Got a challenge for you, Sarafina...

[The Sonic God]

Ever see the movie Kung Fu Panda? I have to say, this is a new favourite of mine. So much so, that it earned a spot next to The Lion King.

Then I got to thinking... what if a lioness could be a Kung Fu Warrior?

Come to think if it... there IS such a thing as an Asiatic Lion. They're extremely rare, but I think that it would make an interesting character.

Perhaps you could dig into your artistic mastery and think of something cool? I've seen your World of Warcraft version... and that kicked major tail.

[ForumAdmin]

Well.. Im happy for you that you've gotten such a great fun watching KFP, that's quite a rare experience for anyone..

But i can't say the same for myself.. I've found KFP to be one of the stream products, it didn't touch me or impress much..
Surely there was a big fuss and excitement while we were waiting, sure, there were furry characters, and feline ones! For us, big-cat lovers this could have become another prophet Bit it couldn't.. I can't put my finger(claw) straight on it, where did that movie lost its "furry awesomeness", but it surely does lack it.. For starter i think it is the character design, Tigress and Tai-Lung(spelling?) suffer from a few design flaws, the head is kind of flat, the eyes are weird, the eyebrows form up the shape of the head which is weird too, and the overall figure has little to no feline grace.. Also the story and overall character development of Tigress and Tai-Lung is weak. Tigress is always the same - gloomy, semi-fanatic follower of the master with just a few words and nothing about herself. Tai-Lung, altough started really awesome, the jailbreak scene was incredible, has fallen into nonsense clownade, lost the reason-action chain, and finally has become nothing but a training dummy for the fat evil panda who has remorselessly killed him after incredibly stupid fight.

I barely touched the icing on the cake of endless floodwar about the true meaning of the story with Tai-Lung, Shifu, Ugwai, Po(sorry if i spelled the names wrong, don't quire remember it on eng.) and company, but it doesn't mean the story is great, it only means it's flawed.

Take a look at recent Bolt for example. I must admit - i love design of the dog altough i can call myself a dog-hater in general! I would love to see a cat designed that well instead of him though The black cat(no clue what her name is on eng.) doesn't cut it, but still pretty good. And the story is well-rounded, you can't possibly open a flood-war around it, there is no logical mistakes or discrepances.

Well, what about art.. One thing i can tell for sure, i don't like KFP design, i will surely not try to copy it in any of my artwork, except maybe commissions, if the customer would explicitly ask for it. As about the idea of martial-arts lioness.. That may happen and had happened before.. There were series of sketches with karate cats, one of them even managed to get into my old gallery http://www.nala.ru/tmp/cat_karate_kick.jpg No connection to KFP though. And my ancient character Starlynx was quite a ninja-kitty too

As about asian lions as a whole.. I think Hyhlion is doing a great job with blending asian style and TLK universe.. As about russian style.. I honestly have no idea what would be one %) And i don't even feel like researching the avenue, im not a big fan of all the russian cliche' culture, and not a huge patriot as well.. There is "what would happen if TLK story was in fairytale russia" project inpired by Tima's Scandinavian TLK though, mostly for good laughs and chatter, a few non-release sketches is all we have atm. *spoiler* There is a chineese tiger

PS: ElfKitty wasn't inspired by World of Warcraft, the picture was made long before WoW has come, it is based on Warcraft-3..

[The Sonic God]

Corrections:

Oogway (Name of Shifu's master)
Mittens (Name of the black cat on Bolt)

I agree to some extent, in that the cat designs seemed to be flat-headed, but there was beauty present in such an abstract style. I didn't think much of it at first, but then I felt I really liked it.

Though I thought Bolt was awesome, it felt just barely short of my expectations. Kung Fu Panda on the other hand, was too short. And I think the point you made in that the storyline for Tigress and Tai Lung was underdeveloped is mostly true. Tigress' past is explained on Secrets of the Furious Five, in which Tigress was a child with incredible strength, but she lacked the mental clarity and focus she needed to control it. Tai Lung was explained quite well, in that he was an orphaned cub who was raised by Shifu as if he were his son, but the darkness in his heart — created by the greed of wanting to become the Dragon Warrior — prevented him from continuing on with his training with Shifu, and led him to destroy the valley, and soon after, defeated by Oogway and imprisoned in a chi-suppressing turtle shell, deep within the mountains of Mongolia.

