Tangled! (The Artist Formerly Known As Rapunzel)

[Marky_198]

"I think they should focus on some sort of 2d animation for the characters only."

No offence, but that's a bad idea. It's better to save it for movies like The Princess and the Frog.


that combining hand-drawn and CGI means the same as mixing oil and water; two different elements that exists side by side, but still separate. Here we are talking about fusing different concepts, like depths from CGI and fluidity from the Disney classics. .

Thanks for your reply!
I tried to find an example of what I mean but it's hard to find. I know there is this picture available of the prince/the guy, climbing the tower in Rapunzel's hair, and I think the style of that picture looks great. I'm not sure how it's done but it looks like a realistic 2d character in a 3d world.
I know "Wonderlicious" has it as his profile pic

I also love the pics of the trees and the girl in the swing.
And I think there's the whole point. It looks so beautiful because it looks "painted", it looks drawn. Like a painting that's moving.
Not like it's made by computers, like CGI characters.
Those red flowers at the bottom look painted/drawn too.

As for the fluidity, I really dislike this in all the CGI movies, the only good movements have been in 2d so far, so I'm concerned about this...

There are also pictures on the web of a hand drawn design for the character of Rapunzel and they look so much better than the CGI design.
I think the lead character in CGI just doesn't work. Not in a fairytale like this. I understand this could be a film of astonishing beauty, but only if they really pay attention to this.
If I was working on this film I would use a character design in the style of the paintings with the trees and the girl on the swing. And maybe add something to these "hand drawn" character drawings by scanning them and using the process they mentioned.

[Jack Skellington]

I want them to catch that squirrel and stab it till it doesn't exsist !

BTW I would bet that this is going to be a musical, coz in the story it was Rapunzel's "singing voice" that attracted the prince in the first place.

[yukitora]

Sleeping Beauty's voice attracted Philip, but I wouldn't consider it a musical.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

"I think that clip was there before they dropped the Unbraided title, I hope they're taking it more seriously now."

Yes, the idea of turning it into a comedy has been abandoned a long time ago.

"The clip that everyone keep refering to is very very very old, like 2-3 years old (maybe even more). This clip was made even before Glen came on board i believe."

I just mentioned that it was shown at SIGGRAPH in 2005. Personally, I wouldn't call a 3 years old clip for "very very old".
And it was NOT made before Glen Keane came on board. He has been a part of the project from the beginning, and was the one who presented the clip at SIGGRAPH. In the start, he didn't even want to do it as computer animation, but it was either that or no movie at all. When he got more or less free hands to do what he wanted, he saw it as an opportunity to improve the medium, which he saw as far from perfect.


"I tried to find an example of what I mean but it's hard to find. I know there is this picture available of the prince/the guy, climbing the tower in Rapunzel's hair, and I think the style of that picture looks great. I'm not sure how it's done but it looks like a realistic 2d character in a 3d world."

Yeah, I don't know if it is just concept art, or a frame from actual animation. But no matter how it is done, it will a homogeneous fusion, not a heterogeneous one as in Beauty and the Beast.

The fact that you love the image of the girl in the swing is because Keane with this has succeeded in showing what he wants with the movie. In theory, it could maybe have been done by hand as well, but with all the tiny details and colors and the way the light is reflected from the skin, hair and clothes, each frame would take forever and not to mention the budget.

And let's just be realistic, there will always be people who will never be satisfied with the look of the characters simply because the are CGI characters, and will not be satisfied before they are handdrawn. In other words; to satisfy them, Disney would have to change the movie from CGI to a more traditional animated film. It would be like removing all the colors from a color film to make the fans of black and white movies happy. I just wish they could be honest and say it, instead of complainting that there is nothing special about the CGI characters at all.

"As for the fluidity, I really dislike this in all the CGI movies, the only good movements have been in 2d so far, so I'm concerned about this..."

As it so often has been said, that's what Glen Keane and his team has put a lot of hard work into to improve. Even if he liked Shrek, he said something like "each frame of that movie was a bad drawing for me".

"I think the lead character in CGI just doesn't work. Not in a fairytale like this. I understand this could be a film of astonishing beauty, but only if they really pay attention to this.
If I was working on this film I would use a character design in the style of the paintings with the trees and the girl on the swing. And maybe add something to these "hand drawn" character drawings by scanning them and using the process they mentioned."

As I said, it is obviously not the quality of the CGI that it is the problem here, but the CGI itself. But people have to face the fact; that's how it gonna be. Why not just wait till it comes out instead, and see what they think about?
I see you are still talking about scanning characters, even if this is not how CGI movies is made. And what you would try to do, is what the Disney crew has worked very hard with the last years now.

