CGI is killing the art

[Vic Romano]

I don't agree that CGI is killing the art, I think it's creating a new one. As far as if you think it's good art or bad art, art is in the eye of the beholder, so therefore; art is a matter of an opinion. I'm a professional illustrator, it's my job to draw. As an artist though, I don't look at my art and compare it to others. If I see something I don't like, I don't think my art is better or worse then someone elses... it's just different. I could say; Frank Cho is a better artist then Alex Ross. Some would say "Absolutely!" Others would say "Absolutely not!", still others would say "Who the heck is Frank Cho and Alex Ross!?", I say, I find both excellent and enjoyable in their own way. One is not better than the other.
I do think CGI can be too heavily relied on. I thought Matrix II & III were the worst hours of my life, visually; very intense... story wise; as thin and shallow as the day is long. True, many filmakers may rely too heavily on this new medium, but to blame bad films on CGI I think is inappropriate. Bad films come from bad film makers.

 

[lili]

an opinion from the top

Someone recently asked Neil Gaiman pretty much the same question, about the whole cgi vs puppetry thing. He handballed the question to Lisa Henson, who had this to say:

Dear Neil,

Some of our fans do sometimes get upset whenever we do anything
new, particularly if it is not Muppets. When my father was alive, he
was perplexed by this, as the only thing he was ever really
interested in was the next thing on the horizon, the thing that was
slightly technically impossible and perhaps commercially unwelcome.
He began by upsetting "real" puppet fans around the world with
puppets that didn't follow in any of the existing puppetry
traditions, in a field where virtually every puppeteer began as an
apprentice or acolyte of a master traditional puppeteer. (We are still
trying to make it up to those people with the work of the Jim Henson
Foundation!)

Many of the old Henson techniques which one might pine for
nostalgically, like the radio controlled puppets of EMMETT OTTER or
the intricate animatronics of DARK CRYSTAL were at the time of those
productions completely new and innovative. There is a first time for
everything. In the eighties, Jim Henson was on a quest for several
new techniques which were on the horizon. He spent a lot of time
working on interactive projects that couldn't be realized
technologically until a couple of years after his death. He wanted to
make 3D movies. The most important project he envisioned was the
computer puppetry, which involved using puppeteers to "animate"
computer models of characters. I went with him on his initial
meetings with John Whitney and PDI and others to talk about how this
might be achieved. Actually, he successfully made the interface work
for the Waldo character in the Muppetvision 3D movie, and what we are
doing now in computer animated puppetry is just a more complete
version of that concept. If he lived, we would have made the
advancements faster and might have been making full CG programs like
our FRANCES show as early as ten years ago.

Jim Henson used the same performers to manipulate all of his
characters in every puppetry medium, and we follow that same
philosophy. The puppeteer is where the magic of puppetry rests, not
in the style of the model or technology. When Frank Oz puppeteered
Yoda, he brought a magic to the character that would not have
happened if he were performed by his builders (as other shops would
have done).

Finally, is it misleading to say that MIRRORMASK is from the creators
of Dark Crystal and LABYRINTH? Absolutely (it's marketing staff
stuff). It is from the creators of SANDMAN and MR PUNCH and WOLVES IN
THE WALLS. We will be seeing a new trailer shortly and hopefully the
Jim Henson Company's involvement will be properly seen by the public
as having promoted and showcased the unique art and talent of Dave
McKean as the visionary director that he is.

Lisa


(this is from Neil's most excellent blog, at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/)

 

[AndyWan Kenobi]

Wow, that was a great response to that question. Thanks for posting it!

 

[Vic Romano]

Nice post with the letter, you hit that one out of the park.

 

[Mario]

I agree that CG should be used when necessary, and I absolutely love that screwdriver and hammer thing, I'm going to be using that one! The only thing that I can really add to this thread is about the humans in Finding Nemo. In Toy Story, you can see how hard the animators worked on Mrs. Davis' (Andy's mom) face. They gave her different skin tones and even added white peach fuzz on her cheeks. But in Finding Nemo, the faces of the sailor and the dentist are plain, and very "cartoonish". I had to think about this for awhile. Why would the animators take a step back, when with all other aspects of their films were moving forward? I realized that if they keep perfecting the human face and human characteristics, one day, it will look exactly like a human, and there would be no point to animating it. I think that it was John Lasseter that said something like, why pay millions of dollars turning dog-doo into an orange, when you can buy a perfectly good orange for less than a dollar.