Can we take a second to appreciate how well the skeleton fight looks in _Jason and the Argonauts_ from 1968? Like, seriously, 1968, and damn! That stop motion is meshed perfectly.
it bugs me when cgi is used for stuff that could be easily (and seemingly more cheaply for a better result) with a practical effect. My biggest bugbear is cg blood splatters in modern low budget horror films. I get that it means they dont have to clean up the actors between takes, but it always looks fake.
The Channel Fadge agreed. It's like the Wolverine scene shown in the video. From the first time I saw that movie, I had wondered why did they not use practical effects for those blades. The CGI blades were terrible looking and really unnecessary. It came off as if they used CGI for that scene just because they could.
Well it's POSSIBLE to make CG explosions well. But you know what, how often do you see explosions in real life? Lots of movies in the 70ies and 80ies used model explosions and model flames that looked waaaaaay wrong, because the whole substituted chemistry isn't the same, and we got used to them. Maybe real explosions look fake to us now too?
CGI effects are almost always over used. There's just too much temptation to throw in unnecessary camera movements and color grading. Just one more lens flare or laser blast. One more unnecessary space craft zooming by background character doing summersaults. One of my favorite scenes is the reveal of the USS Enterprise in dry dock by Douglas Trumbull's team in Star Trek The Motion Picture from 1979, a sequence that is so good it was re used for the immediate sequel. The graceful movement, the attention to detail, the lighting effects and the conveyance of real scale is unforgettable. And it was all 100% real. Every detail had to be hand crafted and budgeted. Had that scene been made today, there would be dozens of dry docks in the background, many more shuttles zooming around and a frenetic camera threatening to invoke motion sickness. Many of these sequences are now made of the benefit of the trailer, not to support the story itself. It's a shame.
When I was 10 years old, and saw TRON for the first time, I knew instinctively, that movies were about to change forever. And even though "The Academy" snubbed it at 1982's Oscars, to this very day, TRON is my favorite film of all-time.
Same here. I had two action figures and two light cycles but the toys were on their way out when I first saw Tron. My Dad rented it for me, then we taped it off Hbo and I watched it just about every day. I used to tape frisbees to my back and shit lol
Modern CGI gets hate because it's the easy way out. Most of the time it's done so cheaply and lazily. They send in the overlay footage, it looks fine as a rough draft. The art director says it looks out of place and fake. Director and studio head says to disregard the art director because they have a schedule to keep. They don't get a second render with better lighting and weightier animation. Instead it gets sent to the editing bay where they try and do some colour correcting and add things on top to obscure it. Rinse. Repeat. CGI can look good, it's just that most of the film has tons of CGI and so the time and money required to make it look good is too much. It's why there should be a balance between practical effects and CGI, because if either one gets to be too dominant then it looks terrible.
I don't believe we're at the point yet of believable, realistic CGI. The trick most filmmakers rely on today is blending the CGI imagery with tangible elements such as setting or actors with color grading and filters that serves to make real people, real locations, and real objects look *less real* as opposed to the CGI looking more real. It will all blend, but our movies are largely looking more and more fake. Compare The Force Awakes with A New Hope. TFA doesn't look nearly as tangible as ANH. The Millennium Falcon looks no more real than something from a video game. In contrast, ANH looked like it actually existed in reality. I can see scuff marks on the floor of the Death Star. I can imagine myself feeling every fabric and every texture and the coldness of the metal. I don't get that feeling with new films because none of it looks real. It all looks like a video game that I can't play.
I am elated that a film aficionado, such as yourself, has such a fair and balanced view of CGI. So many film fanatics seem to take the trendy position that practical effects are so much superior. As you stated, it really comes down to the quality of CGI, and the context in which it is being used, when it comes to assessing whether CGI is good or bad.
The fact that there's so much CGI that movie goers don't notice shows that CGI isn't bad. Like you and Georg said, it's all about how it's used and when. There are so many instances where CGI in the background is used without anyone ever noticing. And in more in your face examples, how Gollum still looks better than the any of the CGI characters in the Hobbit trilogy. The importance, I think, is to ground it in reality as much as you can, no matter how it looks. Compare the Gollum scenes in the Two Towers with any CGI character in any of the Harry Potter films. There's a drastic difference in believability despite technology.
