem. I wouldn't even care if all of the people of New York city looked alike as long as there were actually people in that deserted city.

There, I'm done. I feel better now.

[BabyTurtles]

I'm sure it will get better as the episodes go on :D

[Cipher]

In before someone tells you that non-Manhattan areas of NYC really are that deserted at night, even though, come on, the idea that they could have a full-blown fight or drive the Shellraiser down the street anywhere without attracting attention is distractingly ridiculous. Even sleepy suburbia has nighttime drivers.

The 4Kids show had this problem as well, but I definitely think it's worth prioritizing if they have the time and budget in future seasons.

[Zulithe]

LOL. Alright, I'll admit it. I was kinda hoping that when I clicked on this thread your complaint would be exactly this. Because I have the same one.

While in a few isolated shots in some episodes you do see people wandering around the city (mostly in later episodes), it's still readily apparent almost every single time they are outside of the sewer.

It's just one of those areas where suspension of disbelieve is definitely called for. I'm sure the show runners know this is a huge oversight but they chose to focus on the adventures of the turtles rather than making them constantly hide from the surface-dwellers all the time, which while more realistic is probably less interesting.

Anyway, I'm in favor of making our voices heard on this point so Nick can hopefully make the world more "believable." This would include showing more people wandering around the city and having the turtles using stealth and zany trickery to stay out of sight as they move to and fro. Just how many times can they have these huge battles in the street with the kraang and the foot and be left totally alone?

Alright, in the latest episode Enemy of my Enemy they did show the cops a few times and a bum that noticed the kraang before quickly falling back asleep. It's a start I guess.

[Powder]

Watching the OT today I realized that this has pretty much been universal to our turtles. Even in the live action movie.

[Refractive Reflections]

I could understand how there's a willing suspension of disbelief that the Turtles (any cartoon version) can battle and drive clearly through Manhattan with few people around, but as you said Klunk...no people even in casual/ordinary scenes?

...It kind of does throws the whole stealth and disguises aspect out the window. At least in the OT and 2K3 they both recognized they had to either disguise themselves or hide. (In the OT, it's eventually loosened up in progressive seasons since... I assume the public becomes more and more aware of their existence which at least makes some sense, but the daytime scenes without the disguises in early seasons are a headscratcher.)

But yeah, with such a dense population in Manhattan and with such minimal effort to disguise/hide themselves (unless its obvious with Vic/Spider Bytez)... it's kind of...odd.

[Zulithe]

It is an inherent problem in the concept of TMNT, definitely not a Nick problem, no.

You have these mutant 'freaks' who have to stay hidden at all times because most people would misunderstand them which could lead to some terrible consequences. yet at the same time, they are warriors and need to be shown battling every episode/issue/etc.

So they live in NYC, one of the most densely populated places in the western hemisphere... how do you reconcile this? Oh, right, they're ninjas! So... they can hide and be quiet and stuff! Except we don't see them doing that very often O.o They tend to run a lot while talking loudly to one-another or drive loud buggies without concealing their appearance. Oh and they get in a lot of fights in the middle of the street. Yet nobody see them (except that pizza guy I guess) How does this work?

The only answer is to not examine it too much :p Which, uhh, is challenging for me at times... heh

[Refractive Reflections]

The only answer is to not examine it too much :p Which, uhh, is challenging for me at times... heh

Uh huh, right with you there Zulithe! :lol:

[CyberCubed]

Everyone knows its because of the limits of CG animation. They have to design new character models for random people.

Cartoons don't have this problem.

[Luigiperps]

Other show do it to, any one watched any spiderman shows? There are never more than 5 people on the streets

[Zulithe]

I don't buy the "it's CG! it takes time to create the assets!" argument. And it's true, just look at some of the other CGI shows out there.

I love Nick TMNT but it's pretty clear they aren't spending the money on it that they could. It's pretty cheaply made compared to something like Clone Wars or Beast Wars. Maaaaybe now that the first season has been a success we'll see improvements in Season 2... the kind of improvements that more money buys. Maybe.

