Comments: 63
Pizzaronny [2023-04-12 09:15:57 +0000 UTC]
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Almighty777 [2019-12-18 18:48:55 +0000 UTC]
Do you watch My Hero Academia by the way?
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28ear [2019-11-15 04:56:34 +0000 UTC]
What would an Ultimate version of these aliens looks like?
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teamtrase [2019-11-11 01:42:59 +0000 UTC]
will we get a waybig predator????????
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CreaturemasterProds In reply to teamtrase [2019-11-11 08:31:36 +0000 UTC]
I don't know. I mean, I'm open to the idea, but I think a lot of people have already done it and they have great ideas. It would be hard to make something that wasn't influenced by them.
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ironlegionaire [2019-11-10 23:40:57 +0000 UTC]
Since he can rotate his head 360 degrees, would he be able to spin around while using his hurricane breathe to create a tornado?
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Ben-J-Kirby-Tennyson In reply to CreaturemasterProds [2019-11-09 00:48:49 +0000 UTC]
Agreed! The only ones I can think of are his 4-year-old versions, Ditto, and his Reboot baby versions.
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CreaturemasterProds In reply to Ben-J-Kirby-Tennyson [2019-11-09 01:02:00 +0000 UTC]
To be fair, the younger versions don't count since they're just the same aliens at different ages. And while I know it's subjective, one could say Ball Weevil is cute - after all, Ben wondered if he had "something going for me other than the power of cuteness" when he first unlocked him.
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SuperVegiten [2019-11-08 22:25:26 +0000 UTC]
I personally love Freezerburn. Despite his inability to move and requires a Mobile object to move, I freaking love it! It's too adorably derpy to hate!
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ironlegionaire [2019-11-08 20:56:42 +0000 UTC]
Are you still interested in the idea of that evolution Alien idea? I only ask because I might have some suggestions.
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CreaturemasterProds In reply to ironlegionaire [2019-11-08 23:03:44 +0000 UTC]
Yep, I'm still very much interested, but I think I'm going to hold off for the time being. That is to say, the next alien I make won't be EVO (still a little iffy on the name, but if you can't come up with anything else, it'll work), as I mentioned an alien in a comment on Slapback that I want to wrap up first.
Currently, EVO is projected to look something like the Pokemon Trapinch, but with more appropriate proportions, eyes attached to hammerhead-like stalks, and armadillo plating, with the Omnitrix around his neck as a collar (or maybe on his shoulder?). If you have suggestions though, I'd be more than happy to hear them.
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ironlegionaire In reply to CreaturemasterProds [2019-11-08 23:36:31 +0000 UTC]
What about Tuff? Like, Ben manages to survive so much stuff with the alien that he says “man this guy is tough!” And he picks that to be his name.
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ironlegionaire In reply to CreaturemasterProds [2019-11-08 23:57:22 +0000 UTC]
No, that sounds like a Ben 23 name. What about Endurant? Like endurance and ant because you said he looked like trapinch?
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ArieDranoid22 [2019-11-08 16:55:24 +0000 UTC]
So..in order for him to mvoe around, he need a mobile object?
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Almighty777 [2019-11-08 16:35:44 +0000 UTC]
So he’s stuck in one place, but he can move his spherical body in any direction?
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CreaturemasterProds In reply to Almighty777 [2019-11-08 20:26:11 +0000 UTC]
Kind of. Think of it like one of those rotating fans, but instead of a messily 45 degrees or something, they can turn all the way around.
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CreaturemasterProds In reply to Almighty777 [2019-11-08 21:16:31 +0000 UTC]
No, he can look up (tilting his head back), he just can’t turn his head 360 degrees on the Y axis (to get a little technical).
He basically has the head rotation of an owl.
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Danny-Buckle [2019-11-08 13:01:48 +0000 UTC]
"The Omnitrix was not designed to be a weapon, it was meant to be a genetic database for all cataloged sentient species, as well as a device of peace. This means that not every species is going to have cool or flashy powers, since those powers were, in fact, originally evolved so that they could survive as a species"
^Thank you! I never understood this complaint; not every alien's going to be an Atomix or a Gravattack - sometimes you're going to get an alien that seems kinda useless, at least at first. The OS & OV creative teams understood this well; Ripjaws, Cannonbolt, Grey Matter, Upgrade, Ditto, the Outbreak Quartet, Ball Weevil and Whampire are all aliens whose abilities were clearly shaped by their environment, and most (if not all) of them are undeniably useless in certain situations, but Ben makes them work because he knows how to adapt to any situation.
