I am quite honestly interested, and don't take this as tetchiness, please, in why you watch the show?
I'm just interested on what inspires you, what you find GOOD about it. We all know what everyone finds BAD about it. I could quite honestly walk into alot of these convos and take this for a hate board, so let's put in some positive feedback, for a nice change!!

Because of Moordryd, the dragons, fighting, the City, Ace Lightning isn't on at the moment, some of the characters are interesting, it's 'pretty', and because I like you guys. :)

cuz it help's me deal with my loneness... dont have many friends and... yeah thats why i watch the dragon booster

and to see parm's pink boxers! ^^ i have no idea why i said that ^^;;

I just watch it because it's interesting.

I watch it for the different style of animation, which is combining anime, western (both modern and classic) and masking it with a lot of very intense colour- which is a style I've never seen used anywhere else, but that's common in Canadian toons.
I like the character make ups, yes, they have sterotypes, and I guess they could be irritating if that's the only aspect you let yourself see, but they have dimentions beyond the typical western toon, which hints on an anime influence, although they don't quite breach the gap- the villians still have the very Western "EVIL, NO QUESTIONS!" on their foreheads, they show, as mentioned friendship and actual glimmers of humanity, while the heroes make mistakes, make fools of themselves and humilate themselves.
The scripting comes up now and then with little gems I'm surprised slipped throguh the rather tight net that surronds most of the modern script screening process, and their humour is both spontanious, unpredctable and brilliantly timed to break up the serious bits to remind us that this IS a cartoon, and in essence, created for amusement.
And i like Moordryd, character concept and design.

My, we can write paragraphs full of denounciatons, but only a few sentances of good things?

That's the way it tends to work--for something that's good one lavishes complimentary adjectives on it, and one runs out of complimentary adjectives after a very short time, yet for something that's bad one tends to go into detail as to just why. The only exception to this would be, of course, literary analysis.

Wow, there are a bunch of reasons why I like this show so much. Do I come across as negative about the show? I don't particularly mean to, though there are definitely things I would do differently if I had creative story control. But back to your question as to why I watch:

I stumbled upon Dragon Booster by accident one day while flipping channels. I used to work for Silicon Graphics which was the leading manufacturer of high end graphics workstations in the 90's, so it only took me about two seconds to recognize the cel-shaded CGI on the screen before me. This was more than enough to get me to pause on the channel and watch further since at least to my knowledge, this is the first use of this technique in a TV animated series.

I soon discovered lots of other reasons to watch. I always thought dragons were cool creatures and I have never seen dragons placed in a futuristic setting before, so that hooked me. Because it's futuristic, the show has a real sci-fi feel to me, which are my favorite kind of stories. It's also action/adventure which I love. I also quickly discovered it had a continuing story line and the characters actually had an arc as well. As I'm sure everyone here knows, this is almost unheard of in typical TV animation (at least outside of anime). I am so sick of the typical series where after each episode, the writers push the reset button and the next script has nothing to do with any of the previous scripts. I just hate that. (That's also why you always hear me raving about shows like Gargoyles and Babylon 5 which both have continuing stories.) I also tend to like the mythic hero adventure stories and I love the music used in the show. One of the best soundtracks I've heard on the TV show in a long time.

And since I'm a computer geek, I love the way Nerd Corps knows how to get the most bang for the buck out of the computer. I can forgive the character animation being a little stiff since that all has to be done by hand and they obviously don't have the same budget Pixar has. And Nerd Corps is doing exactly the right thing to compensate: use of excellent cinematography. Moving the camera in the CG world is basically free, so this is exactly what they should be doing given their limited budget. And I just can't gush enough about how well I think they handle the camera moves: they routinely do crane shots, tracking shots, focus pulls, rotating pans, pan/zoom combos, camera shake simulation, ... The camera hardly ever sits still which is exactly what they need to be doing to compensate for the stiff character animation. The fact that they hit this nail so squarely on the head just impresses the hell out of me.