Practical effects are superior at least in that you can get away with them in more places. That said, you can't exactly composite them together without extreme limitations, or CGI. With Bladerunner they had to use an expensive computer camera control rig, and dozens of exposures to get the resulting image. It's beautiful, but it is objectively far too much work. Now computers can extrapolate the exact position of the camera and do the same compositing into free moving shots. CGI as a replacement for matte paintings and multi-exposure compositing? Top notch. That said, the easier and more accessible these techniques become, the easier it is to put amateurish, ugly or jarring CGI characters and effects into shots that didn't need them. That's what everyone means when they talk about bad CGI.
I think the problem is that bad CGI or overuse of it is kind of noticeable like a soar thumb. But we rarely acknowledge good CGI, like in the Planet of the Apes movies, there's no way you can use real apes for doing what they do and the motion capture with excelent trained actors like Serkis works fine, same with It and Lord of the Rings, but then you have movie like World of Warcraft or The Hobbit where the CGI obviusly doesn't work, the motion capture sucks and it give you the idea that it was just lazyness because no one wanted to do make-up and use costumes. So it depends on the movie and the usage.
I think George Lucas made a great point when he said effects need to be in service of the story (ironic), I can forgive a bad effect if the story is interesting or charming. I can watch old Godzilla movies where its some guy crushing cardboard all day long, but hardly be interested when its a photo-realistic CG creation. Its similar with The Last Starfighter, those effects are clearly of their time, but that story has charm to it (imo), so its easier to not get hung up on it.
Check out the latest Japanese Godzilla film, "Shin Godzilla". I think it's a great example of CGI used appropriately. It still manages to capture the feel of those Showa era films despite it's heavy use of CGI. I also think it's pretty incredible what a Japanese studio made with 15 million dollar budget compared to the 2014 Legendary Godzilla that had a budget of like 160 million.
bigevilworldwide1 yeah but think about the quality of the film after it's complete. Those movies earned their fame through hard work to keep remaking the setd
Stop motion is pretty much always laughably noticeable and potentially distracting, so there's that. People in creative field just tend to forget these days that just because you can make something, doesn't mean you should, because the audience might not believe you.
Siana Gearz oh I can suspend my disbelief if it's done well, same goes for stop motion, like the bear scene from The Revenant, obvious CGI, but it was so well done that I ignored it, plus it was very harrowing. But when I'm talking about bad and distracting CGI I think of the baby from Twilight.
That is a ridiculously well done effect! And yet what if they made it just a tiny bit more hectic, a bit worse lit, a bit more silhouetted, and managed to show a bit less of the bear? Wouldn't it be better? Because there's at most a few split seconds where it doesn't move quite right or the fur doesn't move quite right. It seems to me that the paws might be on-set props for the close-up, that does a lot to sell the effect.
Siana Gearz I think for me it's when the bear interacted with Leo that's when I can really tell it was CGI, perhaps the lightening need some tweaking, but other than that it was still a great effect especially with the use of wires for Leo being thrown around.
To me it looks very much like the Tron shot at 6:21 is handdrawn animation and composite, not 3D rendered, but it's framed by two shots that are 3D. Similarly, the Terminator elevator scene showed is mostly practical, in-camera, and has two 2-second CG shots. And a bit later the moment you say "effects that can CONVINCE", you are showing a practical shot. And then again, wireframe in Star Wars was 3D rendered in some places, but the one in the pilot cockpit is hand drawn. Imitating computers of course. A bit disappointed that you didn't include The Last Starfighter and Young Sherlock Holmes. I think these two are first notable example of taking a shot at CG realism, with the first 'seamlessly' replacing a real car with a 3D rendered one, besides having a lot of CG in general. The second contained a scene where stained glass shatters and becomes a knight - not having a frame of reference of what a glass knight would look like, and it being composed of materials closely mimicking those photographed on the set, i think it vaguely counts as realistic. Both of these are from early/mid 80ies.
