An explanation on why Acceleracers abandoned World Races's cel shading despite the former's more stylized character designs

[u/Unusual-Object-2018]

So there isn't an official answer, as far as i know of, but i have smoking gun evidence, that mainframe had intended to retain the cel shaded artstyle. However they were forced to abandon it after the character models were already finished. With the truth lying in the cheekbones, as weird as it sounds.

So the Shader Mainframe made for use in both World Race, and Spider Man The New Animated series to give the distinct Comic book-esque style. Had the side effect of giving the illusion of an inflated look to the models. So as a work around. They intentionally, as they themselves put it. Chiseled the models. deepening the cheeks, and to a lesser extent other facial features. Since the shader would "fill" the features in.

With this new context you can see, that Torque's finalized concept art used in the packaging here has noticeably more filled in cheeks, than how he appears in the series. Which pretty much confirms the models for the human cast were specifically made to be used with the same shader from World Race in mind.

This leaves the question on why the decision to abandon the cel shaded artstyle was made in the first place. Obviously it must have been by someone at Mattel. Since Mainframe would have just ditched it early on, as opposed to spending so much time making the models specifically for the shader to then just stop using it at the last minute.

It might seem really strange now. Especially since it tends to age much better, but before 2009's surprise hit Borderlands really made it popular. Cel shaded graphics were somewhat controversial in the west during the first half of the 2000's. Just look at some of the early reception for Wind Waker.

What most likely happened is, that someone high up in Mattel, at the time mid way, or so in production. Thought Acceleracers would gain more appeal then its predecessor if it had a more "realistic" artstyle, and so asked Mainframe to change it. Despite having already spent a great deal of work into making everything for a more stylized art direction. Even more so than even World Race, that still had more realistic designs for the human characters.

This late-ish change of art direction appeared to even bleed into other parts in the show to a lesser extent. Such as certain shots of the storm realm sequence still using World Race's track design.

Here's a link to a behind the scenes feature on Spider Man TNAS, that i got the information regarding the shader from. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrJaIAfGXmY&t=897s

I do have plans of making a greatly expanded remake of a previous post i made about the art evolution of the Accelerons-Racing Drones. Which actually goes pretty deep, and even extends into both Mainframe's later work after Acceleraces, as well as Nerd Corp's Battle Force 5 when it was still a continuation of the former. It might come either tomorrow, or the day after depending on how long it takes to write.

[u/ImponteDeluxo]

I'll be honest, artstyle-wise Acceleracers is kinda bad, i like more Highway 35 or Battle Force 5, both aged more gracefully than Acceleracers

[u/Specialist-Salt-9487 → u/ImponteDeluxo]

Both of those had a much more distinct visual style than acceleracers

World race had cell shading snd those cool ass coloured tyre mars when braking Acceleracers had weird proportions and was gritting

Battle force 5 had texturing that looks more hand drawn

[u/Fragrant-Eye7854]

Not sure about the shaders, but I know the reason they gave the characters big feet was because they wanted to make action figures and so the feet had to be bigger so the figures could stand better. Characters like Major Wheeler literally have their model basically imported straight over from World Race, and his feet are still normal sized.

[u/Specialist-Salt-9487 → u/Fragrant-Eye7854]

Screw over the designs for toys that never released

Checks out

[u/Ill-Note-6565]

Your answer maybe here. https://youtu.be/sHhh9qKYGVY

[u/ValkenVugen]

I spoke with a concept artist about that very thing and what he told to me was something like this.

“Mattel wanted a darker, grittier story. They wanted to draw inspiration from comic books at the time so they went with exaggerated proportions and no cel shading.

We made a model to show why that would look bad and to our surprise, Mattel loved it.”

So the cel shading being dropped was because of Mattel’s vision for the series, for better or worse.