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CreaturemasterProds In reply to Danny-Buckle [2019-11-08 23:07:19 +0000 UTC]
One could argue out of all the aliens you listed, Cannonbolt is the most useful, but I do see your point. I wish this was something that more fans would realize and accept. Sure, the Humungousaurs and Feedbacks are really cool looking and they make for some really awesome action scenes, but forcing Ben to work with an alien whose abilities are more difficult to utilize better shows off his skills as a hero than every time he sucker punches someone in the face. Plus, as an added bonus, it gives other characters a moment to shine!
Imagine Ben, for once, being relegated to a supporting roll whenever he turns into Freezerburn. He could pop onto Rook's shoulder/back and act as a miniature turret, keeping enemies off of him or providing support while Rook handles the main bad guy! Plus, if he's in the right spot, he can function as a living jetpack, too!
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Danny-Buckle In reply to CreaturemasterProds [2019-11-08 23:34:36 +0000 UTC]
Oh yeah, I completely agree that Cannonbolt's really useful (just don't put him somewhere that's too sticky), but his debut episode helped spotlight the exact type of thing that we're talking about so I figured that it was only right to include him.
Exactly. Besides it's more fun for viewers as well. Even as a kid I hated seeing Four Arms pop up so often because he's very predictable and simple to understand, whereas Cannonbolt was (and still is) among my absolute favourites because it always felt like Ben had to work hard to beat the bad guys even though a full-force strike from Cannonbolt's arguably more powerful than anything Four Arms can dish oiut.
Ben being relagated to the supporting role's also a pretty fun idea, and it's a shame that it doesn't happen very often; off the top of my head the only ones that comes to mind are when he held a planet together as Goop in Deep and some of his earlier uses of Bloxx.
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CreaturemasterProds In reply to Danny-Buckle [2019-11-09 00:04:22 +0000 UTC]
True, but I think that better shows that Ben doesn't immediately know everything about the aliens he turns into right off the bat. Unlike UAF, where he somehow magically knew what each alien did after he transformed into them, the OS series and Omniverse made it so Ben was just as clueless as the viewers when he got a new alien so that he had to learn what each transformation could do. Remember when he learned what Gravattack could do or how he hoped that Ball Weevil had "something going for me other than the power of cuteness"?
Yeah, and this was a pretty big problem in UAF, too. Not only did they, at one point, 'promise' to show all the aliens that Ben had up until that point, but didn't, but they relied way too much on Humungousaur and Swampfire. Maybe that's because they're easier to work with/more creative than, say, Goop (who's only real method of attack is to either spit acid in someone's face or slip inside them and blow them up form the inside out), but you get my point.
I think there might've been a few more than that (I think with Grey Matter, a couple times), but I do see your pointed. Granted, the show is called Ben 10, so it makes sense that Ben is in the spotlight, but still.
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Danny-Buckle In reply to CreaturemasterProds [2019-11-09 09:05:39 +0000 UTC]
Fair enough; it did definitely have that message as well. I love that the Omnitrix forces Ben to learn and master the aliens' powers, rather than just giving all the data to him at once; for one it allows for some subtle visual character development (for example going from shakily shooting out crystal shards as Diamondhead during a training session at the start of the series to precisely shooting them at far-distance targets mid-battle a few seasons down the line), but more importantly from a narrative perspective it's more entertaining to show Ben struggle with, say, Swampfire's powers and still come out on top than just having him know basically everything right away and beat the bad guys with hardly any effort.
Oh it was ten times worse in the UAF era; Humongousaur, Jetray, Big Chill and Swampfire were used all the bloody time, and towards the end of it Echo Echo & Spidermonkey began to feel a bit overused as well. Admittedly each series has their go-to aliens (the OS had Four Arms, XLR8, Heatblast, Cannonbolt & Stinkfly while Omniverse had Four Arms, XLR8, Feedback, Bloxx, Humongousaur and Diamondhead), but in both the OS and especially Omniverse they'd put a lot more effort into spreading out the usage of the aliens to make things more interesting. In UA especially it felt like there was a "Humongo-Mandate" of sorts that forced them to throw him in at least once every other episode.
