How To Design Robot Overlords For "Robot Overlords"

Hallie Siegel writes: Ever wonder how they make robots look so awesomely real in movies? Visual effects expert Graham Edwards goes behind the scenes with the makers of Robot Overlords to take you through the development of the robots in this movie, from script development and sketches, to filming and post FX. Really cool to see how these robots come to life.

Comments

Obligatory

[Neo-Rio-101]

I, for one, welcome out new .... .....oh never mind

I've seen this movie

[mwvdlee]

I've seen this movie.
Now that you've seen the special effects, you've seen ALL this movie has to offer.
It's quite a juxtaposition seeing such good visuals next to such bad story and acting.

Re:I've seen this movie

[Dutch Gun]

It's too bad, because a good story and acting seems like things you don't actually need a Hollywood-sized budget for. I still wonder why it's so hard for so many filmmakers to get this right.

Of course, not that I can point fingers, professionally speaking. Look at how atrocious some videogames are, even though they're supposedly created by professionals. The difference is that videogames can fail on technical, artistic, creative, or gameplay merits, so I think we have it even worse than filmmakers in many ways.

I'd guess that the simplest explanation is that it's just incredibly difficult to look objectively at your own work, while at the same time, laypeople are horrible judges of anything that's not in it's final form. They'll simply get too distracted by whatever is most obviously missing or unfinished, so it's difficult to get useful feedback along the way. Essentially, by the time it's possible to get useful feedback, the product is already largely completed.

This is actually why some of the best videogames take so long to complete, even after it *looks* like they're mostly finished. Instead of rushing it out the door the moment someone can play through it without crashing, the creators took the time to rework aspects of the game that were not testing well. It's pretty obvious which game companies regularly do this, and which don't.

Original Idea?

[Fnord666]

Wright recalled. "A huge two-storey robot came marching up the street and swung its laser cannon arm towards him, and a voice boomed out, 'Citizen, drop your weapon immediately!' I assumed I was just recycling a movie that I'd already seen, but eventually, I came to the conclusion that maybe it was an original idea."

No, you were just having a Robocop flashback.