Yes, I too found myself mentally pointing out the shots that are believed to be cgi but are actually cleverly used practical effects. But in the end, while most don't realise how little cgi there actually was in many of the early cgi-heavy blockbusters and there has even been those in the know who explain that there are more practical effects shots in the dreaded Phantom Menace than in all of the original trilogy combined... The arguments in this video still are true though. So I forgive quite easily these mis-identified cgi shots.
The problem with The Phantom Menace... even when they fake it for real, it looks fake. Because things never quite match up, and that blandest of bland cinematography turned out to be the same, whether you're shooting for a CG backdrop or a model backdrop. Except CG backdrop would have been more flexible... you don't have to shoot it just from one side where the miniature has an opening! Rarely i would say anything of a kind, because i think this movie is the perfect poster child for special effect abuse, which is... pardon me, a menace, but i wish The Phantom Menace had more CG!
eldospinks, wait that comment doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I mean it's factually (almost) correct, it just doesn't fit the context in any sensible way.
Siana Gearz Makes perfect sense to me. Just because the effects cost more, does not mean there were more than there were in three films that relied on pratical effects.
The best is mixing both. It looks better than just good CGI or just good practical fx. Movies nowadays usually use too much CGI and too little practical effects.
The difference however is that bad and or excessive CGI is often used to compensate a poorly executed film. While bad or subpar practical effects in the past was in large part due to technical limitations but despite this still more so followed a coherent story line.
I would say the difference is that even when practical effects don’t look ‘real’ they still look and behave as though they exist in the world of the film, if that makes sense. A bad looking Arnold face clone in Terminator isn’t fooling anyone into thinking that it’s Arnold but it doesn’t look like a cartoon as it would if it were a poor cg effect.
A really interesting film to mention would have been Robocop 2. It used practical effects for the "Robocain" robot, with a CG face shown on the robot's monitor - all at the same time. To me it is the perfect example of the point where practical effects began to phase out of movie making and CG to phase in
The Tarkin shots were still very uncanny. It really frustrated me because they're done in a relatively dark room and the camera comes in through a window. If they were just to leave the camera outside the window, the obfuscation would keep that shot looking perfect. Careful framing of the other shots could have really helped as well. I mean, it looked good, but just too clean in that way that only 3D animation does. Dirtying up the shot by other means takes this away, like Terminator 2 on VHS. The Leia scene..... Did not fare so well, being in a well lit pod and shot straight into her face.
Exactly tumbwarriordx! I remember thinking in the theatre for a brief moment "oh, they're just going to show the CGI Tarkin as a reflection in the glass, this is a great way to sell the effect!". Of course that thought was abruptly ended and the uncanny valley effect just got worse throughout the film..
well they could do it better because as im aware the effects used for Tarkin scene was the same used for Young Kevin Flynn/CLU on TRON Legacy, and in one scene the one where guards take Sam Flynn to see CLU on his flagship, has the better effects for the young Jeff Bridges face in the movie, i mean that scene alone makes me think that if they had their sweet time with that technology they could easly made me believe that there are 2 Jeff Bridges in the movie instead of Old Bridges and Half CGI PS3 Bridges, because they used for the other scenes half CGI Young Bridges and mixed it with his mocap actor that sadly doesnt look anything like Jeff on the face department, that's why CLU for other scenes looks so...off instead of looking exactly like the scene where he talks for the first time with Kevin's Son, if only had more time and sticked with that instead of doing what i said it could had been such an amazing feat but i could think that maybe in more heavly action paced scenes this technology couldn't keep up at all since it was originally used for "The strange case of Benjamin Button" and in that movie Brad Pitt barely moves let alone jumps, rides a bike, or makes a fighthing coreography so yeah i can get why it looks so PS3-ish for the rest of the movie, but man that was a let down.
Wow! Thank you, Sir! Everything you talked about early CGI before Star Wars in 1977, I'd never even heard of. Everything I've ever heard of prior to that here in the United States was credited to American scientists. Apparently here in the states, we're fed a very U.S.-centric view of the development of technology!
Well to be fair, them conniving Brits didn't bother declassifying Bletchley park and taking credit for the first programmable computer until well after the frigging millenium. Sometimes it's not our fault that everyone let us think we were first at everything.