I would argue that there's a ton of creative and unique ways to use Goop, but because he barely ever showed up throughout the series, and when he did it was often either really quick or embarrassing (the dude lost to f*cking Ssserpent; it's pretty hard to come back from that). The same would apply to Brainstorm if Omniverse hadn't given him that perfect moment in The Vengers, and really that's all an alien needs; a moment that perfectly displays their power-set & how it can be used creatively. Cannonbolt got it at the end of his debut episode, and I'd argue that Diamondhead's debut counts as well, but other than those examples I can't really think of a truly perfect showcasing for any of Ben's aliens.
The thing is that while Ben is the main star, he's not the only main character; Max, Gwen, Rook and Kevin should all feel equally important whenever they're onscreen together, and the franchise has always had problems with this; Gwen & Max often felt like dead weight for the first half of the OS before they finally began to use magic and Plumber tech more often in season three, Kevin was pretty okay for the most part in UAF but Gwen often seemed to exist only to shoot Mana Disks & put up mana shields that could barely take a couple of hits despite being "the most poweful being in this realm" according to Dagon, Rook would usually be useful but would sometimes feel a bit outclassed by Ben, especially in the later seasons, and I don't think we even need to talk about how pointless Max and Gwen are in the reboot.
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CreaturemasterProds In reply to Danny-Buckle [2019-11-09 09:52:15 +0000 UTC]
It certainly does. And even then, it's never a guarantee that Ben will win whenever he gets a new alien - remember when he first unlocked Ball weevil? He managed to hold his own for a bit before he eventually was defeated by Khyber. Now that I think about it, that might be the only time where Ben was defeated upon unlocking a new alien (with the sans of Cannonbolt, due to him only figuring out his strengths towards the end of the episode. Also, can I just say how ironic it was that Cannonbolt's planet was supposedly destroyed last week by the gigantic Tick, but was defeated by an Arburian Pelarota nonetheless? No offense to the species, but did they even try to defend themselves? A ten year-old kid managed to kill a planet-eating monster where multiple other species couldn't).
I don't think it was too bad in OS, or at least, they had a good excuse, with that being they only had ten aliens to work with. Granted, they could have spaced them out more evenly, but at least they were open to using certainly aliens in situation where they were clearly at a disadvantage, like when Ben first encountered the Road Crew in the middle of the desert and turned into Ripjaws of all aliens. Omniverse didn't have it too bad either, given how they spaced out the usage of aliens (and hey, they managed to use Humungousaur only once in the first season! Bonus!) and made an effort to use almost every alien at least once (I say almost because unfortunately Jetray, Chamalien, and Fasttrack didn't appear. Granted, Fasttrack is boring as all hell, but you get the point).
But yeah, UAF was absolutely horrendous when it came to giving aliens equal amount of screentime.
I can think of a few good examples where Ben perfectly showcased his aliens. For Gravattack, it was probably when he first unlocked him and not only used his gravitational pull to wreck havoc on Fisttrick, but even make his own orbit - a very pleasant touch. Another one was Way Big verus the Way Bad during the Frogs of War saga, which I think is perfect since it has him using all his abilities and he's fighting a foe of equal size and power, for once. A third one would probably be when Mole-stache finally discovered his powers and beat the snot out of Fisttrick with a mustache of all things (as Fisttrick himself, "sweet 'stache") and a good fourth one would pretty much be the entire episode when Rath debuted.
Yeah, that was a problem with Gwen in UAF. Not only did it feel like the show was focusing on her and Kevin a bit too much, but she didn't feel all that powerful despite supposedly being the most powerful being on Earth (I still laugh at that, given Ben can essentially turn into a biological god at will and her force fields barely lasted a second). but yeah, one of my biggest problems with the Reboot is that Ben has all the attention - like I said before, the show is named after him, so it makes sense that he's the main character, but Grandpa Max and Gwen don't do anything. Gwen doesn't have magic powers and Grandpa Max just seems to pull random blasters and weapons out of nowhere despite not being a Plumber and having an unhealthy obsession with food, and yet they somehow still win while Ben is doing all the hard work.
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Danny-Buckle In reply to CreaturemasterProds [2019-11-09 11:25:13 +0000 UTC]
Yeah, even as a kid I thought that was weird, but considering that the creative team apparantly saw Alburia and all of its tunnel systems as "like a hamster cage", and that the Alburian Pelorotas use their powers mostly for motion and not violence, I'd suspect that the Tick got to them and ate their planet up before they even had a chance to get out of the tunnels to confront the thing, and even if they did they'd probably recognise that it would be better to flee to another world than try to fight off something that massive.