So while I will quibble on story points that aren't quite perfect, which in many ways is just my way of having fun and exploring the world they created a bit more fully, the fact that they're daring to do a continuing storyline and pushing a fresh visual style just blows me away.

You can always look at it as a positive thing that we spend so much time analysing the show, we wouldn't waste our time if we totally hated it. I'll often mix what I liked in with what I don't like.

Consider it concrit that people who have a say may never hear, rather than show bashing.

And, as I don't have a career in a field relating to this sort of thing, I can't really use big paragraphs and technical phrases so express just why I like it, but it's fairly easy to say, as a viewer, what went wrong with which episode, and why.

And no, Furox. You come across as a positive guy.

Lets see...
I like shows that try something new. Dragon Booster's animation is increadibly good. Although I would say it works much better on the dragons than the humans, it still looks good. But, they're trying out something (hence taking a risk with it instead of slipping into the norm) which I admire. I noticed the camera angles a bit too. Is a very good way of making up for other stuff, and makes it more dynamic. Exspeacilly when they pan it around and everything actually seems to move in relation to everything else.

The humor, I can not get over. I have nearly fell off my couch so many times. Not to mention Parm's pink boxers!

Yeah, isn't that cool? All they have to do is define where all the foreground and background elements are in space, insert the characters where they want them, then define the path the camera will follow along with any zoom or tilts. All the perspective is then computed during the rendering phase. Once the location of all the elements is defined, moving the camera around is completely free and all the calculations are handled at render time with no added cost to their budget. Even in the simplest scenes, they're frequently using multiple layers of foreground/background elements to add that feeling of depth. Very well done.

Also, have you noticed the motion blur? This shows up quite a bit in action sequences and adds a nice touch of heightened realism.

Well, okay, I don't pay huge amounts of attention to this aspect of it, but I do like the way the 'camera' shakes whenever dragons race past. :)

Another reason that I just remembered: Artha's mouth. The only thing about him that I really like. It just looks cool.

I reckon the animation seems to look better on the dragons. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they seem to be mostly hard angles, while humans should be more smooth.

Yeah, there are times when the humans don't look too hot, but the dragons always sem to look great.

When Beau does his 'Just after transforming roar' and the flap comes down from his chin and he shakes his head, he ALWAYS looks awesome. Close to the standard CGI animation.

Humans are tough to animate in CG. That's one of the reasons both Pixar and Dreamworks have used toys and bugs as the main characters in their first few CGI movies. The main difficulty the animators face is that everyone knows exactly how humans move. We see it every day. So if the animation is off just a little bit (or a lot in the case of DB), we notice it instantly. (There are technical issues as well due to the limitation of time and money.) Even in the latest Pixar movie, The Incredibles, where the human animation is the best ever, it's still noticeably not quite right all the time.

Toys, bugs, monsters and dragons are easier to pull off in CG animation since we have no preconceived notions about how they should be moving. Their movement can be just as stiff as the human characters but it doesn't become noticeable to us, at least not as much. They can also get away doing stylized motion for the dragons, like they do with Wyldfyr. When Wyldfyr runs, his upper body remains remarkably stable given how much weight he'd have to be shifting back and forth from one leg to the other. The run animation they came up with gives him a really sleek and cool look, and I wouldn't want to change it, but in reality there should be a substantial amount of left-right sway in his upper body when he runs (assuming one can use the word 'reality' when talking about how a two-legged dragon would run :)). If they tried the same thing with a running human character where the legs are moving but the upper body remained totally stable, you can just imagine how really, really odd it would look to us. But it's a good thing for Kitt that Wyldfyr doesn't sway when he runs otherwise she'd have a heck of time holding on and would probably get mighty seasick during a race. :lol:

I just assumed the mismovements in the humans were part of the stylization. like the corset waisted guys and the way they draw the upper lip on both genders, which isn't often done, top lips and eyelashes are ususally only added to girls, which if you think about it, is rather incorrect even in styalizing, if you try lifedrawing a portrait, you'll notice guys top lips are the much more noticiable then their bottom, while girls have both. A little feature I've admired abotu the character design seeing it's pretty unheard of.

