'FINAL FANTASY' dvd, absolutely INCREDIBLE! (1 Viewer)

[Morgan Jolley]

I don't want photorealistic humans in TS, but they could have been done better. They just looked like crap, IMO.

 

[Tino]

[Tino at 16]I enjoyed Final Fantasy when I saw it in a theater, but re-watching it recently, I must say that gee whiz golly gosh darn was the story crap or what?[/Tino at 16]

 

[Chris Maynard]

Morgan - Discussing this with you reminds me of arguing with my 16 year old nephew. You stand on your position without looking at the whole picture.

Point 1: TS humans looked that way because Pixar wanted them to. They fit into the stlye/look of the movie.

Point 2: The rendering power of computers has increased by a factor of 100 since 1994 when TS1 was made. Do you think changing the entire look of TS2 would have been a good decision just because they had more cpu horsepower available in 1998?

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Chris-

I understand that there was a style involved in the designs, and that there were limits, but I still think they looked like crap. I did not like the artistic style. Am I not allowed to do that or something?

I am 16, thats probably what reminds you of arguing with your nephew.

Computer power and such has increased, but if you watch the documentary on the FF DVD, you'll see that they didn't render everything at once, but would do up to 50 renders for one single frame, then they would combine them all together.

 

[Chris Maynard]

This is all starting to make sense now.
Ok...nothing to see here...move along....

 

[Edwin-S]

I would like to know....just what is the point of making "photorealistic" animated characters? I believe that if you make your the characters "photorealistic", you might as well be shooting live action because the power and artistry that animation is capable of becomes of little use.

To me, the whole point of animation is to represent real world motifs in an abstract matter. An animator does his best work when he can manipulate and exaggerate the form of whatever character he/she is working on, in order to give personality and "life" to essentially lifeless materials. Holding an animator to a hard and fast "rule", such as make it "realistic", turns him/her into a mechanic not an artist. The "requirement" to make the characters in FF as "realistic" as time and money would allow restricted the animators from using any sort of exaggeration to add personality and "life" to the characters and as a result they displayed very little personality.

Animating is a form of puppeteering, except instead of strings it is an adjustment with a pencil or a mouse. The whole trick is to make an audience forget that they are watching an inanimate object and instead, invest into the fiction that for that point in time the character exists as a feeling, thinking being....not a collection of sticks or ink blots. "Final Fantasy" fails on that account because regardless of the visual appeal, the people are flat and sort of lifeless. Audiences could not connect with them, therefore they could not care for them or, by extension, what happens to them and in a movie that is fatal. They remained puppets with the strings showing.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

The thing is that they want the characters to look as realistic as possible so that you view them more as real people. The more realistically you view them, the more realistically the whole things seems.

Plus, CGI=total control. I don't think CGI characters have crazy demands and don't need anywhere near as much as real actors. Granted, FF cost a ton of money, but there were things they could do that they wouldn't be able to do in live action. In FF, they have shots that are common and they have shots that are crazy and impossible in real-life. In one scene, the camera goes from high in the atmosphere and rushes down to Aki's face in just a second or two. This shot is powerful and can only be done using CGI.

CGI also makes a film somewhat perfect. Characters don't just change clothes or have their hair looking different between scenes. It allows for greater continuity.

The argument that you should use real people instead of realistic CGI characters could be reversed. Maybe CGI characters should be the only actors. They do whatever you want and they don't demand more money for it. You write a script, storyboard it, and they do whatever you tell them to. If they don't make the right expression, you make it for them. If you can't come up with the right movements, just get a consultant or a real actor to give you some help. Its a lot more ideal than live action.

It will take a long time for CGI to become an effective medium for storytelling on an adult level. Regular animation has gone from stuff like Snow White to stuff like American Pop (I think that's what its called). That shows the differene between what it started with and what we now have.

In Japan, animation is thought of as a very effective method for conveying thoughts and ideas. To tell the truth, I have never seen an American film, live action or animated, that could ever amount to the emotions that I have experienced from watching some anime.

FF's characters felt flat for a reason that has more to do with the storyline and the setting than the animation.

What you said about animation is called a convention of film. The audience accepts something that they know is not true or is unimaginable for the sake of the story. In animation, you accept that the characters are real.