[Disney Duster]

Julain, please take another look at the CGI picture of Rapunzel I provided and the one you had, the blue dress and the pink dress. Please tell me you see those do look different, more like paintings, than CGI you have seen before. Please. Really. If not as completely like paintings as they said, they are getting there.

I don't know... I just have a problem with it being CG/3D. It just doesn't feel right to have a fairytale film in 3D. It kind of kills all that storybook feel. That's probably where all my negative attitude towards the film comes from.

I, too, didn't want Rapunzel to be in CGI either, not just for breaking tradition of how fairy tales have been thought to look, but that it specifically broke Disney's tradition of how their fairy tales look. Their past fairy tale films.

But with Glen Keane originally wanting to do it in 2D, and probably for the same reasons as us!, then being able to make the CGI bend to his whim in a way that he loves it even more that way, and seeing how good it looks, and how it does indeed still look like a fairy tale, lush, elegant, and even old, I think it would be a crime to lose this exact beautiful vision. C'mon, if they succeed in making the film look like paintings it would be just like the past films trying to look like storybook illustrations, as some storybooks had paintings, and of course there were Sleeping Beauty's visulas based on medieval paintings...

And then there's also...remember, Beauty and the Beast, a storybook fairy tale, had CGI backgrounds...

[Marky_198]

" In other words; to satisfy them, Disney would have to change the movie from CGI to a more traditional animated film. It would be like removing all the colors from a color film to make the fans of black and white movies happy. I just wish they could be honest and say it, instead of complainting that there is nothing special about the CGI characters at all.

I see you are still talking about scanning characters, even if this is not how CGI movies is made. And what you would try to do, is what the Disney crew has worked very hard with the last years now.

Thanks for your post!

This comparison isn't really good.
Everyone would agree that colors really add something to the film experience. Comparing CGI characters to 2d characters is a different thing. There is a lot of discussion possible about what is better.
I personally think that the experience they gained in the last 80 years with characters in 2d and the quality and craftsmanship can't be compared to the things they tried recently in CGI.
Look at films like Aladdin and the Lion king, do you see a big difference in style there between the characters and the backgrounds? I think it compliments eachother perfectly.

And I do have to say I think there's nothing special about CGI characters at all. Not one in the films ever made and not even the CGI designs for Rapunzel. No matter how realistic they try to make the faces or movements look, it still looks computer-ish.
I agree that this system is perfect for backgrounds, cameraviews, water, sky, etc. But NOT for the characters.

And there was this idea of drawing the characters, scanning them, make them 2d and add something to make them more 3d and match the backgrounds. A new technology. And I'm open to that.
And I don't think that Rapunzel clip can be called "very old" either.
And I absolutely hate it, even the newest ones.
It still looks like a moving "doll".

I really think the way the characters are designed makes or breaks the movie.

[Disney's Divinity]

I don't know... I just have a problem with it being CG/3D. It just doesn't feel right to have a fairytale film in 3D. It kind of kills all that storybook feel. That's probably where all my negative attitude towards the film comes from.

And then there's also...remember, Beauty and the Beast, a storybook fairy tale, had CGI backgrounds...

I don't think that's an accurate comparison, considering the centerpiece of the scene (Belle and Beast) were animated "traditionally."

And I kind of agree with Marky about 3D characters. In my personal opinion, characters don't look great in 3D films unless they're extremely stylized. Trying to imitate real life is one of the medium's major problems. 2D animation only intends to imitate reality in so far that you can relate to the characters, not to say, "Wow! That looks so real!" That's just not the point at all. I also agree that the backgrounds of 3D films are usually gorgeous, but the major problem is with the characters and how difficult it is to capture emotion with them.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Maybe I was a bit unclear, but you are taking my example too literally. I was referring to an imaginary club of die hard black and white fans. Because they hate colors, it doesn't matter how lush and beautyful they are.

If everybody agress that colors are for the better, I don't know, for all we know, maybe there really are somebody who don't like it. At least one should expect there were some of them in the early days. And it is a fact that filming certain tones, shadows and contrasts works better without colors. Althought that's another topic.

If we are talking about different opinions, it is not possible to say which one is better than the other. Either way, CGI and handdrawn animation are two different kind of mediums. To some degree, it's like asking if comedies are better than action, or vice versa.

The only way to improve the still young CGI medium, is to gain experience by making movies. Should Disney really listen to all those who says they shouldn't do this kind of animation at all? Or that some genres, like fairytales, should not be touched? Those who are trying to make everybody satisfied, ends up doing nothing at all, because there will always be someone who dislikes it, no matter what.

Look at films like Aladdin and the Lion king, do you see a big difference in style there between the characters and the backgrounds? I think it compliments eachother perfectly.