Oh yes, I'd say they've definitely made it part of the style of the show. They would want that for consistency if nothing else. Basically, I think they're doing a great job working within the time and budget constraints they have (the old adage about making lemonade when you're handed lemons).

I was introduced to the show by LightningFlash :) . One of the first things that struck me about it was the animation, it's very unique, and very annoying to draw on the computer <_<, especially since the shadowing they use is a lot more complex than most cartoons I've seen. I love the fantasy world Dragon Booster is set in, it's so colourful and complex, and it makes me feel that the writers actually put quite a bit of effort into the storyline.

I agree with you on the subject of plot Furox, I prefer shows that have continuing storyline with character and plot development (one of the reasons I'm a Trekkie :P ) where in each episode a new dimension is added to the world the characters live in. Another reason I watch it is because I like most things that concern Sci-fi/Fantasy/Horror, especially the saving the world variety, because I like the plot to have profound reasoning behind it, and the fate of a world is pretty profound.

And of course the humour, the characters voice work really enhances it, in Parm's case especially. Oh, and how could I forget Parm, my favourite characters are normally the kooky ones, and for me, the show would be very hollow without Parm.

I was really impressed this week with Track of Doom, the Orange Dragons show that the Dragons are indeed sentient, and able to communicate with humans directly, which makes them akin to another race of people rather then animals, which means a lot in the issue of their "enslavement."

The show also has an element of horror I love. Some of the Dragons are pretty freaky if you think about it, and the way Parm acted in the most recent episode was scary too! Then there was Lance's near miss with the arrows. Well, one thing’s for certain, I'm definitely going to follow the show through.

Ah, a fellow Trekkie. Are they showing "Star Trek Enterprise" where you are? They did stand-alone episodes the first season, then moved into multi-part episodes with continuing stories. The longest one they did I think was somewhere around 8-10 episodes in sequence telling one story. Really fun to watch. Unfortunately, the show just got cancelled two months ago. The last two episodes are about air and then that's it. No more new Star Trek episodes. It will be the first time in 18 years that one Star Trek series or another won't be in production. Sigh. :(

No more Star Trek????? :( :( :( I find that very depressing ;_;

It gets screened here but at something like 12 in the morning. I rent Star Trek from the local video store but I've only seen the first series of Enterprise as that's all they've stocked. Are the other seasons any good?

star trek deep space 9 was good

The later seasons of Star Trek Enterprise are better than the first. Much better. As with all the Star Trek series, the first season is the weakest as the writers needed time to find their footing. They hit their best stride around season 3. So if you've watched the first season of Enterprise, then it only gets better.

It's depressing that it got cancelled. I think it's mainly audience burn-out. After 18 years in this run, it doesn't attract as large an audience as it used to. Reality shows are the big thing these days, so I think those are edging it out as well.

One nice thing though: apparently the production staff had enough notice of the cancellation that they were able to write new scripts for the last few episodes so that the series ends with closure. The show actually stopped airing new episodes and went into re-runs for a few weeks while they re-tooled the ending. The last few episodes have all been power houses and they're setting things up so that the ending of Star Trek Enterprise will blend into the beginning of the original Star Trek series from the 60's. I give them credit for that.