I see many artists adapting their own style to the creation of Tigress... in some cases, I thought that they made her look better.

It was an idea.

[ForumAdmin]

Ah, Mittens.. She was called "Varezhka" which basically means the same here, when we saw it on theater.. It will take a few months before i will be able to find a DVD with original sound, i alwasy try to find one, because our national translate crew is godawful >.< And even if they were not, there is such thing as lip-sync..

Yes, i remember the story of Tai-Lung well.. But i haven't seen "furious five" yet, it's on my list to find

I see many artists adapting their own style to the creation of Tigress... in some cases, I thought that they made her look better.

Def-ly.. The design needs some major influx of furry awesomeness(c) I.e. a work of hand of an artist who loves the thing that she is a tiger, and a young handsome female, not just an action figure which is representing one of kung-fu beast styles.. Surely we can redesign her, but this will no longer be movie based piece of art, the inspiration will come elsewhere to fill that character, only because it needs it. True fan art goes backwards, the thing you watched is filling you with ideas, with fantasies, you basically just unleash the thing inside you..

I can also add Hibbary to the list of the artists who drew something about KFP.. She doesn't upload anything on tlkfaa anymore though ;( so you gotta dig that horrible DA site for it..

[The Sonic God]

Well, I thought I'd give it a go... answering the call of my own challenge.

Bear in mind... my skills pale in comparison to yours.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1798042/

[ForumAdmin]

"If you want something to be done, do it yourself"? A fair try, i would use more kun-fu-istic pose myself though.. As about the character herself, the ears should be a bit higher and the eyes more oval shaped. Also the hands in KFP style would be more like animal paws rather than human hands.. Sorry it took me so long to answer, because i wanted to answer with a picture, and it usually takes eternity for the stars to align so i would draw anything not to mention upload it

[The Sonic God]

It appears that we're the only two here. O_O

I admire your efforts, and clearly superior to my own. I've not been drawing anywhere near as long as you have.

Dreamworks ought to take some insight from your own artistic style. If they could implicate your 2D model into 3D work, I'd imagine the results would be spectacular.

Beautiful stuff, as always.

[ForumAdmin]

It appears that we're the only two here. O_O

Well, at least they read it. haha Look at the views counter.. Well, maybe the topic is not as interesting for other people, or they might be afraid of ol' english

[The Sonic God]

Regardless, I love your work. What I would give to have talent even a fraction as good as yours.

C'mon, guys, don't be afraid of English.

I'd like others to try this. I've seen Lion King crossovers for years, mixing it in with just about everything. Art style should not be a limitation. Just because you may not like the style of Kung Fu Panda doesn't mean you can't still use your own style.

Artwork is meant to grow and evolve.

[Kovur]

I'm not afraid of English, I just have nothing to say.
I'm not surprised that English part of forum was unsuccessful. It seems there no themes to discuss.
The Lion King theme was used up. Even in the russian part of forum there is just a few messages during the last years.
The most active part of the forum is galery and "the world of animation". Why not so in English part? There is two reasons: 1)because the English artists has their regular place to chat. Lylimud and such. 2)The discuss of animation in english is deserted, because in the most cases there already was such theme in the russian part and all the words was already said.
Thats why we have what we have...

And the one more thing. Saffy is a humble creature, she hates the flattery and the cheap admiration. On the other side the most of "bourgeois" thinks that it's necessary to start the conversation or topics with "Sarafina - you are perfect","you are my god, my ideal" and such. It's polite, but it's a lie. And it's very unpleasant to read.

[Sir James]

Heh. The English is not the issue-- It's breaking out of my lurker status!
I continue to be guilty of only peeking in to keep an eye on the adventures of Sarafina/Tailbrush
as well as fellow greater-Twin-Cities Minnesotan The Sonic God...