Don't forget Spitter, Ventrilosquid, Decagon Vreedle, Rocks and Squidstrictor, who were all apparantly unlocked by the end of Omniverse and yet we didn't get to see them. Anyway, yeah, both shows handled it better than UAF did, and the OS had much of an excuse than UAF did (Post-War Of The Worlds at least...which is where the overuse began to become more evident to me, oddly enough). I always did appreciate that Omniverse tried to use so many aliens, but there was still a few guys who'd show up a few times per season even with all the effort that went into treating them all equally.
I did think of Gravattack's debut while typing that up, but I ended up leaving it out. In hindsight though it definitely counts as a perfect showcase. I didn't think of the Way Bad fight or Mole-Stache's fight with Fistrick though; those are pretty damn good examples too. I feel like it's cheating to put an entire episode as a perfect showcase, but I'm definitely okay with including Rath's, uh, "internal conflict" with Jarret as a perfect showcase for him.
The thing is that I love the idea that Gwen has the potential to become the most powerful being on Earth -one of my favourite moments in UAF was when she showed off a bit of her true power against Zombozo before the scene cuts away to him screaming in terror; it's pretty dark and messed up, but A) he had it coming after what he did to her in the OS, and B) it shows just how dangerous Gwen can be if she cuts loose. I would have loved to have seen Gwen develop into the master sorceress she seemed to be in the original series' flash-forwards into the future, but UAF had to make her into an alien with inconsistent mana manipulation powers instead. I don't even mind her having an Anodite Form; just please don't try to turn the Team Mage into an actual alien.
I don't get a lot of the creative decisions with the reboot, but this is probably the most baffling to me; who in the team looked at Gwen and Max Tennyson, two of the best supporting characters to come out of 2000s animation, and thought "hey, why don't we make them practically useless in a fight and strip them of any real personality characteristics beyond being supportive of Ben?". My only hope for them at the moment's that Max will admit to being a Plumber the whole time now that they're apparently going into space in the next season.
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CreaturemasterProds In reply to Danny-Buckle [2019-11-09 23:36:22 +0000 UTC]
The Arburian Pelarota were, as you said, likely a peaceful race (not unlike the Geochelene Aerio) that had little to no concept of violence and merely used their rolling capabilities for locomotion, rather than defense or offensive purposes. It would certainly explain how the Big Tick managed to destroy the planet rather than being killed by the same species that it would inevitably be killed by later. Plus, I think it was stated somewhere that some portion of the population did escape and retreated to Vulpin, where they evolved to being the Vulpinic Tortugan; other than that, the wiki states that Arburian Pelarotas are, for the most part, extinct.
I suppose that's fair. Plus, from a marketing standpoint, it makes sense to give the aliens that debuted in Omniverse a little more time in the spotlight than the aliens that came before since, by comparison, they've been used a lot more. From an in-show canon standpoint, it's just Ben using which alien he knows he needs or what he knows will work in a situation where anything could go awry if he tries something he's unfamiliar with. And even then, it's just him mostly hitting the watch and hoping it will give him something good, since it seems to be a lot more sensitive than the previous iterations (which, as it turns out, was true; unlike before, slamming your hand down on the activation button apparently causes the Omnitrix to select a transformation at random). Then there's the fact that the Omnitrix, on some level, knows what alien Ben actually needs rather the one he wants. It may sound silly, but I think the writer's wanted the Omnitrix to maintain some level of mystery, like it did in the original series, rather than have it be something that Ben and the audience know like the back of their hand.
Given how, to my knowledge, there have been only three instances where an entire episode features only one transformation (the other two being Grey Matter and Swampfire), I think it should still count. If there's one thing the Reboot did right, it was bring back Rath (though, sadly without his previous voice actor, even though he voices Four Arms . . . and sadly doesn't say "Lemme tell ya somethin'" . . .).
That was one thing I didn't like about UAF: they tried to explain everything with aliens. Kevin's no longer a mutant human, he's actually an alien/alien hybrid from another world whose species just happen to look like humans. Gwen's no longer a sorceress, she's an alien hybrid that can manipulate magical energy (also a little butt hurt that Xylene never appears again; I think it would've been nice if she and Max became a couple). Everything is explainable by aliens because the show is called "Alien Force" or "Ultimate Alien"!
