CGI is Almost Impossible to Get Right in Live-Action Film

It is no secret that I find CGI to be the most tragically over-used trend in film today. I don't mean animated film, I mean Hollywood blockbuster films. I do think it can be done well if the CGI is animated well and couldn't have been presented better using any other method, like Pacific Rim and Godzilla, or if there's a perfect balance between practical effects and computer effects, such as Where the Wild Things Are and Attack the Block. Where movies fail these days is using CGI for basically everything.

I saw a talk by a representative for the studio, Double Negative, in which they described in detail how they designed and animated all the special effects. It was really quite daunting how much work they described that went into making the effects look "convincing". Seriously, like the audience was meant to believe that the effects for a giant wolf were real. I'm going to give an example of a situation they described and how they could have solved much quicker, cheaper, and easier. In one scene, in the movie Hercules, there was a scene where he gets attacked by a giant wolf. The wolf was biting his arm and he had to shake it off. How that scene was done, though, was they shook around a green object at the actor, and he had to just stand there pretending he was pulling his arm. He had to shake his torso a bit because his arm wasn't actually interacting with anything, instead they modelled a freaking CGI arm replica of the actor's arm! A good movie would have just used a real model of a wolf head and used that! Simple, more effective, and cheaper. Unfortunately, this is how most films today are made.

I think the heavy use of CGI in live-action cinema is very detrimental, because they instantly lose authenticity. So CGI is limited by the aesthetic quality a computer generated image tends to have, making a lot of time working and rendering completely worthless. I think if CGI was only used a little in live action film but mainly animation, it would fix a lot of the problems it causes with blockbuster films and more critical views on CGI in general.

Exaggeration in 3D Animation

If there is one thing I love to see and do is exaggeration. I think exaggeration adds a lot to a scene in animation, because it makes every motion in the scene so much more engaging and imaginative. I particularly love in kid's shows like Spongebob and Ren & Stimpy when they really have fun with the art style by pushing the flexibility of their characters.

These two shows manage take something as simple as eating and make it look interesting and hilarious, just by exaggerating it. That's why I love animation like this, because they really know how to go off-model. I can accept weird stuff like Ren's mouth and head changing size and shape like that, and Spongebob's tongue and left arm stretching to those disproportionate lengths because the transitions and the motions feel natural with the animation.

This is the benefit to animating in 2D as opposed to 3D, because you can be much more loose like that in 2D. With 3D, it can be really difficult to pull off a style like this, without completely destroying the 3D model in the process, being really good at making 3D character models, or, if you're really desperate, making multiple 3D models of the same character (though I highly doubt anybody's THAT crazy).

Though, that's not to say it's impossible. Films like Hotel Transylvania and TV shows like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are brilliant at exaggeration, for example.

With that said, though, it is clear that a lot of skill and effort is put into making 3D animation stretch like this, the problem for me is that it doesn't really translate as well with 3D as it does 2D animation. The transitions are hella smooth and the emotions are well-acted in the examples shown above, but I just think this style was always meant for 2D, and there's probably more reason that to wonder about why this style is rare to find for 3D animation.

Frame Rates in 3D vs 2D

This is a rather obvious difference between 2D and 3D animation. It is far more easy to animate at an incredibly high frame rate with 3D, because the actual process of animating involves mainly tweening, whereas with 2D is mostly drawing, and depending on what software is used for 2D, can involve tweening but too much of it would lessen the quality of the animation. The average frame rate for 3D animation is 24-30 fps, but occasionally, specifically with video games, the frame rate will reach heights such as 60 fps, or even 144 fps! No 2D animator would ever be crazy enough to attempt such high frame rates. There would be no point, since 2D animation will look smooth enough without a high frame rate, because due to the simple and solid look of it, it'll give the illusion of smoothness; that's why in Japan they can get away with animating 2D at a mere 8-12 fps. I personally adore high frame rates in animation, because they just give the animation a lot of character, and adds a unique quality to the technique that makes it stands out among every other technique of film and TV. Just look at this footage of Resident Evil Remastered, for example.

Even though the art style is realistic, the high frame rate makes it look very appealing and separates it from the more standard 3D animations of that style that are animated at the average 30fps to look more "cinematic".

Cinematography in 3D

I want talk about cinematography for a bit. I consider myself a huge fan of that side of production. I absolutely adore visual mediums that have great lighting/shadow, camera work, and every other aspect of cinematography. It is something I hold near and dear to me. This is one aspect I can easily favour about 3D animation over 2D. When animating in 3D, I am basically in charge of every aspect of cinematography during the animation process. The problem with 2D animation is that I don't have as much free reign over everything. I kind of enjoy physically moving the camera myself more than drawing the shot on a layout sheet; plus lighting and colours are normally sorted out during post production, rather than production like stop-motion, 3D, and live-action; certain parts of the cinematography are usually fixed during post-production with those mediums, though not to the same extent as 2D animation. Of course, the look of the scene in the end is all that matters, really.

3D animation is just more engaging in the cinematography aspect, because it's closer to how it works in reality, where you are creating the stage, setting up the lights, and moving the camera to where it needs to be. I plan on taking full advantage of this in my animation. I am actually mainly influenced by live-action films in terms of this, because I believe their imagery, while adapted to live-action, can be applied to animation. So I will try and look at both animated and live-action examples of good cinematography.

Cinematography/Layout in Animation

Cinematography is an aspect of film that I personally hold very dear to me. Having studied this in the past, though only in the context of live-action cinema, I wanted to see if this knowledge can be applied to animation.

I mean, obviously it can but I wanted to look at which animations stand out specifically to me, in terms of layout and cinematography, as well as look at live-action examples (most of which will be from Stanley Kubrick films, since his films have the greatest and most influential cinematography ever) and see they work at assisting the narrative.

One thing I adore about animating in 3D, using Maya, is the ability to control the camera, because it means I have full control over every shot, and I can manipulate it in a manner that is not possible, or at least as freely, in 2D.