There is no reason why it shouldn't be this way. It's nothing more than we can expect from Disney. Nobody claims it is impossible to fit the animation to the backgrounds. But CGI has the potential to make a type of both backgrounds and characters which would not have been possible to do by hand. It can be done well in both the old medium and the new one, which I think makes the whole thing irrelevant.

No matter how realistic they try to make the faces or movements look, it still looks computer-ish.
I agree that this system is perfect for backgrounds, cameraviews, water, sky, etc. But NOT for the characters.

As I already have said, I suspect you hate CGI not because of the quality, or lack of it, but because it is CGI. Again we are talking about opinions and personal flavors. Those who hate meat will hate a juicy T-bone steak even if it is prepared by the best chef in the world.

And again, it has never been a goal to make Rapunzel, Bolt or Chicken Little look as realistic as possible. These movies are supposed to look cartoony, but cartoony in a 3D way.

And there was this idea of drawing the characters, scanning them, make them 2d and add something to make them more 3d and match the backgrounds. A new technology. And I'm open to that.

What you're referring to what has been done for years now, even if they use tablets instead of scanning the characters. As in Chicken Little, a movie where Disney actually brought CGI another step forward.
With Bolt and Glago's Guest, a couple of more leaps have been made, and there is still a lot of remaining steps ahead in the years to come, which makes it exiting to see what Disney and other studios will show us in the future. Even handdrawn animation has still not come to an evolutionary stop after all these years, so it is not surprising that the far younger computer animation is still in full development, and won't slow down for some time yet.
As Chuck Williams says about Glago's Guest; "There's human animation and a step toward what they're doing on Rapunzel, but also the hair and cloth were a challenge beyond what has ever been done before at Disney. Shapes are stylized and pushed, and the proportions are exaggerated, but the environments and detail are photoreal."

Keane first experimented with the 3D version of Ariel (after the ballerina) as a preparation for Rapunzel:

"Mr. Keane's team also tackled a project closer to his heart: a computer-animated version of Ariel that would be seen in a Disney theme-park show called "Mickey's Philharmagic". In an early version, Mr. Keane noticed that his famous mermaid didn't seem like herself. "There was a deadness in her eyes, a dull quality," he says. The shoulders seemed stiff. She also wasn't hitting what old-time Disney artists call "the golden poses," the few memorable images that sell each character to the audience. Fixing the piece required combining the experienced eye of a traditional animator with the computer chops of someone from the new school. Mr. Keane drew by hand what he wanted and superimposed it over the computer-animated image. At one point, his team worked for nearly a week trying to light up Ariel's smile by pushing her cheeks up and creating little creases around her eyes. "The Ariel project was a testing ground for forcing a CG figure into a hand-drawn look," Mr. Keane says. "We made the computer bend its knee to the artist, rather than the artist bend its knee to the computer." "He put together a presentation called "The Best of Both Worlds," which listed the strengths and weaknesses of each genre, and called a meeting to discuss it. "Immediately, you could feel the polarization of the two groups," Mr. Keane says." "To clear the air, Mr. Keane convened a retreat of about 25 artists at the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif. The discussion focused on redesigning Disney's production process to enhance collaboration. Disney had already been tweaking standard computer-animation software to make it more intuitive for newcomers. At the retreat, the artists got a look at an even simpler tool the company has been developing, which would allow artists to control the movements of their computer characters by drawing on a screen with a pencil-like stylus, rather than using a mouse." "Mr. Keane and other artists often didn't like what they saw on screen in computer animation. While they admired the storytelling and characters in the computer-generated movies made by Pixar and others, many of them saw the art itself as crude, especially in its attempts to capture the complexity of a human form. "If you look at Fiona in `Shrek,"' Mr. Keane says, "her shoulders never seem to move." He decided that embracing computer animation would mean "I would have to go backwards from what I do by hand."


When you say she looks like a doll, it's sounds like it is your assosiciations who are talking. If you have seen the Barbie version, maybe it is hard for you not to have this on your mind when you see the Disney version. But, it is actually impossible to make an animated Rapunzel movie which is so unique that there is absolutely no resemblance with the previous attempts to make a movie adaptation of the story if you are supposed to stay more or less lojal to the main plot and the main characters. Ariel and Belle would look just as much as dolls if they were made as computer animated characters, and I'm sure there would be few complaints about Rapunzel if she was drawn by hand only but otherwise had exactly the same design. So once again are we talking about personal relations to the medium.

Once people said; "it is amazing what they are able to do with computers". Now they often say; "it is amazing what they were able to do without computers". I'm interested in keeping as much as possible of the old techniques as well, but there is always those who will to exaggerate, and hopes to recreate the past by fighting the new ones. The old stuff is not gone, it still has its own niche as long as there is someone to keep it alive.

