The Ugliest Cartoon I've Ever Seen: Problem Solverz

oh deary is it bad should i call 911. who possibly looked at this and thought sure let's give money towards that it'd make a great series and what kind of ditch did they end up in the problem solvers is a cartoon network series that came out in 2011. it was a show about a group of detectives alpha roba and horus solving problems in their hometown of farb far borough fair far i would double check how to pronounce it but that would require watching the show again the series ran for one season with a second being fully produced and dumped on netflix two years after its consolation when it came out when reminiscing moose saw the show was an unfunny uninteresting headache inducing piece of drivel that had no business being created now up until this video i'd never actually seen the series i feel like most people into this sort of stuff went through phases of enjoying cartoons as kids then growing up and transitioning into their fees of cartoons are for kids man you shouldn't understand i've got more important stuff to watch like 13 reasons why and high school musical what are kids into then after that go right back into liking cartoons again yeah so this show came out while i was in that phase it's what i enjoy about doing these videos it's a good way to look back at the stuff i missed out on for a few years so i want to go back to the problem solvers to see if it's as bad as everyone made it out to be or no yeah that's about it just why was this show so heated well i feel like it's fairly obvious but for the sake of piercing let's start from the beginning the problem solvers was created by ben jones who has designed the characters for the show as far back as primary school in 2000 he collaborated with a few others to form paper rad an art collective known for comics video art designs and a bunch of other stuff ben's work had a very distinct style what was known as dogma 99 the rules involved in this style included no tablet no scanning pure rgb colors only fake tweening and as many alpha tricks as possible they took heavy influence from pop and punk art and adapted that to their style of bright fluorescent color schemes trying to make an almost lo-fi look i live and breathe and love this stuff but you have to be very careful because it's very potent he was also a big fan of mid-eye audio you know weird pixelated and compressed recordings and sound effects the more i talk about this the more the gears sort of turn in your head as to how we wind up with this but anyway in 2001 ben started releasing flash animations online some of which featured characters that would end up in the problem solvers and in 2006 paper rad released a dvd called trash talking with one of the segments revolving around alpha horse and robot albeit with a slightly different look like for some reason this guy is bald i'm calling him this guy because i genuinely forgot what his name was after befriending an executive producer at adult swim ben was given the chance to make a pilot for them with the result being neon gnome gnome spell for care though it's like cooler eyes when i was a kid i found a small fur creature in a sewer thing it grew up with me and my twin brother roba his name's alfay [Applause] it was a fairly standard short i actually didn't think it was half bad it featured the characters trying to get rid of a giant rollerblade on their lawn before the landlord got home the visuals are a little more muted than the final series that's a good thing and while mostly everything stayed the same from this pilot to the final series the writing style was a lot looser i can't confirm this but it feels like a lot of improv was incorporated into this pilot and like while it's not good improv per se i always feel like it has a certain charm to it you know is the ass back from her vacation yet i don't know i think she'll invictus if she sees this probably probably it's what landlords usually do to us yeah it's got an almost improvisational tone so after the pilot was finished and uploaded onto adult swim's website the series was referred over to cartoon network with executives feeling his creativity and style would fit better there which i guess is code word for there is not enough swearing and cool blood in this show for adults so now it was a kid show damn you'd think with all that development and time spent on this he'd have a pretty good concept on his hands the last of 18 episodes almost every episode of the problem solvers follows the exact same format also before you ask we will get into the visuals i get it's the most apparent thing let's just get the show out of the way first we begin the episode with the characters being presented with a problem they solve the problem the real problem then arises where they have to seek the help from the snooty tux wearing dog guess what his name is tuxdog can you guess that this is the one ben came up with in primary school i get that they don't want every episode to be as simple as here's our goal okay we achieved it the end but having a twist every single time sort of defeats the point in having a twist the writing is not just your generic standard kid chauffeur gone is the oddly charming improv style humor of the pilot and instead the show is just the most generic thing out there like i wouldn't call it bad but it's not anything special horse is your average straight man his creepy old man sweater and crappie haircut would imply that he's like a homeless guy who belongs in the background shot of some alleyway but for some reason he's our main character next to him we've got his twin brother ruba yeah i don't think you um i don't think you really get how twins work like they need a they need to like look similar and um oh yeah one of them can't be some dumb freaking robot robot is supposed to be like the nerdy one i guess he's sort of prudish and um i'm trying real hard to remember what his personality was i swear i watched this entire show like 20 minutes ago and finally alpha this domo looking guy he's the most interesting of the three i mean he better be one of ben's only conditions for the show was that alpha had to be in it so what did we just need to see about him he's like the slob of the group he's dumb and eats a lot but ends up saving the day in the end isn't that funny it's like it's it's because