Honestly, I've kind of given up on the Reboot, but I'm kind of hoping that they'll try and fix all the plot holes they blasted in the series for the next season. For instance, why was the Omnitrix sent to Earth? Why was Shock Rock's DNA allowed to create the Omni-Enhanced forms when other DNA pods couldn't do it? Why is the Omni-Kix function even a thing if the Omnitrix (might be) is intended to be a peace-making device rather than a weapon? How did Kevin, a human - who, mind you, are significantly stupider than before - manage to build a replica of the Omnitrix and get the necessary DNA to make it function? Why does he hate Ben so much if the two have previously never met? And that's not even getting into some of the other characters . . . does anyone even wonder how or why the cockroach scientist even has a cockroach head/body in the first place!? At least Animo got some backstory (I think).
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Danny-Buckle In reply to CreaturemasterProds [2019-11-10 10:43:04 +0000 UTC]
Yeah, both the pop-up trivia and the crew's statements have suggested that some Alburian Pelarotas did survive. I kinda wish that the show did something with that idea honestly.
I always loved that the Omnitrix seemed to have a mind of its own throughout the original series; countering out Ben's hyper-impulsive "let's just punch the bad guy and see what happens" attitude by giving him a more logically fitting alien, punishing him for messing with it with energy surges and alien amalgamations, occasionally timing out or recharging at a suspiciously convenient time that helps get Ben out of a situation alive - it gave the Omnitrix a sense of character that all of the other versions, even Omniverse, lacked. Nowadays I'd compare it to one of the Greek Gods; it found a human that it liked & attached itself to him, toys around with him at a whim (with both life-threatening and life-saving results), and when the human tried to mess with it he would get severely punished.
I feel like the Omnitrix needs to be written almost like one of those Gods - it's a fickle thing, just as likely to reward you as it will punish you, and those who mess with it will be punished severely; Kevin gets turned in a xeno-chimera, Albedo gets the beautifully karmic punishment of being genetically altered into being identical to his least favourite person in the universe, and the elite Highbreed fascists get turned into hybrids of other "inferior races" instead of just making them "pure", showing that even when the Omnitrix is helping out it's still infusing a punishment in there. Of course the latter two examples kinda fall flat because of all the alien techno-babble tied to the post-timeskip era, which de-mystifies the whole thing turns the Omnitrix's "mindset" into just another AI acting like an AI.
Fair enough I suppose. I'm okay with the Reboot-Era Rath, but like you said he has a new voice actor and it just doesn't feel the same; John made Rath the Lovable Sh*t-Talking Tiger that everyone knows and loves, and it just doesn't feel right to cast him aside like that, especially since he still works on the freaking show.
Yeah, that's always annoyed me as well. They did eventually begin to revert that around the end of Alien Force by re-establishing magic via their white-washed version of Charmcaster and having a Yeti show up in UA, but for those first two seasons of Alien Force they kept bashing into our heads "it's all aliens man!" and that just isn't as fun to me. I liked the magic and the mutants and the bits of real-world mythology that they'd throw in every so often because it helped flesh out the world, and when some of these seemingly supernatural things turned out to just be aliens (The Halloween Trio for example), it was cool instead of being an eye-roller like it became in Alien Force.
I wish that Xylene showed up again as well, though I wouldn't have wanted her to get together with Max. Instead I'd have her work alongside him as he trains the next generation of Plumbers, and beyond the occasional bit of flirty banter they remain strictly professional.
With the reboot I've come to treat it like I treat Teen Titans Go; just turn your brain off and try to have fun. Unlike TTG, which occasionally ends up being mindlessly enjoyable (more so in the more recent seasons) but for the most part comes off as annoying, the Ben 10 reboot's success rate is more 50/50, and I do genuinely like some of the ideas put forward. Trying to take it too seriously will only lead to me resenting the thing's existence like I used to do for TTG, which I really don't want to do. Like I said before there are some decisions that I just flat-out don't get (Gwen & Max being basically useless, the decision to keep the Omnitrix's available aliens stuck at ten, making Zombozo completely human instead of a supernatural mystery), but for the most part I don't let it bother me too much because the show's meant to be a light-hearted & goofy ride for younger audiences; we had our Ben 10, and now they've got there's, and I'm glad that the current generation of kids gets to grow up with this franchise like we did, even if we aren't the biggest fans of it.
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ironlegionaire [2019-11-08 12:30:11 +0000 UTC]
Freezer burn came out looking really interesting. I admit, I also saw some spiriting in their design but I’m guessing that wasn’t really intentional. But overall, great alien.
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DemonWatch24 [2019-11-08 10:38:36 +0000 UTC]
Fire so cold, it burns.
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