The "requirement" to make the characters in FF as "realistic" as time and money would allow restricted the animators from using any sort of exaggeration to add personality and "life" to the characters and as a result they displayed very little personality

It wasn't a requirement, but rather a choice. Hironobu Sakaguchi, the director, didn't say "I want to make a film with realistic CGI characters," but rather said "I want to make a film with themes that humans can relate to so well that the characters must be of the higest quality CGI" (and I'm not just guessing about this, he really did say something along those lines). The animators actually added mannerisms to the characters based on the voice actors, such as Ming-Na touches her forehead with her open right palm, so they tried to impliment this into the film a few times.

I think the characters showed enough personality. All the characters didn't act like normal people from nowadays, but we still have all of the worlds population alive and we aren't stuck to living in tiny cities for protection for a force from an alien planet. Had you grown up in this situation, would you act like you do now, or would you always be a little depressed?

Should CGI replace regular animation? No. Should all animation be unrealistic? No.

 

[RicP]

Should all animation be unrealistic? No

So, what can be implied by that quote is that you feel that either some animation can be (to you) unrealistic, or you are saying that all animation should be realistic. In the latter case, not a particularly open-minded view on what constitutes art. Did Picasso paint realistic human figures? Does that in any way lessen his impact as an artist?
Closed Mind = Narrow Thoughts = Less fulfilling life.
Oh and Morgan, invest in a Thesaurus. There are many more eloquent ways of expressing yourself than "crap".
P.S. Maynard - How the hell are you buddy?

 

[Chris Maynard]

P.S. Maynard - How the hell are you buddy?

Not too bad...drop me an e-mail sometime. We should get together next time I am in NYC.

 

[Ricky Cash]

I would like to know....just what is the point of making "photorealistic" animated characters?
I wonder if anyone asked that question when the first talkies were attempted. I dont know if you have any artistic vision, my bet is you do as most of us who post on these forums probably see ourselves as writers of some sort. But I think the whole point of art is that there is no point.
Although we may not think we see much art in films. At it's core film is art and animation is films highest form of visual art.
Holding an animator to a hard and fast "rule", such as make it "realistic", turns him/ her into a mechanic not an artist.
I would venture to say that the computer artists that worked on FF were very juiced to have someone direct them to create real people with the computer.
I sometimes dabble with 3D landscape rendering software Bryce, Terragen, Vue 'd Esprit. My goal is to make my scenes as realistic as possible. The whole communtiy involved in this as a hobby spend untold hours striving for realism. The simplest thing in the world to do is make the landscapes look like cartoon stuff because cartoons have no rules and can look like anything as long as its colorfull. But the fun is in the creation of realism inside the computer. Now whats amazing about this culture is after you get really good at the realism you want to learn to make them look like oil paintings or something. My point being sometimes the art is in the challenge.
Before I would call these folk mechanics I would maybe venture to call them architechs. Something that requires artistic vision, as well as mathematical,structual,mechanical,and computer skills.
All I know is if I was one of the animators on FF, I would be be very, very proud of our work. They would all probably say "If I had more time it would have been even better." But such is the nature of the beast.

 

[teapot2001]

It should be noted that the media has used the word "photorealistic" to describe Final Fantasy; I have never read anything from the people involved with this movie use that word alone to describe the movie.

From Animation Arist, here is what the animation director, Andy Jones, had to say regarding the animation: "We know you can't achieve perfect photo-realism, but we wanted to pursue a new style of CG close to photo-real, but flavored like [2D Japanese] Anime." I have never viewed Final Fantasy as being 100% realistic or cartoonish, but, like Roger Ebert, I think of it as existing in its own world.

From what I know, it has long been the CG artist's dream to create near-realistic characters, and the Final Fantasy artists welcomed this challenge. A lot of people thought the phantoms were impressive because they were creative compared to the humans, but, according to Jones, they didn't take much time and effort to animate.

~T

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I never meant to say that all animation should be either realistic or unrealistic, but rather should not be set to being either. If they want it to be realistic, then they can make it that way. Same goes for unrealistic.

Closed Mind = Narrow Thoughts = Less fulfilling life

I don't have a closed mind. I would explain myself, but right now I'm actually quite tired.

After reading and watching many interviews with the people involved with FF:TSW, pretty much all of them were excited about the film before and after its release. The idea of creating something on the scale that it was created on was such a big deal for them and they enjoyed it a lot.

TSW had art everywhere, from the ships to the structures to the characters. When someone does Tom Cruise's hair for a movie, they consider it to be art. Everything about a film is art, from the sets to the costumes to the makeup to the script. The same thing goes for TSW, only more so since its all made from scratch.

