Conspicuous CG Vehicles

I notice that since the mid-00s, more and more vehicles in 2D cartoons have been CG. I can deal with this if it wasn't for one problem. Even if the Cel Shading is fantastic, the fact that the animation is smoother than the 2D characters is distracting. Is it hard to decrease the frame rate of CG on a TV budget and deadline?

edited 17th Oct '13 2:23:49 PM by DS9guy

I recently learned that even before CG animation was practical for feature film, you'd see some "cel-shaded"-looking vehicles in cartoons that were created by rotoscoping from a film of a white model of the vehicle in question. If everything else moves at the same high frame rate, then I don't know that you can take away from the uncanny geometric perfection of a technique like that.

It's like anything else, it takes time and money to do something properly. Matching frame rate, shadows and coloring requires a lot of cooperation and fine tuning, which may not be possible when the final product is due in a week. Disney led the way with a lot of computer assisted animation while Fox's Titan AE was one of the more ambitious efforts. Titan had gorgeous CG animation, but was not very well matched into the traditional animation. Atlantis The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet ended up improving the integration factor significantly.

Is that what scared people away from seeing those movies?

I thought it was because people were sick of Disney by then.

Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great

despite the fact that Atlantis and TP were really good.

All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.

Cruella De Vil's car in the original 101 Dalmations was a model with bright lines painted on it photographed and xeroxed into the pencil animation. It was a new technique then.

Fresh-eyed movie blog

I think it is more that in the realm of animation in general, the more dramatic stories haven't fared anywhere close to the bankability of musicals and comedies. All CG movies like The Incredibles and How To Train Your Dragon are a little bit more serious and have been more successful, but both are buffered by a lot of comedic elements. At least a little more than Titan, Atlantis and Treasure Planet.

Well, my real hypothesis about those was that audiences are scared off by a pure "sci-fi" setting in an animated film, as opposed to something more whimsical that just happens to have some science fiction in its background material. Like they're afraid it won't be dumbed down enough, or it'll be only for "nerds", or something. I dunno. Atlantis The Lost Empire was the only one of those I actually watched, and only once. Does Final Fantasy The Spirits Within also fit the pattern?

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about! I saw a clip of that and thought it was cel-shaded CGI. Also I watched the Don Bluth FMV game trilogy, and the time machine in Dragon's Lair 2 looked weird, since it had stable shapes but could rotate in all dimensions; that was one of several models used in the game, like the flying instruments in the Beethoven scene. I also found magazine articles with storyboards and a picture of a model of the pirate ship from a deleted Dragon's Lair 2 scene that was only seen in an abbreviated form in the Amiga sequel. If it had been finished, it was supposed to have had a whole "Pirate King" musical number from Pirates of Penzance...

Perhaps I should explain; by the time Atlantis and Treasure Planet came out, Disney had been churning these movies out, one a year, for over ten years. By that point, any series or movement's going to be at least a bit decayed in public standing. Not helped by the fact that a lot of the movies Disney was making were pretty much the same movie over and over. That kind of overexposure would probably frighten anyone away.

Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great