[CyberCubed]

I don't buy the "it's CG! it takes time to create the assets!" argument. And it's true, just look at some of the other CGI shows out there.

I love Nick TMNT but it's pretty clear they aren't spending the money on it that they could. It's pretty cheaply made compared to something like Clone Wars or Beast Wars

You don't know how CG works then. Same reason we see the same backgrounds re-used most of the time, they have to create, "sets" for new scenes. Notice how the Turtles keep jumping along the same rooftops over and over again with the water tower, yet they try and pass it off as different parts of NYC? Or the same alleys?

They probably spent alot of money on the recent docks scene since it was all-new and the water effects.

[drgon78]

I would be just happy that they would show April at school interacting with friends(or people her own age) or her at home with her aunt(or whoever is her taking care of her).

It would be nice to see more people and maybe seeing the turtles actually trying to be stealthy again.

Maybe if they had a mission that actually took place during the day.

[Tazi]

It's really not that hard to have 3-4 3D models for templates of people and make little modifications on them, like palette swapping (takes few minutes to change the texture like that in any graphic app) to have a lot of different persons wandering the streets.
But invidually animating all of them for each scene would take more time. But I think animations could be copied too from model to model.
Tho it wouldn't be that much more work, it would definitely cost them a bit more money. Seems like they trying to save money, as much as they can. Dunno. There are other things in this show like this. For example sometimes skyscapers are just cubes with a simple texture over them, or there was a close up of Leo's sword in last Ep, and that made the pixelated texture seenable.

But to be honest, these things doesn't ruin the show for me. OT had far more mistakes like these.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

We at least saw a homeless man in "Enemy of My Enemy".

[BubblyShell22]

And don't forget all of the people we saw in "I, Monster" as well.

[Candy Kappa]

I really don't mind it, unless there is a clear moment where the turtles have to avoid detection there is little reason to include NPCs at night time.

All to save render time

We at least saw a homeless man in "Enemy of My Enemy".

there was also a hobo in the first episode.

And then theres Vic, Kirby and April was walking outside at night. The twins police officers.

[gobo]

There was an occupied cop car and a hobo on the streets at night just in this last ep, exaggerator.

[sdp]

Even if the OT and 2k3 had just as few people as this show on the streets for some reason in this show I really do feel like something is odd in NYC, it really does feel empty and I never felt that watching the OT and 2k3, I don't know why that is but it makes it feel like they live in this world alone. Maybe the other shows had scenes with people in them even if it wasn't when the turtles were around but this show never shows scenes with a lot of people. I hope this is corrected after they have a few more character models because it does take you out of the world.

[Gwydion]

I'm mostly used to it by now. There are still times where the emptiness of the streets really stands out, but mostly I'm able to suspend my disbelief. It would be nice if they took a bit more care with this (and as the episodes have gone on, it has seemed to improve a bit), but as others have said, it's not like this is the only show to do this.

In fact, I was just watching an episode from the 2003 show in which Raph was escorting this kid to a police station, and even though he directly stated he couldn't go with him, he was still able to walk right out in the open because no one was there. That was just as distracting for me personally as the Shellraiser doing donuts in the middle of the street.

[Candy Kappa]

There was an occupied cop car and a hobo on the streets at night just in this last ep, exaggerator.

and a guy reading a comic book at the comic stand, might be the pizza guy though.

[The Big Bad]

On a slightly related note, this particular episode just highlighted how the people aren't simply offscreen, but often appear not to exist at all. Here we have an alien ship of unknown origin flying around in plain sight, which would normally be huge. Here, though, it can't be huge, because making it huge would involve implying that people outside of the turtles' world exist. It ends up making the world feel small and a bit fake, particularly since the writers haven't put in the effort to sell the turtles' world as one where wacky stuff just occurs, like Scooby-Doo Mystery Inc. or Teen Titans or the original TMNT (comic or toon, it applies in both): we're still meant to buy this world as realistic except when it isn't, which doesn't work when we have stuff like a completely empty school during school hours.