If you run out of Star Trek videos to rent, see if your store carries (or can get) Babylon 5. If you haven't seen it, it's worth watching. It's a five year story comprised of 130 episodes, each 44 minutes (since there are no commercials of course). So if you run out of Star Trek, that will keep you busy for a while. I have yet to meet anyone who liked Star Trek and didn't like Babylon 5. And if you run out of those, there's something like 8 years of the X-Files to watch. :)

My sister loved Babylon 5, she said it was like a darker version of DS9 and that I should watch it because DS9's my favourite Star Trek (Weyoun rocks :P ) but she also kind of told me what happened in at the end :blink: , but I'll try it out anyway. My sister introduces me to most sci-f because when most of the good stuff was coming out I was too young to understand it, I remember when the X-Files theme song used to freak me out :lol: . I'm glad to hear Enterprise gets better as I thought series 1 had some funny parts and great special effects, but I didn't like it that much, blending into the Original series sounds very clever :) , I need to see if I can nag the people at VideoEzy into bringing the later seasons.

I used to be a trekkie, then I got bored. I found fantasy books instead, and they ended up being much more interesting for my weird and unusual beings facination. The only character in Star Trek I'm still fond of (and would use effort to actually see) is Q.

Ah, Q, Q, Q..Q2! Have you seen the Voyager episode where Q has a teenage son? :D One of the funniest Voyager episodes.

My personal favourite Star Trek character is Weyoun. He's an extremely complex character, and you can't get rid of him either! They just keep cloning him. Well, besides number eight :( . Number seven was sleazy :P . Gagh gotta go.

I'm a trekkie! My fav series is Deep Space 9. I love Odo. If the later eps of Enterprise are better I'll have to try and watch them. I think they tried to get a wider audience with that series and I found it tried a bit to much to be a soap opera. You know they were thinking of making Archer gay?

O.O kind of glad they didnt make archer gay


odo rocks!

At least the actor that plays him is back in Star Trek Enterprise. You've probably noticed Jeffrey Combs now plays the recurring Andorian character named Shran.

For Star Trek Enterprise, only season 1 is presently available on home video (at least in North America). There will be a total of 4 seasons with 98 episodes. Season 2 is good and seasons 3 and 4 are the best. I think most Star Trek fans would enjoy watching all 4 seasons.

I ment to post in here last night when I was on, but something else caught my attention. :lol: Anywho, I watch Dragon Booster 'cause I like the story, the art, the characters, the music, the humor, and of course the dragons.

I noticed Jeff Combs in Enterprise, but I didn't find his new character as interesting as Weyoun, but then I haven't seen the other seasons.

They were going to make Archer gay? Well, they really do need a gay character in Star Trek, after all it's meant to promote diversity and peace. DS9 did have a lesbian Mirror Ezri and Bi-sexual Intendant Kira in "The Emperors New Cloak" but as that was set in the much darker Mirror Universe it sort of gave the viewer the message that homosexuality only occurs in wild, lawless areas.

In another DS9 episode Dax met up with "her" past lover Khan while they were both inhabiting female hosts and she started to redevelop feelings for Khan, but the relationship was actually based off a heterosexual marriage. However Dax's friends saw no problem with Dax and Khan being together despite their gender.

The this convosation is getting a bit off topic :P

Jeffrey Combs' character Shran gets better as the series goes on. He's in several of the multi-part stories and his character gets more depth, though he's probably not as much fun as watching Weyoun.

Speaking of the Star Trek Mirror Universe, they're wrapping up Star Trek Enterprise with a multi-part story all taking place there (though I imagine they're going to tie it back into the regular universe before it concludes). What's cool is that since entire episodes are taking place there, they even went and completely re-made the opening title sequence to match. So instead of the images of peaceful exploration throughout the ages backed with calm optimistic music, the new titles are all images of war and fighting throughout time with ominous foreboding music, ending with the dagger-through-the-planet logo of the Empire in the Mirror Universe. It's as if we're watching a show that was made by a production company in the Mirror Universe. It's very surprising and all very well done and it's some of their best writing so far. If they had been doing stuff like this earlier on, the show may not have gotten cancelled.