That happened a lot during and after WW2. There are probably developments achieved at time that will never be known, so many were destroyed during the period, or just buried in a basement somewhere and forgotten. Quite likely, some things had to be reinvented later. That period also saw tech talent moving around a fair bit between nations, eg. a lot of German scientists ended up in the US, but their origins are glossed over in favour of their impact on the space programme. Wernher von Braun inparticular is sanitised for the convenience of comfortable history. Likewise, the UK ended up giving away significant elements of British jet engine technology to Russia, in a manner that quite likely came back to bite us and the USA in the ass during the Korean War, but this isn't going to be mentioned in any highschool history book. :) Such a complicated time, so many untold stories...
Its interesting that because of the prohibitive cost of mainframe time, John Carpenter had to use practical effects to emulate cgi for the glider sequence in Escape from New York. I think it gives it a unique look.
When you go from CGI effects to lets shoot everything on green screens, thats when you have horrible problems, wooden acting because they don't know what they are interacting with. Like all the SW prequels, the last couple of RE movies and probably others i havent seen.
jsnsk101 The Star Wars prequels really went overboard with the CGI and it shows. The visual look of those movies haven't aged well. One scene comes to mind where a character is talking to a clone trooper and it's a real actor on a set standing on some sand in front of a blue screen and the clone trooper is so obviously a computer animation and it looks so awful. Just making some real suits would have been so much better for scenes involving a few characters. Those entire films just feel so lazy from the director's stand point. Like he didn't want to leave a nice climate controlled studio, he didn't want to deal with prop people making real props and sets, and so on.
+ jsnsk101 all it takes is actors with imagination that can actually act. Actors used to just get up on practically bare stages and give performances. There is a reason it is called a craft.
You people have no idea what you are talking. The Star Wars prequels used a crap ton of practical effects. And just because something is shot on a green screen doesn't mean CGI is being used. The idea that Lucas "didn't want to leave a confortable studio" to shoot is also bullshit because they also used real locations in these films. The true problem in the prequels in terms of effects was the digital compositing and the computer effects aplied to the models that made even the practical stuff look CG. And the only movie where I think Lucas over used the CGI was in Ep.2 TPM and ROTS look fine
Great video, thumbs up! -To Anyone interested in how Hollywood exploits the CG industry and its artists, check out the documentary on RU-vid called "Life After Pie".
I wish movies would bring back stop animation. If they could make the animation more realistic. I think it could fool the public. With modern technology aiding the animation. Stop animation lacks fluidity to trick the mind at its current state, but I'm a big fan of it.
I got to have a chat with Brendan McCarthy last winter. He was the lead concept artist/"co-writer" for Fury Road, and, among many other things, the lead designer for the 90s 3D animated show Reboot, and the 90s TMNT movie. So having worked practically and with a pioneering CGI show, he had a good perspective on effects. We both ultimately agreed that the main thing that makes current day CGI look so fake despite being at the point of photo realism is over-animation. Look at any scene in Game of Thrones where the dragons move about and you'll see that nigh-on every individual part of them jostles and shifts and flexes when they take a single step. Everything sways unnaturally and unnecessarily, down to individual scales and spines. Compare that with an actual lizard or animal and you'll see how relatively little they move. Likewise, human models tend to do this weird cartoony smear/deform when they move, giving the appearance that they're made of rubber. Movements are over-exaggerated too, where every punch has to arch around twice it's regular distance in order to supposedly "compensate" for it's lack of weight. It works in 2D, but causes conflict in 3D It seems to come down to a common choice the animators make, all based on older 2D principles of animation. If a model can move beyond the point of a real life counterpart, or if the animator can shift around 50 separate points of articulation at once, they will do it.
I think that cgi is “bad” because it’s overused It’s great when used well but if it’s used for literally everything without any substance or good story behind it then people start to associate cgi with bad films Companies now use cgi and big monsters instead of good stories to make people want to see movies and that’s the problem Practical effects are good but have limitations cgi is good but it’s overused
Seems silly now, but my first memory of CGI was in the Dire Straits video, "Money for nothing." ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lAD6Obi7Cag.html Of course it was and is very cartoony, but it was amazing to me in the early eighties. Still a rocking tune.
