BONE Movie in the works

MNM bombed? Hell Yeah! I....I never thought this day would come.... when I saw the trailer, I just sat in the theater thinking: "you know parents are gonna take their kids to see this and it will be the new animation travesty" (perhaps I've been reading Cartoon Brew for too long?).

Yeah. I know the feeling.

Oh crap! Oh Crap!...it....it was distributed by DISNEY! The studio that's predicted to lose massive amounts of money is Disney! I....this can't be good.....

Yes it bombed, Cartoonbrew's readers are very happy. There may be some people that may hate Disney's marketing, because they make bad choices sometimes. With this being its best example.

However let me say this. Zemeckis has thrown away a whole lot of dollars....BUT I'M HAPPY THAT IT BOMBED!!!

edited 14th Mar '11 6:27:32 PM by Theoriginalblader

^^ I wouldn't worry about that. Disney isn't exactly struggling for money, and this will only demonstrate that motion-capture movies aren't what the public wants.

Here is a flash version of BONE that an animator worked on. Yes, Cartoon Brew hosted this link and they were fuming (posted on May, 2010).

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/?s=bone+jeff+smith&x=0&y=0

I would think that it would hurt Disney considering this loss, compounded by the loss from the Princess and the Frog.

According to this article by the NY Times, "the loss is expected to be severe. Disney is taking a blow of over $100 mill,"

"Tens of millions more in losses are expected, pending worldwide box-office results. "

Hopefully, the studios are starting to see what people have been criticizing all along.

“ 'Mars Needs Moms' also signals broader movie business problems. Computer animation has been Hollywood’s most reliable moneymaker over the last decade — so much so that nearly every studio, including Universal Pictures and Paramount Pictures, has ramped up production of such films. As the first big-budget computer animated movie to flop, “Mars Needs Moms” tells some film executives that the market is becoming saturated."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/business/media/15mars.html?src=busln

edited 14th Mar '11 7:28:16 PM by Gr3mlinify

Hahahahhaa.

I'm sorry. But Mars Needs Moms is not the first big-budget CG film to flop! That's amusing.

And that Flash animation is AWESOME.

edited 14th Mar '11 8:55:37 PM by Shota

I think what they meant to say was that it was the first big-budget CG film to loose this much money in comparison to its cost of production and marketing as opposed to just flopping in general. But hey, they should be more specific/accurate.

edited 14th Mar '11 9:14:30 PM by Gr3mlinify

Okay, now if we can get Hop and Smurf'd to crap the bed and die (read: bomb) maybe we can finally get this terrible CG plague that's been slowly killing animation for the past decade off our backs once and for all!

I honestly don't have anything against CG animation. I have actually worked with it and have spoken to others who have careers in it, and I can assure you, it is actually just as difficult as traditional animation if not moreso. For one thing, you have to not only draw out the model and proportions, but then be able to translate that form into the equivalent of a visual, 3D graphing calculator, using only geometric shapes. Oh yeah, and then you have to apply the traditional skills of "squash and stretch" from earlier mediums (think Nine Old Men) in order to actually animate it effectively.

Other animators have said it best, but the truth is that it is what it is. CG is just a tool, just as much as a pencil is. Similarly, the motto at Pixar is "computers don't make art, people do."

Likewise, CG doesn't make bad movies; people do. Just as back in the late 80s and early 90s, studios assumed that outdoing Disney's colorful cells and paint software would earn them money with subpar 2D films, studios now assume that realistic graphics will win audiences over rather than true commitment to the art.

This is nothing new. There is nothing inherently wrong with CG just as there was never anything inherently wrong with 2D animation (used to be criticized for being gimmicky);and just as there is nothing wrong with cinematic film or photography (both used to be considered gimmicky replacements of painting as well).

But there is something wrong with the people who assume that CG will solve all of their studio's problems. The problem is not with the tool, but with the people who wield it just to create gimmicks.

edited 14th Mar '11 10:48:07 PM by Gr3mlinify

Gr3mlinify, that was beautiful.

Aww...Thanks Air.

Gr3mlinify, you nailed it perfectly .

There's nothing wrong with CG animation. Motion capture like Mars Needs Moms, on the other hand, does not require the same skills. That's why it's not technically animation.

edited 15th Mar '11 11:24:20 AM by RTaco

If you were responding to me, I didn't mean to imply that CG Animation is the problem. Pixar is actually my favorite film studio, and I consider Rango to be one of the best movies of the year so far.

What I mean was exactly what you said: how these studios shove cheap mo-cap and live action/cg crap at us instead of just trying to create a decent project. If we can squash the assertion that these kinds of movies make a lot of cash, we might be able to get a few decent or even good non-Pixar/Dreamworks kid's films.

I just hope the loss affects the studio's decision for making BONE in CG with mo-cap.

Why is everyone so against the idea of motion capture? Isn't the point of it just to make it so that, when you have real people/objects interacting with completely animated people/objects, they both seem to be equally real?

Can the words Uncanny Valley describe Mo-cap to you?

Not when done correctly.

So far, mo-cap has NEVER been paired with cartoon-designed models. We can't imagine it any way other than with realistic ones, so we're sceptical.

@ Roundy 210

I wasn't really directing it at you specifically, just putting in my two cents. Although I now understand that you aren't part of the anti-CG crowd, I said this because there are many people who are against anything CG, Pixar or not, and I just wanted to nip it in the bud before someone could say"down wit all de C Gzz!". I've seen that on IMDB, this wiki, you name it. That kind of rhetoric (which interestingly enough, is usually from people who know next to nothing about any animation process, let alone CG) is in a lot of places. So sorry if it seemed like I was attacking you, honestly I wasn't.

And to clarify, I'm also not saying that just because something needs to be animated means it has to be CG animated. Some things are better in some mediums moreso than others. If something works better in traditional, then do it. If it works better in CG, then that's cool too.

As for BONE, the only thing I can hope for is that if they must do mo-cap, then hopefully just the humans are mo-cap (in a tasteful way) and that the creatures are CG animated.

To be honest, when I first heard mo-cap, for some reason, I had the horrible image of Phone Bone acting and looking like Gollum. BONE Darkerand Edgier, much?

edited 16th Mar '11 12:08:48 PM by Gr3mlinify

^^ Monster House used motion capture with cartoony models, as did Sonic Adventure 2. It made the characters look like adults wearing giant fake heads.

My biggest beef with motion capture is that it replaces skill with technology. It doesn't involve actual animators outside of clean-up work, and that's why it isn't actually animation.

edited 16th Mar '11 5:59:42 PM by RTaco

R Taco; Well said.

Why does whether it technically counts as animation matter?