The famous ballroom scene in Beauty and the Beast was made in the early days if we are talking about the digital revolution in feature animation. I'm sure that if computer graphics and internet discussion boards had been just as old and familiar as they are today, when the internet is used to gather information and talk about upcoming movies, you can bet there would be complaints about "cheating" and such (which is the reason why Tron didn't get an Oscar, by the way, as you are probably aware of). As it is today, the computer created backgrounds are accepted because the process was little known among the moviegoers then, and because many watched the movie as children and because of that, it is an important part of their childhood. Just as I'm sure Rapunzel will be a part of the newer generation's childhood.

In my personal opinion, characters don't look great in 3D films unless they're extremely stylized. Trying to imitate real life is one of the medium's major problems.

We are not talking about The Polar Express or Beowulf here. This is not an attemot to imitate real life, but using the basic principles of animation developed by Disney's nine old men in CGI, as they used it in traditional animation. And with the new tools, new doors have been opened.

It is actually handdawn animation who can allow itself to be very stylized. Computer animated characters has to look a bit more realistic. Of course, it is not impossible to make them very stylized, but the medium suits full animation better than limited animation.

Limited animation became an alternative for full animation because it allowed larger artistic freedom, and many artists took advantage of this (UPA Animation). Gerald McBoing-Boing and The Flintstones in their original design and animation, fits the flat 2D animation far better then 3D.

Examples on characters who doesn't look too realistic in Disney's features are Jafar, Hercules or Lilo, the pigs in Home on the Range or the horses in Mulan. They are all more or less stylized, and wouldn't work so well in 3D. The more realistic style used on characters in movies like Treasure Planet, Pocahontas or The Little Mermaid, would be transferred to the other medium much better.

Remember how the car in Mickey's Trailer moved on the bumpy road? It wouldn't be possible in CGI, the car would look like it was made of rubber. Other exaples are the way Donald's and other birds' beaks move while talking. The animators can allow them to be much softer and more flexible in old cartoons than in computer shorts and features. This was a challenge during the production of Chicken Little.

Handdrawn animation still has a lot of advantages compered to computer animation, they can explore more stylized designs and styles studios like Pixar and DreamWorks Animation can't, and base whole worlds on this. Just as computer animation has a lot of advantages compared to its older sibling, for instance more depth, details and complexity. Neither of them will go away, and I don't see why they can't coexist peacefully side by side.

As Andreas Deja says about the production about The Princess and the Frog; "I always thought that maybe we should distinguish ourselves to go back to what 2D is good at, which is focusing on what the line can do rather than volume, which is a CG kind of thing. So we are doing less extravagant Treasure Planet kind of treatments. You have to create a world but we're doing it more simply."

In other words, 2D movies should do what 2D does best, and 3D should do what 3D does best. The way I see it, two animation types (if excluding stop motion) are better than just one. Both of them can explore styles and ideas the other one can't. This makes Disney richer, not poorer.

2D animation only intends to imitate reality in so far that you can relate to the characters, not to say, "Wow! That looks so real!" That's just not the point at all.

No offence, but this sounds more like an opinion than a fact. Walt Disney himself would not have agreed, for him it was a goal to make the animation as lush, realistic and beautiful as possible.

I also agree that the backgrounds of 3D films are usually gorgeous, but the major problem is with the characters and how difficult it is to capture emotion with them.

Chris Sanders has another opinion:

In terms of inspiration, Shrek and Ice Age were revelations in terms of the subtlety of emotion that they transmitted.
“The way they lingered on Shrek’s face and not have him say or do anything made me want to stand up and cheer because you can’t do that in a traditionally-animated film. Or watching that little sloth in Ice Age struggling to get comfortable on that rock — slipping and sliding. At that moment, I knew that everything had changed. I realized that I have to change the way I write. I’ve indulged myself in scenes with protracted interaction, emotional interaction. We have the broad stuff too, but I’ve never felt so safe before in having a very subtle scene transpire between two characters sitting across the table from each other.”

http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=Colu ... 684&page=5

If someone still think CGI characters looks stiff; this improves for each new movie, and I would guess that in a few years, it will be a complaint of the past, at least in big budget features, if the animation is done properly and people are 100% honest to themselves:

"Glen, I'm not asking you to go make a movie with humans that look like 'Final Fantasy,' " referring to the stiff figures in the 2001 computer-animated dud. "I'm asking that you - and I know it doesn't exist out there - I'm asking you to go create it. You have to create something new."