Funny side note, since we already have Kraftwerk in this video, they too produced a cgi music video for their tune "musique non stop" (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-O0lIlROWro8.html), also in 1986. A very fitting video to their style :-)
I can't be the only person that got that Kraftwerk reference. Edit: I think a very "let's do this as much as we can" film is the Wachowski's adaptation of Speed Racer, nearly everything in that movie was CGI, including part's of the house where the Racer family live and parts where the car isn't even in motion, and for a movie that came out in 2008, they aren't half bad and make for a headache inducing watch that I think compliments the old anime well
What about entirely CGI movies and shows? You mentioned Toy Story, but what about more recent animated films? The Good Dinosaur had a meh story, but dang were its visuals impressive. Can't wait to see what Pixar can accomplish ten more years from now.
CGI is at times cool. However, it’s overused for many years. Maybe it’s better working with Special Effects. But at moments it’s stronger to use Practical Effects
Overused is something funny to call it, like someone saying practical effects are overused for many years. How much the effect is used wouldn't matter if its use was high quality.
Combination of practical and cgi is best. That's why Terminator 2 still looks so good and often objectively superior to more modern usage of it. Directly with Genisys(young Arnold is impressive but T-1000 looks really bad in genisys)
The Brad Pitt movie "Troy" is a good example of unlimited possibilities gone too far. It could not just have been 20 or 40 ships, no, it had to be infinite ships coming to an infinite shore with infinite soldiers. CG can be too attractive for some directors who don't realize that limitations is what makes art something special.
I don't know men, CGI makes things possible that in the past people only dreamed off. Or had to be done using limited effects. Yet, I like the limited effects too, looking at The Thing and their monsters and practical physical effects is something to enjoy. Seeing a Yoda puppet and knowing something is actually there. Sure it has its limitations, creating a tyrannosaurus is a big task! But these days, I don't feel it in many movies. You just feel that so much is done on green walled stages. Yes, they can do a lot more these days but it is all faked on stages and that feels weaker. As most tools go CGI can do a lot of good but overuse makes it gaudy and fake. I just know that many big-ticket movies use green screens and the actors are acting into nothing. Lord of The Rings, a modern movie but expensive, why? As much actual actors and locations are used. Yes, some have to be CGI'd, like the horses and their riders, there were not as many horses as the movie shows! But that is a small detail, to make the movie better, acceptable. Yet here we are, watching movies where there is so much CGI that it probably was shot on one location inside a green screen stage. No I don't want to force movie directors to choose only practical effects, we would be stuck than, but too much and it really feels fake. Right from an actor point a view, a director expects you to ACT as if something is there. No matter if it is for a movie or on stage. You need to ACT as if something is there. But it helps if at least there is the faintest clue that something is there. Sure if you are on stage doing a The Thing rendering the monster will be..probably hilariously limited.. but the actor is expected to treat it as if it is a horrific being. If an actor does it right we as viewers believe it. But if an actor has nothing to work with.. it is harder to make things believable. Call me old but there is something about the horror and action movies from the 1970ties up to 1990's that make it more real.
Very True! Spoken about the effects, you can see what happens if the actors and the effects used are on different worlds in The Giant Claw, a monster movie where the actors act their best.. and the puppet is a big joke.
CGI, like practical effects, have their advantages and limitations. I always hate the question "What's better? CGI or Practical effects?", as I feel there is no solid answer to that. On one hand, CGI is overused today, to the point where spectacle no longer wows me like it did in the past. On the other hand, CGI has made it a lot easier to make films, and I'd be lying if I said my first film would not have CGI elements in it, due to costs reasons. Practical effects have the benefit of having "weight" and being physically on camera help add a sense of realism to the effects ( even if the effects look fake, I don't dismiss it as easy with CGI). On the other hand, practical effects have their limitations, and I doubt films like "Gravity", "The Avengers" or any of the "Lord of the Rings" films would have been made without CGI. TL;DR I feel both effects have their ups and downs, and in my opinion, the best films nowadays incorporate elements of both ( such as Fury Road). Probably my favorite video regarding CGI would be RocketJump's "Why CG Sucks (Except It Doesn't)", which I highly recommend.