My two cents on the KFP bit were along the lines of what you guys had already mentioned--
I VERY much enjoyed the movie, LOVED Tai Lung's badass breakout scenes and ABSOLUTELY
wished for more time with all of the characters, especially Tai Lung and Tigress. I did
forgive the movie for making Tai Lung disappear only because it's point was to show the
effortlessness that kung fu was supposed to be. I liked that some credit given to Tai Lung's
sheer power (could have gone for more, too!), but since the story wanted to show the relaxed
nature of kung fu, he had to go down to someone as silly as Po. I was a not sure that Jack
Black was going to be a good choice for the Po's voice, but I was impressed by the, I guess
I'd call it sweetness, that he gave the character. I thought Po and Master Shifu ended up as a
nice balance. Maybe credit Hans Zimmer's music for getting me in the mood?

You will indeed have to see SotFF, Saffy- The little blurbs are barely a taste of what
I'd truly like, but they're fun. My biggest highlight from those stories was without a
doubt Mei Ling. The very first sound she utters is the most adorable "Yah!" ever!
Some fans have suggested that she and Crane make a cute couple, but I'm not sure that she
should be part of the main story beyond their friendship in days gone by. I think that the
inclusion of side stories that open vast lands to the imagination are so much superior to
the way that some people try to squish together good things and end up making a mess that
leaves everyone worse off (*cough* George Lucas *cough*).

I have not had the opportunity to read the Art of KFP book that's out there, but apparently
there are a number of characters that fell to the cutting room floor for various reasons
as the story was being developed. I heard that a couple of them made it into the KFP
computer game, most notably the Wu Sisters, a trio of snow leopardesses! It was probably
for the best that Tai Lung was left by himself, but I could definitely do with a set of
side stories that dealt with more lady warriors.

We'll have to see if someone tries to make a KFP 2. I would probably check it out, but
I would be afraid it would suffer from not being done with as much care as the original,
as is unfortunately the way that such things tend to go...

Cheers from Cairo! (I'm lucky enough to be studying there for a month)
-Sir James

[ForumAdmin]

I was talking just about KFP there Kovur and the idea of making lionised version of it, overall TLK discussion boards issues have nothing to do with it Altough you are mostly correct this would be offtopic here.

Sir James welcome Some nice read you posted

[Sir James]

Was that really the first time in five years I've posted? Боже мой...

Risking getting too far off-topic, I'll throw out that I do wish that there had
been something for TLK like the Secrets of the Furious Five. I think a couple
of the early stories that came out in hard-to-find children's books, especially
that "6 New Adventures of TLK" series or "A Friend in Need" about Mufasa and Sarabi
and Zazu as teenagers, would have made for FABULOUS little animated shorts.
Even if the big budget weren't there, to find someone who cared enough to do nice
little short stories about the in-between times in TLK would be amazing.

Fanfics and art, of course, have filled in quite well where we needed, often exceeding
anyone's expectations with beautifully talented art and writing, capturing that spirit
that we all loved, yet that craving for something animated is sometimes there. Even after
getting burned (in my opinion) by the almost unwatchable Timon and Pumbaa cartoon
and the silliness of TLK 1.5, I still wish to be able to see something on the screen
of some of our favorite characters' adventures. I never saw that "Jungle Babies"
cartoon, so I can't say whether Jungle Book got a good treatment, but I have always
wondered why TLK never got something along those lines...

Alas.

Oh, by the way, Saffy, I never got around to wishing you good luck on your name change!
I think Kovur makes a good point about the level of hero-worship you've had to endure
(I have been guilty of a certain amount of that, too...) and I think freeing yourself
from who and what SARAFINA *dramatic music* has to be is a fine idea. Your free time
artistic treats should be that, and not, as you put it, "the world of dreams which
actually was like a slow poison, a burden, killing me..."

I trust that 2009 will find all manner of new adventures in the real world
to bring delight to your heart.

Cheers,
-Sir James

P.S. I'll still buy you a drink if you ever walk into the same pub I'm in...

[Kovur]

"Jungle Babies"

"The Jungle Cubs" is the correct name. You can find it in torrent if nowhere to buy. It worth it.

[Beltar]

I posted several screenshots of "Jungle Cubs" in this topic. Contradictory show IMHO but with several brilliant episodes.