RZ is the man,

I'm very impressed actually. Doesn't look like they're holding back for the kiddies.

this seriously cannot be the final look of the film, can it? the animation looks so stiff and lacking in style, it appears to be a film made decades before beowulf. someone please tell me this is simply a test from early on in production....anyone?

Well I agree it looks really bad, but then so did Beowulf. Gamers would say the footage just has bad graphics. In Beowulf some parts were very good and even great, like Bewoulf himself or the dragon, but others were just meh like the king played by Antony Hopkins or the queen. And Angelina Jolie... looked like a fucking plastic doll... So I don´t see any improvements from Beowulf.

both beowulf and the polar express were terrible, as is jim carrey's track record as of late. given the combination of the two elements, i can't imagine this being anything to write home about.

but it'll be cool because it's in 3D, right? because that will compensate for everything else, right? it'll be fun to look at! (my rationale going into beowulf in imax 3D).

The animation looks fluid but the model of the ghost looks wrong....I'll wait untilthe real trailer to decide what's up with the models.

IDK, the animation looks good to me but I'm not an expert on such things

yeah the hand of the ghost in that photo, looks like they put a wrinkle map that looks pretty amateur.

I would really like it if Zemekis got over the CGI thing. It has turned his past few films into failed CGI experiments rather than narratives. Remember Back to the Future? Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Forrest Gump? even Castaway? Any chance we can a few more of those and less Beawulf or Polar Express?

I think Killzone 2's opening cinematic looks better than this feature length film (texture / model wise). Is that bad?

Indeed.

Not necessarily. KZ2 was in development for the better part of five years, and also happens to look fantastic in any sense.

Dear Mr. Zemeckis,

Please stop with your motion capture experiments. The characters look monstrous and the stories are bland. We thank you for what Roger Rabbit did for animation in the 80s, but if you complete one more CGI film you will officially be booted out of fandom.

Sincerely,
The Animation Community

Did we go back in time? Sorry, I take back what I said about this movie....I'm not impressed. :( Ugh.

Meh, looks kind of video game like, but it's just one clip so I'll wait until I see the full trailer on the big screen. I bet it will be good though. I thought Beowulf was pretty awesome, and The Polar Express was Ok.

Try as they might they'll never be as great as A Muppet Christmas carol.

This looks like a cutscene from a game

it looks like a video game

No I seen it again my main problem with the clip besides the visuals: Jim Carrey´s annoying voice.
Directors should stick to real actors and only create creatures with cgi. Saw 300 the other day and although I remembered liking it more the first time in the theatre, that black wolf in the snow was still sick. It was highly stylized and very cgi but it blended perfectly with young leonidas and cgi enhanced enviroment. The overall look was 100% consistent and believable. Hate or love Zach Snyders directing style but he can create truly atmospheric images, something Zemeckis didn´t come close to in neither Polar or Beowulf.

This looks horrible.

Link's dead.

Mocap tech in CG films, at least I find, too often crosses the uncanny valley. Plus, all the expense put into mocapping the actors often leaves little time to hammer down other animation which ends up looking super sloppy (i.e. Beowulf). At least in this case Disney isn't making all the characters look like their respective voice / mocap actors.


[youtube jdiYWi3h3h8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdiYWi3h3h8 youtube]

Bottom like...........
Big name actor
CGI
Holidays =
$$$$$$$
and that is all film makers care about making.
(sad for us)

the CGI looks like cheap, unfinished CD ROM rendering.
What is wrong with Robert Zemekis? why does he insist on these piece of shit CG films
Polar Express sucked ass, Beowulf was terrible and this looks even worse! Tin Tin better be fucking amazing because i am losing faith.

That was a quick clip, but it didn't really impress me in anyway. I haven't really been looking forward to this and so far I'm still not.

I immediately thought this was a cut scene from a video game. the music and the camera movements didn't help. I'll wait to reserve final judgment for the trailer, but I'm not at all impressed.

Dear Zemeckis,
if you want a photorealstic feel to your movies, have considered going back to shoot them for real (I.E., real actors in real sets) instead keeping on doing these mo-crap horrors?

Seriously.
Think about it.

People are jumping to some interesting conclusions based on 19 seconds of footage.

19 seconds of footage and two already forgotten shitty movies.

guess why people are skeptical.

Because the internet is filled with nothing but cynics?

apparently, the only acceptable opinion is a positive one. oh well, here goes-

This movie looks terrible.

Looks more like an in game cinematic, but I'm still interested in seeing the rest of the film based on the performance capture of the other actors as well.

looks like a cut scene from a PS2 game

So with this movie it will mark 9 years of him not making a good movie. Maybe then studios will stop throwing money at him for these stupid mocap projects.

So everyone is basing how bad it looks from a low res compressed embedded video, and a scene that has virtually no dialog or mocap to show off? Even Avatar would look crappy in that format. How can you make a judgement? Not to mention this mocap thing looks miles better every time they do it. You just need to find a right balance between photo real and stylized to make it really work, and from what I see they're heading in that direction.

when animation doesn't look like it's moving smoothly in a compressed video something is very very wrong.

