Anyone miss it when they would use Puppets and Costumes for creatures? - General

[QUOTE=Mr. Scorpio;23123749]Hellboy is a perfect example of practical effects used to their fullest.[/QUOTE] I thought it looked pretty shitty.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwJWr_Zk1R8[/media] They replaced this with CGI. Fuck them. Also, I only just realised how [i]everything[/i] in Captain Scarlet explodes.

Alien.

I can still tell when there is CGI on screen, but it's improved so much that it's cheaper than making any sort of model.

Hate me for this, but I prefer the CGI Yoda.

I like it when CGI and Puppets work together.

Almost none of the monsters in the movie Silent Hill were CGI. [IMG]http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2007/08/silent-hill-movie-dude.jpg[/IMG]

[QUOTE=BANNED USER;23146395]Last monster was CGI though, but yes.[/QUOTE] Actually it was stop-motion. And I prefer puppets/costumes/animatronics. They just seem to have more substance. CGI mixed with live action is normally like oil on water, it just looks bad unless it's done extremely well. Probably my favorite puppet-based movies of all time are the 'Gremlins' movies. They just wouldn't have been the same without the awesome puppets. Also, just because I find this somehow extremely amusing, the Brain Gremlin: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLNPmQQlvak&feature=related[/media]

Avatar's CGI was amazing. CGI is great if it's done properly on a big budget but if it's done cheaply it's horrible. R-2-D-2 was a man in a suit and so was C 3 P O

I always thought one cool thing about Farscape is that they occasionally used puppets on that show, and it was relatively recent.

[QUOTE=doomkiwi;23120414]That was the great thing about jurrasic park though, they used both when appropriate! From far distorted shots or large majestic shots they used CG but with up close shots they mostly used puppets. I think both have their place, but cg monsters never look real to me and always have this slimy sheen to them which sorta breaks it for me.[/QUOTE] Same with Godzilla, in the later films they still didn't use CGI for most of it, they only used it when needed. Like in the underwater scenes.

Ok these pictures suck, but you get the idea. [img]http://www.character-shop.com/images/aliensqueen-1.jpg[/img] [img]http://www.freewebs.com/avp2-movie/Predator1.jpg[/img] If done well, it can really work. CGI & Animatronic both can deliver on believable. Personally I prefer Animatronix for so many reasons, actors seem to get more into it also. First few minutes [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUy8kQJIrek[/url]

In Lord of the Rings, I know they had a life sized model of Tree Beard for the scenes they acted.

[QUOTE=Strongside;23118638]I know all it is is CGI these days because the costs are much lower.[/QUOTE] I used to think they were just cheap like that, but no. Apparently Transformers used models and (well not really animatronics, more like... robots. :v: ) to [i]cut costs[/i]. What the fuck. If it's cheaper and better then why the fuck does anybody even use CGI?! [editline]09:29PM[/editline] [QUOTE=DoneZ;23120453]I think the term "suspend your disbelief" applies here.[/QUOTE] Not at all. I can suspend my disbelief that something that isn't entirely logical happened in order to further the story. I can suspend my bisbelief when say Superman stops a bullet with his hand or something. I know people aren't really immortal. I know people can't really fly and don't have x-ray vision. I'll suspend my disbelief that Superman is an alien who got magical powers by sunbathing. I can't suspend my disbelief when what I am looking at obviously is painted in or otherwise fake. And because effects are nearly always used for things that would normally be impossible, I don't have anything to fall back on. So it's not reasonable and it doesn't look real. There's nothing to suspend anymore.

Watched the old Gremlins movies last night and the same thought crossed my mind. If they were ever to make it a trilogy or someone got the idiot balls to try and remake it, it could be guaranteed the adorable little beasts would be CGI'd instead of the old puppet style. I also enjoy the puppets for the collectible factor. A lot of the old puppets have went into storage, museums, or have been auctioned off to reside in private homes. You can't display CGI monsters the same way and have a similar effect.

Yoda from the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy is the best example of this. The puppet version feels like a real character, while the CGI one does not. This is, however, heavily influenced by George Lucas's incompetence - he completely ignored everything about Yoda's character that the original trilogy set up (masterfully I might add). Since Yoda's personality and mysticism are such a major part of what made the original character so believable and wondrous, throwing those things out the window as Jorgg did for the prequels irrevocably damages Yoda's character. If it was the same character from the original trilogy with shitty CGI instead of a puppet, the new Yoda would be bearable. The problem is that he doesn't look nearly as good as the puppet [B]and[/B] the character is completely different (non-existent would be more accurate). Double-loss. George Lucas 2, everyone else 0

ESB is great to the point where you believe in him. But I must say, his dying words in ROTJ are so amazingly well done, I quite literally forget he's not a real actor with a payroll. I wonder what happended between that and the atrocity that was Episode I's lazy eye Yoda.