"I loved 'Shrek,' " Mr. Keane responded. But the characters, particularly Princess Fiona, looked plastic to him. "Every frame of that film was a bad drawing to me, personally," he said."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/busin ... yt&emc=rss

I sometimes get the feeling that the many complaints about computer animation is like a mirror version of The Emperor's New Clothes. Even if he is actually dressed in rich and colorful clothes, some crowds are yelling that all he is wearing is some ugly underwear. I'm not referring to any specific person, it's just a general feeling I have.


P.S. Found some more info where it seems like Keane has been involved with the project since 2002: http://members.lycos.co.uk/pixararchive ... /index.php

And there was also a plan to include a bassett hound in the movie:
"What began as a Shrek-like spoof on fairy tales, followed by a supposed turn into a tale about a squirrel and a bassett hound, the plot for Disney's Rapunzel Unbraided has supposedly been revamped once more."
http://www.animated-news.com/archives/00003513.html

[yukitora]

If you guys watched the Final Fantasy CGI cutscenes in Final Fantasy X I think you'd be quite impressed. Especially the dance Yuna performs to send off the dead. Despite the fact the game is so old now.

(I actually haven't seen these myself in awhile now, but from memory, they were pretty impressive)

[Marky_198]

Thanks for the reply Rumpelstiltskin,

You do have some good points. And I'm glad they realize that the CGI characters created so far have many flaws, like Fiona in Schrek and the Ariel experiment. I have seen the Ariel clip and have to agree. It looked horrible, she didn't sparkle, moved in slowmotion, looked like a doll, her eyes looked dead, her shoulders were extremely stiff, the movements were static.
If they can solve all this by lifting the cheeks and give her some creases around the eye, to desperately try to light up her smile, let them try, but I wonder how much they can do about all this, as the characters in all the CGI movies created in all those years look like that.

I'm not against CGI. I try to have an open mind.
The backgrounds look fantastic. But everytime I give it a chance, and a new movie is presented with CGI characters, the characters just look like I described above. Even if they light up her smile, or make the movements better and less static. It still looks like rubber dolls moving.
It's just the way it is.

"As I already have said, I suspect you hate CGI not because of the quality, or lack of it, but because it is CGI. "

No, it really is because of the quality.
The quality is actually really unacceptable if you take a close look.
I'm open to CGI, but I think it needs at least another 100 years of development and experience to get some decent characters out of it. Characters that actually have good movements, don't look like rubber dolls, don't look static etc.
I understand that the people working on it want to create and discover a new wonderful thing, but I wish they could realize if something's just not there yet. And they should keep working on it, and try to make hundreds of little movies and clips, but not use this for the characters in a Disney classic as Rapunzel. I know what you're thinking now. Snow white was groundbreaking too right? Yes, but in terms of style, Snowwhite can be compared to Toy Story. Something new, a new style, a risk.
But how many CGI films were made after that without any improvement in movements, look, etc? A lot. At least the same amount as the 2d Disney classics. And can you tell me what's special to the rubber-ish look of the girl character in Bolt, compared to the previous films?


"As Chuck Williams says about Glago's Guest; "There's human animation and a step toward what they're doing on Rapunzel, but also the hair and cloth were a challenge beyond what has ever been done before at Disney. Shapes are stylized and pushed, and the proportions are exaggerated, but the environments and detail are photoreal."

I think that's a big mistake. It shouldn't look real.
What do they want? Do they feel it lacks a lot and are they trying to make it better by making it look "photoreal"?
So we end up getting 3d animated rubber characters that live in a world that looks like "real life"?
Then they might as well use real life characters in a 3d world, like the idea of some scenes in Mary Poppins, that would work even better.
Actually, I think I love the look of the film Rapunzel with the backgrounds etc, but if the characters look like anything done before (like in Bolt) I would rather have real actors play the characters than the lame 3d experimentals so far.
This isn't "good" just because it's 2008. Anyone can see that this needs years of development.

"In an early version, Mr. Keane noticed that his famous mermaid didn't seem like herself. "There was a deadness in her eyes, a dull quality," he says. The shoulders seemed stiff. She also wasn't hitting what old-time Disney artists call "the golden poses," the few memorable images that sell each character to the audience. Fixing the piece required combining the experienced eye of a traditional animator with the computer chops of someone from the new school. Mr. Keane drew by hand what he wanted and superimposed it over the computer-animated image. At one point, his team worked for nearly a week trying to light up Ariel's smile by pushing her cheeks up and creating little creases around her eyes".

At least I'm glad they are desperately trying to live up to the quality of the 2d classics, but it seems hard.


"Mr. Keane and other artists often didn't like what they saw on screen in computer animation. While they admired the storytelling and characters in the computer-generated movies made by Pixar and others, many of them saw the art itself as crude, especially in its attempts to capture the complexity of a human form. "If you look at Fiona in `Shrek,"' Mr. Keane says, "her shoulders never seem to move." He decided that embracing computer animation would mean "I would have to go backwards from what I do by hand."