But as you say, we're getting rather off topic. So let me continue that thought but bring this back a bit to Dragon Booster:

I didn't mention this in my original posting here since most had not yet seen "Pride of the Hero," but this was an episode that really surprised me and got me even more interested in the show. I was fairly certain all along that Moordryd would find a way to use the bone mark of the Furox on Beau since that made the most sense story-wise. The thing I never expected though was Beau letting Moordryd on as a rider. That one moment caused so many things to shift and open up new possibilities for future episodes. And then Moordryd recanting and making the move to remove the bone mark of his free will is something I would have never would have guessed at either. I mean, these things just aren't done with "villains" in other cartoon series and it adds a whole other level to the depth of the story line. Two total surprises like that in one episode scored them big points in my book. Stuff like that is what gets me interested in watching. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for more surprises in season 2.

I watch Dragon Booster, because one day, I will ride my own Dragon! Not to mention, this cartoon is way better than Inspector Gadget!

Dragon Booster's a lot better than most cartoons, isn't it. The only other action/adventure animated series I'm watching at the moment other than Dragon Booster is Inuyasha. Haven't found anything else lately that appeals to me. There's lots of comedy series I like (South Park, Family Guy, Futurama, Simpsons, American Dad, Duel Masters), but the good action/adventure shows don't show up as frequently.

Anyway, welcome to the board!

Thanks! And may Dragon Booster live to be 88888 episodes year old!!!!

Welcome to the board!
Yeah, it's way better then just about everything on lately, and I do mean everything, but , quite honestly, I'd take a He-Man (OLD SERIES!!!! >.<) over NYPD Blue anyday.

I've been hooked on toons since I was small, and Dragon Booster is honestly the best thing I've seen outside the type of anime you can have to actually buy to watch. *coughDecendantsofdarknesscough*, not only for it's animation style and the setting, but their really inventive approach to character design.

I'll admit I like Dragon booster mainly cause of the dragons cause they look so exotic compared to many versions of them. (the only dragons I've seen that were weirder are the ones from legend of dragoon. Very odd looking.)
The characters are fun too, though they leave a lot to the imagination sometimes.
The city makes for a really wild backround too, I mean a 20 mile high 500 mile across? with nothing but rumors and anything you can think of for the lowest levels? That makes for a incredibly unique backdrop.

Yeah, I really like the whole city structure. There must be tons of stuff in there people don't know about.

To me, the setting has a very 'paint-by-numbers' approach. They strictly defined the levels, the draconium variants, and the abilities, and it feels more mathematical than anything else. To me, an interesting fantasy world isn't about maths. It's about a human presence, an aura of genuine mystery (ie. none of these Ancient Prophecies we've all heard a thousand times before), characters who AREN'T directly lifted from cliche, and something truly organic. Dragon City doesn't have that sort of feel to me. Its limitations and areas are very clearly and thoroughly defined, and I just don't feel that anything realistic should be that strictly separated. It feels very obvious that it's a created world rather than something that could have arisen naturally, because of how completely divided the city and the powers are. From the red/blue/green/gold/black colours of the main teenage characters to the sharp City divisions to the set-out gear abilities, it feels like a world whose creators had more fun making up statistics than heart. Which they probably did, especially considering it's a game as well.

Depends all on how ya take it. But I'll agree that the series creators took a very stiff approach to everything. But It's a both habit and hobby of mine to take whats there and give it a slightly different spin then was originaly intended. sometimes that helps give it a little more life.

I know it can be fun in fanfic to give an interesting spin to a less-than-perfect canon, but to me that doesn't change the more-than-occasional irritation I feel when I know a writer's got something wrong.

There's that, plus I like the fact that they're not the typical mythological fire breathing dragons with the huge scales and wings (besides Beau, of course). Except for their mag abilities (which isn't too terribly different than the Force in Star Wars), they're more like natural creatures which fits into the futuristic sci-fi approach to the show. The fact that they came up with creatures that break out of the typical mythological dragon cliche makes it more appealing to me.