I don't think the CGI Tarkin in Rogue One is as cringe worthy as everyone says, sure it could have been done more taste fully, but it's fine as it is. I think it'll hold up better than many of its contemporaries, but every digital media is extremely disposable nowadays. The animation is good, the model is not real and it never will be, whether you can get past that is another thing entirely.
Even if they decided to make tarkin all practical. For example that japanese guy with the scarlet johansson robot. Think about that then tell me which is too uncanny.
bigevilworldwide1 I do remember BluRay Robocop being worse than the DVD one but I think that was poorly transferred. You are right though. Stop frame does need post-processing, ironically in a computer based form, in order to reduce the loss of realism. Even 'simple' things such as anti-aliasing might make the difference between a hard, blocky or grainy stop-motion to an enhanced stop motion that work better with the advanced resolution of many new screens (big or small).
I think things a moving a little faster than 50 to a 100 years. Hobbyists/independant film makers can do better vfx in their home on a modest PC today than James Cameron achieved in Terminator 2. Many Software packages that were previously in house are available to buy. One just needs the knowledge and time to do it.
Overall, I think CGI is doing a better job of many practical effects from the past. Yes, there are some practical effects that just look good vs their CGI counterparts. For now. But I've seen some truly awful, cheesy and just "obvious" practical effects over my 5 decades of watching movies, so for all the flaws of CGI - and there are a number - I still prefer bad CGI over bad practical. I love TRON when it first came out - it was mind-blowing for me as an early teen, and it quickly became one of my all-time fav movies. Some of the "improvements" Lucas made to his Star Wars original trilogy films using CGI were great, but quite a number of the additions were just awful - either too obvious, too clean, too jarring, or just "Lucas-goofy". For all the flaws of the 2nd trilogy of Star Wars films, I felt overall they were better at using CGI than the "patch jobs" Lucas made to the first trilogy. I know this will sound like heresy to the Star Wars puritans, but I'd LOVE to see a full-CGI remake of all 3 original films, using original actor's voices. I think the pacing and modern style of cinema that could be applied would really give the classics a new lease of life. Unlike many people I've seen on the internet talking about movies, I'm happy with a full-CGI movie. Why? Because if I go into a movie knowing it's 100% CGI, I can roll with that. It all works properly and as a specific "effect" and "look" to the movie. For example, the "Final Fantasy: Spirits Within" CGI you mentioned, while looking dated now, I really enjoyed. Even when I watched it soon after its release, I enjoyed it's style immensely. Since the WHOLE world of the movie was CG, there were no jarring collisions between CG and practical effects / actors. The effect was an absorbing, engaging movie that I very much "got into", leaving me wanting more of that style. Regrettably, despite huge advances in CG since then and a big reduction in costs, 100% CG (note: not cartoony-animated) movies are still few and far between. I would love to have seen Rock Fish made as a 100% CG movie - the trailer created years ago by Blur Studios was epic for its day, and is still one of my fav shorts despite how "basic" it looks by 2020 standards. Regrettably i have no talent for animation or art, and no money to speak of, so being able to create my own full-CG movie is just never going to happen - unless someone invents a way to record our imaginations and create movies out of them. Now, THAT would be truly epic! BTW, I'm surprised you didn't include The Lawnmower Man in your rouges gallery of CGI fails. It wasn't bad for it's day I suppose, but its graphics have dated terribly. Despite TRON's CG being very basic, for some reason they do (overall) hold together better even almost 40 years after the fact. Again, although it will be heresy to some, I'd love to see TRON re-made as a 100% CG-only movie. THAT would be worth paying to see!
I remember being wowed by the CGI scenes in T2 Judgment Day, like when the T-1000 made himself part of the floor to kill the guard and then when he phased through the bars. To my 14-year-old self, that was mind blowing. The problem I think is when movies started doing CGI for CGI's sake, like Independence Day. However, I loved how the CGI complemented the acting and storytelling in the LOTR trilogy.
