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3D Computer Generated Movie From France
An anonymous reader submits a link to this Computer Graphics World article on a French-made film to be released in June. "A film by Xilam, Kaena is a full length feature film, entirely made from Off the shelf software. The previews looks amazing."
Using just off-the-shelf stuff, that's really amazing. I wish I could be that good with Bryce =/. It looks like the storyline could be equally amazing, but I'm wondering if there will also be an english release around the same time. It looks that way from the site, but I hope to see this in a theater near me.
- Sherman
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I thought the same thing about Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, but the major downfall of that movie was that their characters were so detailed that people looked at them and expected to see the performance of an actor, which made the characters seem like zombies in their computer animated facial expressions and movements.
Cartoon characters (even human ones) don't suffer from this because they are stylized enough to allow us to suspend our expectations of reality and just see them for what they represent. This is the main reason the big companies stick to stylized characters in cartoony situations; they don't have to worry about trying to simulate reality.
Whether intentional or not, the characters in this film all have a very nice stylized look that may allow us to just see them as characters and not zombie like humans. It looks like a pretty beautiful film, and if it fails in the US it won't be for the same major reason Final Fantasy did.
The limitation is talent. Few people can drive these tools competently.
I've done software for high-end animation. I can run the tools myself, but I can't get the results that the people with real talent can. Watching a good artist running an animation system is striking. They work quite differently from amateurs running these programs. They draw far more than they edit. They're fast. They have a clear picture in their mind of what they want to see on the screen.
There aren't many people like that, which is why most amateur 3D animation sucks.
I'm surprised that no one posted the imdb link yet. And as someone stated, the voices did sound familiar, both in french and english: Kirsten Dunst, Richard Harris, Anjelica Huston...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Suspension of disbelief is not the only effect of stylization. Stylization can also create a more universal identification with characters. Scott McCloud covers the topic well in his book Understanding comics.
First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
Actually as I understand it a huge part of the problem with Final Fantasy was the WAY they decided to animate the facial expressions. In most CG type movies, like Shrek, standard practise is to film the voice actors, and the animators work off of that. If done right, the characters facial movements look right, since they follow the dialogue naturally. With Final Fantasy, it was all done seperatly, based on what the animators thought it should be. So it doesn't match up right with the way the lines were delivered.
Cartoon characters (even human ones) don't suffer from this because they are stylized enough to allow us to suspend our expectations of reality and just see them for what they represent. This is the main reason the big companies stick to stylized characters in cartoony situations; they don't have to worry about trying to simulate reality.
However, using cartoony characters (i.e. Shrek, Pixar films) requires you to spend a lot of time at the other end of the spectrum. In other words, you have to work hard to make sure that your simulation of what is not reality, but instead exagerated physical activity, still meets up with the audience's expectations. Expectations based on what they've grown up with.
One example I remember hearing about is when they needed to make a character sneak across the screen. Using the cartoony body with human-like sneaking did not make any sense at all. Sure, it was realistic looking for a human, but it wasn't "realistic looking" for the simulated character. Instead, you have to kind of make them stand on tippy toes, stick out their butt, pronounce the forward extension of their neck and head, etc.
Of course, doing all that is probably easier anyway since there's most likely a lot more leeway as to what the audience will accept when you're working with exagerations.
The first European fully CGI feature was made in Spain and called The Living Forest.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
I just watched the fourth movie clip they made available on the site -- there's a creature that's helping her who has a very warm rich voice... with a slight British accent. Listen to the "if you had the chance, would you leave Axis?" to hear it clearly.
...Whoah, I just looked up his bio to make sure he is, indeed American (confirmed; grew up in NJ and Florida), and it seems his father (a bar-owner) was murdered in '68. His sister was murdered in '75, and 2 half brothers died while scuba-diving in '80. Ouch.
It could be that they're working off the stereotype that the elite (evil or not) speak with British accents. Think also of what's called the "mid-Atlantic" accent (the accent spoken partway between the US and Britain...) taught so carefully to Julliard drama students -- you know how "Frasier Crane" talks? Yup, Kelsey Grammer is a Julliard grad. He's got it down pat.
He also spoke the role of the villainous but brilliant Sideshow Bob on the Simpsons.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
Why would people who have played in Maya be able to tell that they're metaballs? Maya has no metaball features whatsoever. Anyways, they didn't use metaballs (and they don't look like metaballs to me at least)- they used RealFlow, a full blown fluids simulation solution.