[Cipher]

On a slightly related note, this particular episode just highlighted how the people aren't simply offscreen, but often appear not to exist at all. Here we have an alien ship of unknown origin flying around in plain sight, which would normally be huge. Here, though, it can't be huge, because making it huge would involve implying that people outside of the turtles' world exist. It ends up making the world feel small and a bit fake, particularly since the writers haven't put in the effort to sell the turtles' world as one where wacky stuff just occurs, like Scooby-Doo Mystery Inc. or Teen Titans: we're still meant to buy this world as realistic except when it isn't, which doesn't work when we have stuff like a completely empty school during school hours.
Sort of an aside, but I like the use of "meant to buy this world as realistic except when it isn't."

Going to have to remember that particular verbiage next time someone says, "But we're dealing with mutant turtles and aliens!" or generally pretends different levels of suspension of disbelief don't exist as is wont to happen in these discussions.

[ToTheNines]

when we have stuff like a completely empty school during school hours.

I'm not so sure it was during school hours. Notice every door April tried to open was locked?

[CyberCubed]

The universe so far is too small and compact. We see nothing of April's life outside her connection with the turtles, and it does surprise me we've never seen the Aunt she's supposed to be living with.

And so far, almost all the villains are connected to either Shredder or the Kraang. Rat King is the only one who isn't.

Even the 4kids series did stand-alone villains in Season 1 that had nothing to do with the overall plot, and the original toon had so many one-shot villains not connected to Shredder/Krang.

That's why it feels like not much has happened yet, the Turtles haven't gone on that many adventures or interacted with that many villains yet.

[the doomworm]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that it has more to do with software limitations or time crunches. That's weak, I know.

The episode I watched tonight had their little 4-gocart following a helicopter, and the streets were full. There are lots of people running and they actually force a van to tip over. It's the only episode that stands out like that though.

There are the occasional random people but it really does feel like a big empty movie lot set, especially when they are in a vehicle.

[The Big Bad]

I'm not so sure it was during school hours. Notice every door April tried to open was locked?

That...doesn't really work, though. The scene is shown in a way that implicitly says that April runs into Ms. Campbell (this is key: she was in no way expecting the encounter) while entering school during a regular school day, and the scene doesn't work any other way. There's no reason at all given why April would suddenly get the desire to enter the building outside school hours, or a way she would be able to enter it at all if it was closed. It'd work a bit better if it was after school, when almost everyone had left but the custodians, but that doesn't work either, as no reason is given for April to remain in school after hours, and would ignore the footage we see of April explicitly entering.

[demonsweat]

I don't buy the "it's CG! it takes time to create the assets!" argument. And it's true, just look at some of the other CGI shows out there.

I love Nick TMNT but it's pretty clear they aren't spending the money on it that they could. It's pretty cheaply made compared to something like Clone Wars or Beast Wars. Maaaaybe now that the first season has been a success we'll see improvements in Season 2... the kind of improvements that more money buys. Maybe.

It's really not that hard to have 3-4 3D models for templates of people and make little modifications on them, like palette swapping (takes few minutes to change the texture like that in any graphic app) to have a lot of different persons wandering the streets.
But invidually animating all of them for each scene would take more time. But I think animations could be copied too from model to model.
Tho it wouldn't be that much more work, it would definitely cost them a bit more money. Seems like they trying to save money, as much as they can. Dunno. There are other things in this show like this. For example sometimes skyscapers are just cubes with a simple texture over them, or there was a close up of Leo's sword in last Ep, and that made the pixelated texture seenable.

But to be honest, these things doesn't ruin the show for me. OT had far more mistakes like these.


Both good points. CGI is notoriously expensive to do, no matter what it is. My guess is that they started with a limited budget in order to see if this new show would take off or not. Once the ratings/toy sales figures start to roll in, they'll probably hire a few more animators and modelers.

It doesn't bother me too much because I love CGI and I'm used to corners being cut. Some of the metal textures (what Tazi said about Leo's swords, for instance) irk me in the same way. The important thing to remember is that things like this are not design choices, they're just the limitations of what the crew has to work with.