I agree, looking at the actual characters, you would have to agree too.


"When you say she looks like a doll, it's sounds like it is your assosiciations who are talking. If you have seen the Barbie version, maybe it is hard for you not to have this on your mind when you see the Disney version"

No, it's my common sense that's talking. I have an open mind when I watch something.


"Ariel and Belle would look just as much as dolls if they were made as computer animated characters"

Yes they would, but they don't. That's why the films were actually successful. I'm quite sure that Beauty and the Beast wouldn't be such a hit if belle looked like a rubber doll, and walked in slowmotion with stiff shoulders, and didn't show any emotion.

"Once people said; "it is amazing what they are able to do with computers". Now they often say; "it is amazing what they were able to do without computers".

I wonder why they so often say that now.....

"Remember how the car in Mickey's Trailer moved on the bumpy road? It wouldn't be possible in CGI, the car would look like it was made of rubber"

Ehm, well.....isn't this the case with all the characters too?

"Handdrawn animation still has a lot of advantages compered to computer animation, they can explore more stylized designs and styles studios like Pixar and DreamWorks Animation can't, and base whole worlds on this. Just as computer animation has a lot of advantages compared to its older sibling, for instance more depth, details and complexity"

I actually can't see the depth. And I also have difficulties to see if scenes in a 3d animated film are meant to be outside or inside.
But it's the look of the substance of the characters and the lack of emotion that annoys me the most.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

The whole point with the new shorts program is to experiment and try new stuff to be able to evolve the art, tools and technology further, as well as finding new talents and so on.

I don't know what they mean about "photoreal", but the 40 seconds of Glago's Gueast that I have seen so far, looks very nice.
And there is a big difference between using real actors instead of animated ones. It's all about the design and the motions, areas where real humans have a lot more limitations than animated characters.

A simple test to see how good the animation in CGI is; make the characters and their world look like they are black silhouettes, like the silhouette animation by Lotte Reiniger. If it is hard or impossible to see if the black figures on the screen are from a computer animated movie or a hand-drawn one, then there is at least nothing about the animation to complain about.
It shouldn't be too difficult to write a kind of cel-shading program which is able to do this.


This is what we have so far:

It is not the characters' design which is the problem, since they would work perfectly in 2D animation.

The digital created backgrounds (and probably foregrounds) looks beautiful. It is the characters who are the problem.
Making a digital painting where the characters are a part of the background or the painting as a whole (like the girl in the swing) looks great as well. If a single frame from a movie looks just like such a painting, it should mean it is the animation that is the problem.

If the animation is just as soft and fluid as in hand-drawn animation, (which could be checked with the modified cel-shading program for those who still are sceptic), it shouldn't be the movements that's the problem either.

So what remains? Only the fact that the characters are in 3D. And if that's the problem, it can't be solved.

Personally, I have only one major complaint about many of the CGI characters created so far; the skin still reminds much about smooth plastic. But the short Rapunzel clip with the squirrel looked very promising. So I choose to be optimistic.

"Remember how the car in Mickey's Trailer moved on the bumpy road? It wouldn't be possible in CGI, the car would look like it was made of rubber"

Ehm, well.....isn't this the case with all the characters too?

Perhaps, but I was referring to inanimate objects. As a general rule, the world in computer animation has to be more lojal to the laws of nature than is the case with Disney's more traditional animation. Again a reminder that the two different styles has to be treated separately instead of comparing them in some hand-drawn vs CGI competition.

And for now, I don't think there is much more to say about the subject, at least not for me. Looks like there are still many different opinions out there, but most of them have the hopes of continuous improvements of the medium in common.

[Marky_198]

Personally, I have only one major complaint about many of the CGI characters created so far; the skin still reminds much about smooth plastic. But the short Rapunzel clip with the squirrel looked very promising. So I choose to be optimistic.

And for now, I don't think there is much more to say about the subject, at least not for me. Looks like there are still many different opinions out there, but most of them have the hopes of continuous improvements of the medium in common.

I agree with you. It's not about the design and not about the backgrounds.
It's about the movements that they were never able to get right so far.
And it's about the rubber-ish/plastic look that all the CGI characters have.

We all have the hopes of continuous improvements and I'm glad you're optimistic about it.
I'm not that optimistic yet, I think the clip with the squirrel looks like something we've all seen before, and still looks rubber-ish/plastic to me.

[Disney Duster]

Mooky, you hear that? Glago's Guest, and probably other shorts, are using, trying out, and experimenting with the type of computer animation, or similar strides in computer animation, that Rapunzel will have before they actually start animating Rapunzel! There you go!