it's not what you'd expect except it happens every episode so it's exactly what you'd expect when i just go back to talking about the history that was way more interesting than the actual show anyway there's only really one consistently used side character and again that's tux dog i don't really know who he is he's not the mayor he's also not like the manager of the problem solvers or at least he might not be i don't remember them ever saying that but really he's just there for exposition so whenever there's something going on in the plot and the writers just want the episode to end along with their lives theirs have them all go up to tuck's dog for help i actually like his voice a lot it's done by john dimaggio who also voices literally every single secondary character greetings problem solvers i'd offer you some sorbet but i'm afraid it'd be wasted on you i'm so glad i found your problem solvers he even narrates the intro this is the story of three such heroes alfay roma horus the problem solvers what time is it time for you to shut up so yeah the show itself it's not bad it's not good but it's not bad weird not bad people have been ranting and raving about this show for years and all you have to say about it is it's not bad well yeah i mean it's just sort of a harmless kids show although i don't blame people for not being able to see that behind these god awful visuals [Applause] you know the part of every single youtuber viewer the guy says this thing was so bad it was painful to watch yeah okay of that but but but like literally the visuals for each episode were actually produced within a few weeks compared to the usual months or even years of most other shows this is because every aspect except for riding was produced within flash which made the process a lot faster that's supposed to be like impressive but i feel like this only works if the end product looks good so everything i do every single thing is all just a creation of one computer program called flash i kind of use that as my sketchbook and i was creating these ladder shapes in the program as much as i do the videos or paintings i'll start in this very program all right let's address the elephant in the room come on man i'm not hurting anybody no not you every background in this show uses like all the colors and they really love bright neon blues reds and yellows but they still gotta have some sort of contrast so it means making the main characters more muted browns reds and blues but as a result the backgrounds become way more interesting to look at when a character isn't talking they stand completely still with no expression but the backgrounds are filled with flashing colours and moving pixel art so i don't even register what the characters are saying half the time as my attention is slowly veered towards the random background elements and it's a shame because at times where i think there are nice moments of character interaction i immediately forget about it to focus on whatever is happening behind them a girl can be better than a drum sound you're sick sick man and these background characters what happened here i guess someone else realized that having characters consisting of dull muted colors wouldn't be interesting so instead they just started coloring them the exact same as the background so here we have a blue red and yellow character standing against a blue red and yellow background yeah no that looks fine oh look a floating giant check i don't see anyone holding that what there are people out there who actually really loved these stylized and surreal visuals and while there are things i somewhat enjoy like the incorporation of pixel art i think the scenes that have an isometric view do a really good job at replicating that old school video game vibe but again i can hardly pay attention to it because there's just there's too much there's just too much i don't know what else to say yeah it was snuggling with me in the tv room last night who did i go skinny dipping with at the lake what did i just lend a hundred dollars to i hate that i have to complain about this so much since it's clear band put a ton of work into making this world as stylized and varied as possible but it just doesn't look good i'm so genuinely shocked no executive stepped in and was like yeah we actually don't want to give our young audience seizures or impair their vision despite the show flopping in pretty much every aspect cartoon network for some reason greenlit a second season that's something i see these networks do a lot present a new show and hype it up then when around when it starts to er renewed for a second season to make it look like you're super confident and doing well it's safe to say cartoon network have been called out in their bluff a good few times now so yeah problem solvers was renewed for a second season but they decided not to air it then i guess when the show was licensed stuck to netflix they decided they dumped the unearned episodes there so did season 2 fix any issues they actually took the characters out of their home a lot in this season to put them in more toned down environments i guess someone told them to step in and just stop with the colors but this season actually focuses a lot more on the characters doing other stuff besides problem solving so the plots can become more unique and not fall under the same structure each time unfortunately though i think this season's way worse with no stimulus overloading backgrounds it means your focus is solely on the dialogue and yeah it's boring there are people who say when you look past the visuals the show isn't that bad and yeah you're right it's not that bad but i'd rather a train wreck than something that puts me to sleep so why was the problem solver so hated probably because it wasn't very good it's a shame because ben jones clearly had love for these characters locations are jam-packed with references to paper rod's previous work and he's been developing his creation for decades but maybe his style just wasn't meant for a kid's cartoon my name i like a is nuggets i put them in my mouth another exciting case solved by the problem solvers [Applause] you

Channel: LS Mark

Views: 761,588

Keywords: Problem Solverz, The Problem Solverz, LS Mark

Id: B0hXwzUX_Mo

Length: 11min 25sec (685 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2020