I love CGI. I love Harryhausen puppets. I like Anime and high-end computer assisted anime, like Bloodlust but I love the 60s/70s era anime also. I like Rocky and Bullwinkle. IMO it's about the STORY - something modern films forget. They have incredible effects, the CGI artists are awesome. But the movies they have to make are bland "Re-Boots" of old memories - G-d help them if they risk $ on new stuff or don't dumb something down so people in the ...'exceptional' department can get the plot and shout it out loud.
Unpopular opinion: Decent CGI looks better than the best puppetry/miniatures ever can. I don't say this to in any way disrespect or shit on the work of practical FX teams, but...well, I'll use Farscape as my example. Farscape's aliens were primarily done with practical effects, by Jim Henson's team, and they were amazing. They were imaginative and emotive, but oh, my goodness, they were _clumsy._ Rigel, one of the main supporting characters, was nearly all done as a puppet. He was supposed to be a glutton, always after more food, but whenever he reached for it, or tried to put it in his mouth, it was painful to watch. Pilot, another main supporting character, was supposed to be constantly operating controls at the centre of the ship. It was, however, blatantly obvious that his four arms were mostly just bouncing up and down on the control panels and not actually moving with the precision needed to control anything. This was puppetry at its very best. This was The Jim Henson Company from 1999-2004, with plenty of time to iron out any problems with their puppetry, and it still never looked as convincing as good CGI. CGI raised the bar. You can't get away with "good enough" any more in practical effects - you have to be the very, very best, or you'll be replaced.
I do miss the artistry of the upper crust of practical effects movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien (and it's sequel) the original Star Wars trilogy etc...
Yesterday I saw a small feature on TV about a local (German) guy who does practical effects for hollywood. He even got an Oscar for it, for his work on the new Blade Runner. He says that, with a snowfall-scene as an example, 90% of the snow is fake, but some in the foreground is physically there, mainly to give the actors something to react to. Also, in a later flood scene in the movie, they did the water and waves for real and just extended the background, because water still doesn't look 100% realistic if it comes out of a computer rather than a hose.
Hopefully you can make photorealistic films entirely in CGI in the future. That way, the film industry can finally ditch all of it's obnoxious and entitled actors and "stars".
I think CGI can look good, but for whatever reason it doesn't. Many of the best looking computer effects are from the 90's, if not all of them. Bizarre.
I have returned from the future ( via practical SFX ) to warn Georg that he no longer has a photo-realistic beard. And now everyone's ill. Coincidence?
David fincher, who worked on the cgi team from ILM on Return of the Jedi, used more shots with cgi in the social network than was used in Jurassic world. He uses it where you dont notice, only to make what you're seeing more believable and logical as well as stylistic
Even the most photorealistic CGI person still looks like a dead man being used as a puppet. We humans make a lot of subtle micromovements that one human can pick up from another, that a CGI character has yet to mimic convincingly.
The thing about The Thing from the 80's was so good that it broke the practical effect world. A bit like Akira broke Anime. No one could come close to that and they didn't for a very long time. I think Jurassic Park was the next big leap in practical effects by the amazing Stan Winston. In Anime there were a few that braved it but I think they all lost money and animation went into a deep decline for a long time. Computer graphics kinda saved it really allowing for cost cutting but that's a whole other complicated story. My point was that The Thing broke the minds of artists everywhere but it also inspired a generation growing up to get into the industry so hey, swings and roundabouts!
This is becoming one of my favorite channels with every new vid, whether talking about cinema industry, or more social matters... Keep up the good stuff!
It's amazing how little CGI the original tron actually features, watching it again reveals most of it is still traditional animation and matte paintings
I'm watching this a few days after I watched Tron all the way through for the first time, followed by Tron Legacy, which really doesn't get the credit it deserves.
PixelBro64 Right? Heh, I thought the clips shown were kinda cool, but I wonder what it's about (if it's about anything in a traditional sense, that is)
My dad abhors CGI. Except he doesn't really know what it is, how it looks and how to spot it. He bought a compilation DVD of old Road Runner cartoons (1960s to 1990s), and complained that these hand drawn cell-animations were just all modern CGI crap.
Fred Park was my Facial Animation professor at Texas A&M! He is a wealth of information about computer imagery and visualization. Sadly he is retiring soon.