Thi-

Some people from FF used the term photorealistic, but that was after the media coined the term and it was pretty much for promotion purposes.

FF is animation by definition. It really shouldn't be categorized with other animation, though, seeing as how it does more than what most other regular American animation does.

 

[Edwin-S]

I sometimes dabble with 3D landscape rendering software Bryce, Terragen, Vue 'd Esprit. My goal is to make my scenes as realistic as possible. The whole communtiy involved in this as a hobby spend untold hours striving for realism. The simplest thing in the world to do is make the landscapes look like cartoon stuff because cartoons have no rules and can look like anything as long as its colorfull. But the fun is in the creation of realism inside the computer. Now whats amazing about this culture is after you get really good at the realism you want to learn to make them look like oil paintings or something. My point being sometimes the art is in the challenge.
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I'm glad that we agree because what you are saying is essentially what I said when I posted this:
the whole point of animation is to represent real world motifs in an abstract manner
The definition of abstract, as I'm using it, can range from something as wildly cartooned as "Megababies"(IMO, a disgusting show) to a simplified but more representative style (ie: The Simpsons), all the way up to the lushly painted "realistic" backgrounds of "Bambi". The common theme running through these shows is that they have real world roots because a person can recognize real world analogues in them, however, not one of these films/series attempts to completely recreate the real world,detail for detail. To do so is pointless because at that point you might as well just take a camera and shoot everything live.
That is partly where "Final Fantasy" falls down. The makers were so consumed with trying to make everything and everybody look "real", they forgot that animation derives a lot of its power from the skilled use of exaggeration to create character. The people in "FF" looked quite real but as personalities, they were robots. "Lady and The Tramp" is hardly a realistic depiction of dogs (other than they look like them) but as personalities they were far more realistic humans than the characters of "Final Fantasy".
"Akira" is good example as well. Have you ever seen anyone that actually looks like that. Not likely because they are abstract representations of real humans, yet for the 2 hours or so that the film runs, I don't think of them as cartoon characters. I think of them as "people" because the animators and the voice actors succeed in creating a suspension of disbelief. "Final Fantasy" was extraordinary to look at but the movie did not succeed in getting the audience to invest in the fiction because the characters did not engage.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Edwin-

Once again, you keep referring to a convention of film (this one being a convention of animation where you know the characters are not real but you accept them as such, depending on their presentation, such as dogs that talk).

I disagree that animation should consist of unrealism to the point of it not being associated with real-life in any way other than thoughts or ideas or inspirations (in other words, I think animation can be as real or unreal as it wants to be). If this is your opinion I respect it, but I still disagree.

Final Fantasy's characters lived in a world where most of the population was killed and they are constantly terrorized by an alien force that they know barely anything about. If anything, I would think the characters show too much personality given the circumstances. Just because its animation doesn't mean they should have outlandish personalities, but the level of realism doesn't mean they should be without them altogether. In FF, the characters have suppressed emotions because of the history and the setting.

Just because you don't like how FF pulled off the characters doesn't mean someone else could do it "right."

I'm not trying to be offensive, but your opinion of animation shows why American don't think much of animation. They see it as Disney movies and saturday morning entertainment for kids, not a serious mode of conveying thoughts, ideas, themes, or mature stories. Until Americans in general are able to accept animation as more than what they already see it as, then it will always be crap (like most of the animated films released in America).

The closest anime I can think of to TSW is Neon Genesis Evangelion. Most of the population of the Earth has been killed by a nearly unstoppable force. The only hope for stopping it is this strange idea formed by a small group funded by the UN. This group is opposed by the government, but in the end, the group's plan works. While the specific details are different, the main idea is very similar. In NGE, the characters exhibit suppressed emotions and pretty much EVERY character lashes out at some point and expresses something very personal about themselves. In TSW, only Aki lashes out her emotions, but most of the time, she supresses them in order to keep her cool. One time when she breaks down is in front of the man she loves, which shows how comfortable she feels with him. You could say that this is all coincidental or planned out or that I'm reading into it too much. Nonetheless, it shows depth in the character of Aki to some degree.

What is the point of my ranting? To tell the truth, I'm not sure. It just sort of happened that way...

Back to the point, just because FF is realistic, that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be made. There are things that can only be done in CGI, such as some of the shots used and some of the landscapes. They also might want to get a person who looks a certain way to be in the film, and unless they are willing to meet the monetary demands of some overpayed actor/actress, CGI would be the better route. Considering that most of FF's budget went to the studio, they can now create a film that looks way better for less than half the price.