[Disney's Divinity]

2D animation only intends to imitate reality in so far that you can relate to the characters, not to say, "Wow! That looks so real!" That's just not the point at all.

No offence, but this sounds more like an opinion than a fact. Walt Disney himself would not have agreed, for him it was a goal to make the animation as lush, realistic and beautiful as possible.

That's a bit ridiculus, considering none of the characters of Snow White (except possibly the Evil Queen) look realistic and the colors are far more lush there than you could ever find in actual life. There's a reason so many animated characters have eyes that are larger than normal, because they were meant to express emotion first. Focusing on a realistic look would take away from that.

I also agree that the backgrounds of 3D films are usually gorgeous, but the major problem is with the characters and how difficult it is to capture emotion with them.

"I loved 'Shrek,' " Mr. Keane responded. But the characters, particularly Princess Fiona, looked plastic to him. "Every frame of that film was a bad drawing to me, personally," he said."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/busin ... yt&emc=rss

I sometimes get the feeling that the many complaints about computer animation is like a mirror version of The Emperor's New Clothes. Even if he is actually dressed in rich and colorful clothes, some crowds are yelling that all he is wearing is some ugly underwear. I'm not referring to any specific person, it's just a general feeling I have.

I'm sorry that you feel that way, but I doubt it's possible to create a movie of Princess Fiona's and it not turn out lacking. And I seriously doubt 3D animation has progressed enough to achieve even the simple work of 2D animation. I'll keep an open mind until the movie is actually released, but, as the film is not released, please don't prevent me from having an opinion when nearly everything about this thread is speculation and words, with nothing of the actual film shown.

[Marky_198]

Nice profile pic (avatar?) you have there Disney's Divinity!

And it made me think. That actually really looks like a painting that's moving.

I don't understand why they want to make of Rapunzel a film of astonishing beauty that looks like a painting that's moving, and then use 3d characters (and desperately trying to push up the quality as everyone knows the previous films don't look quite good enough), and use all kinds of CGI techniques on the characters, EXCEPT painting.

The characters will not look like painted characters as they're not.

They will look like rubber/plastic dolls, as that's what 3d animation obviously is.

But my point is, why go through the almost impossible process to make 3d CGI characters look like something they're not (a painting) and not just paint them?
We all know how beautiful and realistic paintings can be.
And how 3dimentional they can look.

And how beautifully 2 styles can compliment eachother (as the backgrounds in the film will be in CGI obviously).

No 3d/CGI character will ever look like this:

[ichabod]

But my point is, why go through the almost impossible process to make 3d CGI characters look like something they're not (a painting) and not just paint them?

Because they're trying to push technology, then trying to do something different that's never been done before, thery're taking a chance on something new!

If they were to just paint the backgrounds, they wouldnt move, the individual leaves on the trees wouldn't flutter in the breeze, you wouldn't be able to move through the scene. They're trying to bring to life a painting!

And unfortunately unless you're going to wait 50 years for 100 people to hand draw all 30 million blades of grass in a field, you're going to need to do it in CGI?

I hate to say this, but do think Walt would have made "Rapunzel" the same as past films, because it worked in the past? Or do you think he would taken a chance at trying out some new technology and seeing how far they could push things?

*Goes to wash self because he feels dirty at using the "What would Walt do?" line*

[Marky_198]

Ichabod, I agree with you about the backgrounds.
They can look stunning.

But the problem is that the characters in 3d/CGI will never look like a painting.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

That's a bit ridiculus, considering none of the characters of Snow White (except possibly the Evil Queen) look realistic and the colors are far more lush there than you could ever find in actual life. There's a reason so many animated characters have eyes that are larger than normal, because they were meant to express emotion first. Focusing on a realistic look would take away from that.

Snow White and the prince were rotoscoped, so they was actual more realistic than the queen, who was fully animated.
And I didn't say as realistic (but not photorealistic) OR lush OR beautiful as possible. It's about finding the best combination. Of course the animators couldn't get it right in their first attempt, so there was a lot of training going on before they started on the main project. Among them was The Goddess of Spring, the first attempt to make a realistic human characters. Realistic enough for people to relate to, but Walt didn't find it good enough, so they would have to study anatomy as well before moving on.
After Snow White, the studio made Pinocchio, which was even more impressive. And finally Bambi, where the anthropomorphic animals looked far more realistic than they ever did in the movies made before it. Walt's demand for realism frustrated the animators a lot, althought the result speaks for itself. The complexity of the forest was too detailed to create by hand, so the artwork got an asian influence to make it both believeble and simple enough. Today, it would probably have been different.
Either way, my comment was just a respond to your claim that the animators choose to draw their characters realistic enought for the audience to relate to, but nothing further, which I don't agree with.