PDI, BlueSky and Pixar's films are every bit as formulaic. Buddy banter, rescue subplots and a heart-wrenching song in the middle. The same is true of most of Disney's cel-animated features. What exactly bothers you about the idea that a forthcoming 3D animated feature may also follow the traditional Quest storyline? So what if Kaena's just a poor sap farmer's daughter, bound by destiny to fulfil some prophecy or another... Who isn't? It doesn't do your arguments any good to alternate between criticising technical aspects of Xilam's first feature film and praising Pixar's early shorts in spite of their primitive technology. The simple fact of the matter is that Xilam (and Chaman) have done a very cool thing: they've completed a film that looks to be what FF:TSW should have been, on a fraction of the budget.
With off-the-shelf software, on Windows PCs, no less.
you know hitler was big into american(actually any) films..
he even saw chaplins dictator, twice.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The artwork of this movie is fantastic, imo, and the general dark tone and characters seem to borrow from many areas of modern science fiction and popular figures.
The Marauder figure and the organic structures and the overall dark scenery borrow heavily from Giger's work, as the producer notes in the biography section of the site.
The story is in an extremely similar vein to a still rendered series done by an Italian guy in the middle 90's on a Mac with Strata Studio and Photoshop and Deck and sold as a multimedia CD which were still popular back then. Sadly, I can't remember the title.
Other influences seem to be taken from Larry Niven's Integral Tree (the tree in the film), a classic comic series about a world of creatures living in the clouds (the Sharken), and I notice that the one detailed shot of the heroine with hair (the wallpaper section) looks very similar to Virgine Ledoyen who starred in the Beach with Di Caprio.
This film will probably not be that much of a hit, as I think it is very difficult to excite mainstream audiences with fantasy SF, but I think it'll be a pointer to things to come, when bigger film houses with bigger budgets start to produce films in a similar vein.
I'm from The Netherlands and although our government was on the side of the US, 95% of our population wasn't. You Americans talk about freedom, but boycot French ware for their OPINION, that is so hypocrit. Land of the free, home of the brave... Come on, the freedom you enjoy has merely become a blur of what it used to be. The US used to be the flagship of freedom in the world, yes Europeans recognize that. But we also recognize that this is no longer the case. Your intelligence agencies monitor everything, NSA, CIA and whatnot scan your e-mails, phonecalls and mobile phone coordinates, you people get visits from FBI when you use encryption higher than 512 bits to safe-guard your privacy. Now that kind of info you don't see on your biased news networks now do you? How dare you despise France when you fail to see the truth about your own country. Your economy is weak right now and still the US uses 25% of the entire world oil production. Reluctant to invest in new technologies like hydrogyn, solar power or nuclear fusion. Your cars are low tech and suck alot of gasoline and don't come close to German car technology, still you all want to drive European cars. You guys come over so hypocrit. You want to know what most Europeans think? Like 95%? They love America, they love it's people, but they really fucking hate your extreme-right wing government. I appreciate you take stance for the Jews, i appreciate the US tries to liberate all sorts of countries. But your motives are foul, lies and deception. You went into Iraq to find nuclear and biological weapons. Now the US weapon inspectors have given up their search, because it simply wasn't there. Then suddenly you switched your motive to free the Iraqi people. That is so low. Instead of admitting your government was wrong, you just switched motives. Which shows that your government motives to attack a country is just a curtian to cloud the true motives. Your true motives? We don't know, you don't even know. Oil?World Domination?Both? Now here's the real catch. China. Your government is peeing it's pants because now they see actually that the communist system is actually showing it's fruits. China is becoming the most powerfull nation in the world and they're communist. They have the fastest growing economy in the world, largest army in the world and are technologically catching up. Auwch...that's gotta hurt, because now your government is going to lose it's nr1 spot as unofficial world leader. What other country has military bases in almost every country in the world? The US has miliatry bases fucking everywhere. Now why would a nation do that? Just for fun? No, that gives them military influence all over the world. World Domination, big guns and bombs is what the US is all about right now. With a 7 trillion dollar dept and defense as your greatest expenses, it looks like your government is growing nervous. You destroyed your own economy to wage war for undisclosed motives. You think you know the truth? You know as much as USSR citizens did back in the cold war, your goverment told you shit. From Europe it looks like your country has become a police state. Oh be so proud, the things you are all so proud already dissapeared 50 or 60 years ago. Once you had a great nation dwelling in true freedom, but what's left is just a mere shadow of itself. A military state trying to spread their ideology with military force and placing military bases all over the world, because they can't hold the pace of China's economy and technological advancement anymore which is growing like nuts. If you can't beat with your economy, you beat em military, that's the philosophy eh? Big guns, bombs, but little brain. And then you dare to talk about France? Offcourse they aren't all clean themselves. But right now, France is doing much better when it comes to true freedom/liberty and economy. Freedom fries....hmmpfff. You really think we Europeans care what you put into your 65% overweighted population? The US has become this big-footed goofy giant which crushes everything where it comes wi