Damn, I ramble too much.

To sum it up, I don't see why they shouldn't create a photorealistic CGI film. Even if they made one that was 100% doable in live-action, they should still be able to do it in CGI if they want to.

 

[Richard Kim]

They also might want to get a person who looks a certain way to be in the film, and unless they are willing to meet the monetary demands of some overpayed actor/actress, CGI would be the better route.

As opposed to paying millions of dollars for high powered computers used to design, animate and render said actors? :rolleyes

 

[Morgan Jolley]

If money isn't an issue, why shouldn't they go with CGI? A film is an extension of the director's vision, and if they want total perfection, CGI is the only way (unless the actors are perfect for the parts).

I said most American animation is crap. Shrek was funny, but had a very choppy plot and I could have cared less about most of it. Toy Story 1 and 2 were good, but I got bored and also could have cared less about pretty much anything in both films. Disney used to make somewhat good movies, but after Tarzan, they pretty much sucked (and Tarzan wasn't that good IMO to begin with).

Then again, Disney is the only company who pretty much does any animation besides Fox. If someone started to do more adult animation that dealt with more mature matters and was more dramatic and not at all aimed at children, maybe the overall quality would improve.

 

[Chris Maynard]

Morgan - Dreamworks does quite a bit of animation and much of it is directed at adults or at least caters to them.

I thought TS1, TS2, and Shrek had plots and story lines that were far better executed and way more involving than FF. The fact that adults and children enjoyed both makes my case even stronger.

FF is on par with Titan AE and we know how well that was received.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Titan AE was crap, IMO.

TS1 and TS2 are family friendly films. It makes sense that they were received well by adults and children. I, though, did not really like them.

Shrek had a very choppy plot and story. The whole thing was supposed to make fun of Disney films in different scenes, and to tell the truth, it did, and quite well. But then again, a bunch of short skits doesn't make a film if they are connected through a good plot. The wrestling scene and the gingerbread man scene had nothing to do with the rest of the film and could have been left out. The actual story of the film was not even that good and was poorly executed. The whole thing with the princess was actually quite stupid and I don't even see why they did it. If anything, it was probably a failed attempt at putting a theme in the movie.

This is all IMO.

FF had a backstory that nobody really knew when they saw the movie, so the whole thing didn't make sense. Look for the context clues and you will find out that the main characters have depth to them and that the story is quite strong. I did not see any weakness in the film other than the voice acting of some characters and maybe the dubbing in a scene or two being a millisecond off.

 

[Edwin-S]

The wrestling scene and the gingerbread man scene had nothing to do with the rest of the film and could have been left out.
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Well, I'm going to have disagree here, especially regarding the wrestling scene, that particular piece of business was an integral part of the story because it resulted in Farquuad getting the idea to employ Shrek which leads to everything that happens after. Just because they chose to spoof wrestling doesn't mean the scene was filler.
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If anything, it was probably a failed attempt at putting a theme in the movie.
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IMO, I would hardly call the plot thread with the princess a failed attempt at a theme. It fits in quite well with the theme of fairy tale parody. Traditional fairy tales always have the princess rescued by the handsome Knight, which is well established in the opening scenes of the movie. The rest of the movie then proceeds to turn this convention completely on its head which fits in quite well with the theme of the movie.
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FF had a backstory that nobody really knew when they saw the movie, so the whole thing didn't make sense.
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A movie has to stand on its own merits. An audience generally will come in with no particular knowledge of a particular story's history, unless they are fans. If a movie is well made, it will succeed in giving the audience a basic understanding of any "backstory" with out them even realizing it. If an audience goes into a film with out comprehension and comes out of the movie still uncomprehending or, worse yet, not caring to comprehend what they have just seen, then the filmmaker has failed and the movie isn't a very good movie.
I'm sure I'm giving the impression that I did not like "FF" which is not the case, after all I bought the DVD. I, however, do not think that "FF" is better than most American animated films. In my book, it does not rank up there with classics like "Bambi" and "Lady and The Tramp". "FF" is far below those films, as far as I am concerned. "FF" is an average story with some quite stunning visuals but the main driving force which seperates a good film from a great one is characters. The movie has to make you feel something for the characters, either you sympathize with their plight or you despise them or something in between but if you feel nothing at all for them then someone has failed and that someone is the director.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Horse...beaten...dead...