anybody else find it hard to get into cgi?

duck soup

son of a BANG son of a BOOM
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i tried watching wall-e for the first time the other night. since i've heard so many great things over the years, i was very excited and had pretty high expectations. hate to say this, but i shut it off about halfway through because it just wasn't doing anything for me. i always feel this way about cgi animated films (with pretty much the sole exception of finding nemo for some reason).

i know it's somewhat unfair for me to say this, since its obviously an art form in its own right, but the style just never 'impresses' me. to my eyes, it always looks so polished that it verges on sterility. and since the artist's hand is never overtly visible, it seems sort of cold and devoid of human feeling. anybody else feel similarly, or am i alone on this one?
 
I like a lot of CG movies but I'm never really wowed by their art style. I mean, I can appreciate the effort, but they feel too video-gamey. I also hate how the oversaturation of CGI has left no room for traditionally animated theatrical movies. Even the mostly-2D SpongeBob 2 has some bullshit 3D tacked on to the end.
 
I like cgi if it's used in a cel-shaded cg and hand-animation combination. When cgi is used in live-action, it gets really tiresome on my eyes.
 
CGI is great! I like it very much. However, I am not a big fan of how most CGI has that generic "Pixar Look". The new Peanuts movie, however, looks very unique, and i like that :)
 
I'm not the biggest fan of CGI due to how much it is overused in movies nowadays. That being said, there are a lot of really good CG animated films out there. Pixar has some of the best examples of these and the fact that you couldn't get into Wall-E just because of it's CG animation is really disheartening. Of all the CG films out there that I'd consider "sterile" or "cold", Wall-E would certainly not be one of them. The movie is a visual spectacle, with some of the best animation around. Give it another chance but next time pay attention to all the little visual quirks not only in the mise-en-scene but also in the character of Wall-E and the other robots. It really is a beautiful film.
 
I tend to like CGI more when it's stylized. I'm typically too distracted when a CGI character is mixed with live action, and I'm afraid early CGI efforts haven't aged especially well for me. When the CGI is used to create a 2D or more stylized look, I tend to get more into it. Regardless of my opinion of the movie itself, I like the style of Despicable Me and, to a lesser extent, Ice Age. The Book of Life is one I found to be especially impressive, and I like the look of the Peanuts movie.

Then again, some live action movies have used CGI rather deceptively which, in that case, my eyes aren't trained to catch the difference. I heard Anger Management used a lot of CGI effects, but I guess I just didn't catch them.
 
I'd argue that WALL-E is a bad place to start because the animation is supposed to look as real as possible, due to the fact that the human race in movie originate in live-action form. They even hired legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins to help give the film that extra, authentic look to the CGI. (I do love the film to death tho)

If you want a stylized Pixar film, then "The Incredibles" is probably a better place to go off to.
 
I can see that. I was screencapping a CGI movie for a video review I was working on, and found that a lot of the individual still images didn't seem as visually striking to me as hand-drawn stuff. Although in motion, I find CGI movies to look amazing but the individual shots can feel a little synthetic at times.
 
I think "good" CGI is awesome, the low budget off the grocery store shelf stuff can ruin your day.
I still cringe at the over proliferation of "Flash" style animation. Sadly, due to the extreme savings, its not going away anytime soon.

I can see @parklife 's take on 100% CGI films, but I'm constantly amazed at how CGI is used Everywhere.. Even in things you would'nt think have it..
Hand drawning images is awesome, but CGI frees you from the laboriously caveman days of individual hand panted acetate cell with those monstrously huge animation pan cameras of old that would take over half of a room. Good riddance to that $#!t! Getting it all done inside your PC is the way to go. Some people cried the day the buggy whip factory closed, but I wont look back. Digital Rulz!
:gatorbang:
 
I can't get into cheap or basic CGI, it at looks so terrible to me. Flat, plastic, lifeless. I also really don't like human CGI characters, and it's not just the uncanny valley, it's that I become fixated on and frustrated by their wrongness. The way their mouths don't form words properly, their hair doesn't move right, their eyes don't work right. I could deal with "Frozen" and "Tangled" because they're still very Disney-like so they register to me as cartoon characters, not strange video game avatars. Undoubtedly, I'd enjoy both immensely more if they were traditionally animated.

Another thing I can't stand is the over-reliance on CGI special effects, especially when used to add in creatures or animals. It never looks realistic and I always feel like I'm watching a very old movie where I have to suspend my disbelief even more to compensate for claymation special effects. In terms of creature special effects: animatronics/puppets>>>>>>>>>>>CGI>stopmotion-other>stopmotion-claymation. (It's not just creatures, of course, it's everything. CGI explosions look absolutely terrible, for example.)
 
stop motion is arguably one of the purest forms of animation, seeing as a person's total blood, sweat and tears go into every single goddamn frame of it and it's not only just drawing. you gotta respect that at the very least
 
I ADORE stop motion as animation!!! Claymation specifically is my favorite type of animation, ever. I mean in older movies when stop motion was used for special effects. It's utterly charming, sure, but of course not one bit believable and takes you out of the movie a bit:

kingkong1.jpg


Compare to the absolutely incredible animatronic T-Rex used for Jurassic Park

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The CGI version at the end, however, looks very lifeless and toy-like

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I can overlook it, considering the limitations of the technology of the time. But even though everyone is convinced that today's CGI is "mindblowing" and "super realistic!", it only looks marginally better than that T-rex to me.
 
CGI animation can be amazing when done right and movies like Finding Nemo, How To Train Your Dragon, Rango, Rio and Toy Story 3 have proved it. However when it's not done right it looks horrible and bad CGI just doesn't have that charm that bad claymation, stop-motion, practical effects or even stick figure drawings have. As for the overuse of CGI in non-animated movies it's a mixed bag for me. I don't really mind movies that use CGI animals as it can be hard to get a real one, but this one movie The Edge which had a real bear is part of what made the movie work. Also it seems like the more movies and TV shows I see the more I'm starting to catch on with obvious CGI especially in shows like The Walking Dead (Which I am far behind on by the way.) and the season 1 finale where this one building gets destroyed is so blatantly obvious that it ruined what could've been a cool part. I think one of the best examples of great CGI in recent years is in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes which part of why it looks so great is because the actors wear motion capture suits instead of it being just some guy creating the apes with computers.

So as a whole, CGI is both good and bad. It's the same thing with the kind of animation The Simpsons uses now.
 
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