Shrek 2 How-To

mblase writes "Animation World Magazine has an article online about some of the technical hurdles Dreamworks Animation had to overcome in making "Shrek 2". With November's "The Incredibles" being Pixar's first movie to feature an all-human (er, superhuman) cast of characters, it's interesting to watch how these two studios push each other to the limits of computer animation."

Comments

Re:State of the art?

[stev3]

I personally thought that the facial expressions of the characters in Shrek and Shrek 2 were the best part of the movies. It gave it a character that most other animated films don't have (save for a few, most recently Finding Nemo).

Shrek 2 was an amazing movie, and as a college student I and the rest of the group of ~15 people that went thourougly enjoyed it. It was funny, had an interesting story, and held our interest for almost 2 hours.

I don't think your post is a troll, but I completely disagree with you.

Interesting info...

[Mz6]

"Of all the advances on this film, I think that our use of global illumination was the biggest technology breakthrough," asserts Bielenberg. "Ray tracing/global illumination/radiosity techniques have been out there for a number of years, but it has been price-prohibitive to utilize them significantly. For Shrek 2 we used global illumination for 80% of the shots. "It's our own renderer, and it's been re-written since the first Shrek. We developed a bounce light technique that --given a key light -- automatically computes the correct bounce light off of the other objects in the scene. If the light bounces off of a yellow wall, it will bounce back yellow in character.

They re-wrote an entire renderer? Granted, Shrek is still behind some of Pixar's work but i've got to ask... Why not use some of the other renderer tools out there?

Why Final Fantasy failed.

[El Camino SS]

Pixar and Dreamworks, as far as I know, haven't tried to do a non-cartoony movie, but even with knowing how good their teachnology and artists are, it would be quite hard to compare to the level of detail the FF movie had.


Look, it is CG. It is, for many years at this rate of technology, going to look like CG if you do the entire movie in it. You can either play with it or you can look like a clown trying to ignore it.

I think that the biggest problem with Final Fantasy was the fact that it did look animated. There was too much seriousness going on with animated characters. It just didn't sell as a human drama. It wasn't a human drama. It WAS A CG DRAMA. This is the difference between the best film you've ever seen, and being up front row with the worst play you've ever seen. The play is still more immersive.

The movie was, in a nut shell, as well thought out as one would making Shindler's List an animated movie... or telling Frank Zappa to keep it clean, straightforward, and don't go over anyone's head. Even Mizayaki doesn't try to give a 'most realistic looking people' project. And he does animation like a master.

Final Fantasy the movie failed because it played to all of the disadvantages, and none of the advantages of the medium. ART is never about, "toning it down."

"Let's impress people by how real we can make it."

NO! NO! NO! Bad idea! Comics and animated characters are loved for their elasticity and style. You just don't try to make a style that is "indistinguishable from normal." That is playing to all of the disadvantages, and none of the advantages of the medium. Good actors don't try to be "normal." They try to be extraordinary. All good art tries the same.

If they wanted drama, good acting, and suspense, they should stick with real actors.

If you want unreality... elasticity... uniqueness... style and art, then you go with an animated medium.

Final Fantasy was shortsighted. They thought the cutscenes in the game could be a movie. It is like saying, "let's remake the Godfather movies, but use CG instead of actors! Make it real serious! That'll show this CG is a serious medium!"