It comes down to this. When something is real and physical it makes mistakes, "Human error" When something is CGI and animated it is perfect, "lifeless". I prefer puppets and costumes. [editline]11:08PM[/editline] [QUOTE=BmB;23187842]ESB is great to the point where you believe in him. But I must say, his dying words in ROTJ are so amazingly well done, I quite literally forget he's not a real actor with a payroll. I wonder what happended between that and the atrocity that was Episode I's lazy eye Yoda.[/QUOTE] Puppets and costumes ware and rot. That's why they went CGI.

[QUOTE=kmlkmljkl;23123820]also Men In Black[/QUOTE] woah MIB wasn't cgi? [editline]11:13PM[/editline] [QUOTE=RearAdmiral;23146548][media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwJWr_Zk1R8[/media] They replaced this with CGI. Fuck them. Also, I only just realised how [i]everything[/i] in Captain Scarlet explodes.[/QUOTE] spectrum represent :respek:

There was a lot of CGI in MiB.

[QUOTE=RearAdmiral;23146548][media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwJWr_Zk1R8[/media] They replaced this with CGI. Fuck them. Also, I only just realised how [i]everything[/i] in Captain Scarlet explodes.[/QUOTE] Hell even Captain Brown explodes in the first episode!

I like puppets more, especially when the CGI doesn't look realistic.

I believe Jurassic Park was the only film to ever get CG right. The CG was only used when the Dinosaurs where required to move on screen. Everything else is Stan Winston's beautiful Dinosaurs. Excluding the jeep, the Dinosaurs only had CG when there was no other option.

Jabba's palace, that's my argument right there. Fuck you George Lucas and your Lazy ass CGI techniques.

[QUOTE=BmB;23183960]I used to think they were just cheap like that, but no. Apparently Transformers used models and (well not really animatronics, more like... robots. :v: ) to [i]cut costs[/i]. What the fuck. If it's cheaper and better then why the fuck does anybody even use CGI?![/QUOTE] CGI is what's expected nowadays. One of the reasons it's so expensive is because of the amount of time involved. The first transformers movie's CGI was so complex it took 38 hours to render a single frame. [i]38 hours.[/i]

[QUOTE=doomkiwi;23120414]That was the great thing about jurrasic park though, they used both when appropriate! From far distorted shots or large majestic shots they used CG but with up close shots they mostly used puppets. I think both have their place, but cg monsters never look real to me and always have this slimy sheen to them which sorta breaks it for me.[/QUOTE] It's also worth noting though that Jurassic Park was animated using stop motion techniques on wire maquettes to manipulate the Dinosaurs in the computer rather than by mouse and keyboard. The movie was originally going to be traditional stop motion like something out of Jason and the Argonauts but ILM's work on Terminator 2 convinced Spielberg to go with the CGI, but he didn't want to fire his stop motion team. I don't know if they still use custom maquettes or not but you can't deny the results they got out of them compared to other movies. They went so far with the clay stop motion animation that some of the T-Rex breakout scene was done in stop motion, you can probably find it on Youtube, and I know I've seen it on my old "Making of" VHS of Jurassic Park.

[QUOTE=RR_Raptor65;23196450]It's also worth noting though that Jurassic Park was animated using stop motion techniques on wire maquettes to manipulate the Dinosaurs in the computer rather than by mouse and keyboard. The movie was originally going to be traditional stop motion like something out of Jason and the Argonauts but ILM's work on Terminator 2 convinced Spielberg to go with the CGI, but he didn't want to fire his stop motion team. I don't know if they still use custom maquettes or not but you can't deny the results they got out of them compared to other movies. They went so far with the clay stop motion animation that some of the T-Rex breakout scene was done in stop motion, you can probably find it on Youtube, and I know I've seen it on my old "Making of" VHS of Jurassic Park.[/QUOTE] the T-Rex breakout AND the Raptors in the Kitchen scene have full stop-motion animatics available on the DVD.

I might be late but [I]The Thing[/I] is an excellent latex monster movie! [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwknrtA1mCg[/media]