I agree... if we were talking about key frame animation. But we're talking about motion capture. If anything the motion is the best thing coming out of performance capture. The big things people seem to complain about are the face, the eyes, and the rendering. No one would care anymore if it crawled out of the uncanny valley, and I can say, this movie is really close. And it's only going to get better.

I still have to understand why all this display of bad cgi trying to mimick live action when they could shoot a live action movie and add vfx later.

I have yet to view something on TrailerAddict and have the player not drop more frames than a clumsy art thief, so I can't say anything about the motion. But if that photo is any indication of what's to come, this will actually be the first Zemeckis performance-capture project that I'll have any interest in.

Just a note. The CG for Beowulf and Polar Express were made by Sony Pictures Imageworks. This film is being done by Zemekis's new studio (Image Movers). This is probably why your seeing the difference in the quality. Personally, I dont mind as long as the story is good. Wait, ive already seen this story 20 times!? =)

Zemeckis just can't drop the CG animated crap can he? Awkward animation with mediocre to poor writing. That's the whole of his career now?

Nice looking CG and only 19 seconds doesn't really give me enough to work with, but I've always liked A Christmas Carol in all the different versions that have come over the years. So I'll see this one as well.

Oh, Robbie Z. What happened? I used to like you so much. Please do good stuff again.

hahahhaa jim carrey is gonna be a hilarious scrooge. can't wait to see it. the animation is whatever... i got used to it for pineapple express and beoulf and still enjoyed them.

This isn't even at Blizzard-level. And i don't think Blizzard's budget for in-game cinematics is as big as the budget for these movies.

Everyone's a cynic, not a critic.

I think Beowulf is fantastic, and those who say that the animation is below-par must be watching it only on Youtube. RZ is experimenting, and I know what he's trying to achieve.

The audience don't know what they want. They point fingers at BTTF and Roger Rabbit with rose-tinted glasses on, saying 'Look! My childhood movies! Make more of that!'.

OK, rather than bitchin' about the poor mo-cap CGi on display here, here is a better more pertinent question for Mr. Zemekis: Why mo-cap in the first place a story that doesn't require it; has been done much better in the past without it (including the use of freakin' (m)uppets); and no doubt will have cost much much more than just doing the story without mo-cap-ing the whole thing? I understand the drive for progress and pushing the tech envelope (Hello Mr. Cameron!). However: A Christmas Carol the CGI experience? Really? Isn't this like doing a 150 mil CGI-version of My Dinner with Andre? (And yes, I may want to see *that*). Here endith the rant.

Crude mo-cap is not animation. it lacks the soul of animation. Neither is performance, because it still misses all the subtleties of a real performace. The best VFX creature are always the hybrid approach, motion-captured bulk of motion further refined with keyframe animation. Most of all, is already been done, so i don't really see the "experimental" part of it. Why get rid of real sets and real actors if you have to do a creepy undead version of your star? is not even cost-effective.

and to be clear: i think another BTTF or Roger Rabbit movie are a bad idea.
And i think even the higly buzzed Avatar will suffer the same problems of Mr. Zemeckis last three movies.

Because the directors are restricted to real life limitations when shooting live action, and they have much more creative freedom than they ever had before. That's what's attracting all the big name directors. It's like giving a painter a computer with a tablet and photoshop. "You mean I can undo strokes and paint in layers without it having to dry? And add blending modes? etc?". If you shoot live action with vfx then you have the trouble of marrying the 2 to make it seem they go together. With complete CG you can make it as stylized as you want. Besides performance capture is only like 5 years old? I challenge you to think of CG in a movie within the first 5 years that blew your mind. Give mocap another 5-10 and i think all these arguments will be moot. You don't walk into a pixar film expecting it to look like live action. And you don't walk into a live action film expecting it to look like CG animation.. or 2d animation. So why would you walk into a mocap movie expecting it look like either live action or Pixar? It is what it is.

All i'm saying is, this is the movie that'll make you rethink what you feel about mocap. Once you see it, you'll understand. And you'll see the possibilities of future movies. It's amazing how judgmental people are from 3 movies in the infancy of the technology. Fact is, it's changing the way movies are made and it's sort of ground breaking. Why would you give up on something like that because of only a few movies that weren't quite right yet. It's like if you were making movies when technicolor first came out and were like, "Ugh this isn't getting all the colors I want.. the colors aren't as vivid as it is in real life. Let's just trash this whole 'color' thing and stick with B&W."

All the mocap in the world can't hide the total lack of good story and art direction.
With the addition of these two simple ingredients, i am more than willing to give mocapped movies a try.
As it is, could be the greatest technical advancement ever, but will remain a gimmick.*
Unlike technicolors, which was never used to hide lack of ideas.


*Even the most advanced special effects, or the most smooth hand-drawn animation, are nothing but mere exercises without strong ideas behind them.