And I seriously doubt 3D animation has progressed enough to achieve even the simple work of 2D animation. I'll keep an open mind until the movie is actually released, but, as the film is not released, please don't prevent me from having an opinion when nearly everything about this thread is speculation and words, with nothing of the actual film shown.

Nobody is keeping you from having your own opinions. And as far as this and other threads goes, I'm trying to document my replies as much as possible, and instead of telling how amazing it will be, I choose to question some of the claims, concerns, worries and misunderstandings by others if I have the opportunity and the right info available.
When some people makes a statement that CGI more or less hasn't evolved at all during the last years without documenting it, it is only logical there will be some who doesn't agree as the movies speakes for themselves. There no hard feelings behind it, just a whish to make a comment about it.
Also, it is correct that the movie is not out yet, but besides the short clips we have the other animated projects from Disney that shows us where they are going and how they keeps improving.

I don't understand why they want to make of Rapunzel a film of astonishing beauty that looks like a painting that's moving, and then use 3d characters (and desperately trying to push up the quality as everyone knows the previous films don't look quite good enough), and use all kinds of CGI techniques on the characters, EXCEPT painting.

As it has already been mentioned, it is to time consuming. Imagine how long it would have taken Leonardo if he had decided to not just make a single painting of Mona Lisa, but make a cartoon with her with every frame in the same quality as the painting.
There is also a difference between not looking good enough, and deciding to improve future feautures when possible.


Neither is it just about making it look like a painting, but combining the strenghts of both CGI and hand-drawn animation. Althought this has been said quite often, I can't tell what all these elements are since I'm not an animator and was not present at the presentation called "The Best of Both Worlds", which "listed the strengths and weaknesses of each genre, and called a meeting to discuss it". Some examples have been used, like the fluid animation and squash and stretch. If the goal was just to make CGI look like it was made by hand, there would be less points in creating the technology.


If you take a look at the image of the girl in the swing, you will see there is no way the characters with all their tiny little details could have been made by hand, frame by frame. The only solution would have to make them simpler, but a simple design as Cinderella (compared to what the studio is working on) would not fit in with the backgrounds, which would have to be made simpler too. Just as line overlay was used in 101 Dalmatians to make the background match the characters' Xerox lines.

The image we see is not just a single picture, it is a frame from a test footage that is frozen in time, so-called "bullet time" which became so familiar after The Matrix. On SIGGRAPH, Keane showed the same image, and then rotated it so it could be seen in every angle to really give the impression of depth and 3D. The only thing the image is not doing is actual moving. When people mistakes the frame for a painting, then I would say the studio has pretty much succeeded at least with this challenge.


The upcoming stop motion animated feature Coraline has a face made of actual plastic, or a similar material, but nobody is complaining about it because in stop motion the texture and surface feels right because what we see is actual real. That's what it's really about, the rendering. And there is a lot of development here, from the planned Tintin project to future stuff from Disney and Pixar and others:

“It just seems like we’re scratching the surface,” Ryan adds. “I’m going to be working on Rapunzel next, doing a haggard old witch. Her skin looks like an apple that’s been left out in the sun for years. What you want to try and get is that skin over bone. This is just incredible stuff — it truly feels like there’s been a technological evolution through animation. We went from flat cartoons to getting the multi-plane effect and now with CG getting full dimension and these really believable characters. We’re able to control the silhouette of the characters, so we’re getting very designed so you can shape shift these forms so they have all the aspects of two-dimensional animation into this great CG world.”

“One of the things we didn’t tackle with Chicken Little that American Dog (now Bolt) is taking on in earnest is the ability to handle very large environments. We came up with a nice element flow for being able to bring elements from one department to the next and have layout set everything up, but we didn’t get there on Chicken Little. This will be essential to Rapunzel too.”


http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=page ... 684&page=3


I showed the Glago teaser to my grandmother the other day, and when he comes out the door, she actually believed it was live action.
And althought the example with the ballerina has been used many times by now, it could be worth repeating. If a trained animator as Glen Keane agreed that the 3D ballerina moved just as smooth as a 2D one, and this was done some years ago, how far hasn't to come by the point Rapunzel is released?
For each new movie and short, Chicken Little, Bolt and Glago's Guest, new technology is used and tested, and new techniques invented. Remember that even hand-drawn animation was something new once, even if it is now more or less perfected.

At first, Rapunzel's hair actually needed to be rather short to make it move in a credible way. Only graduall were they able to increase its length to the point they wanted it to be. Again, this was years ago.

"All of that hair represents a difficult challenge in computer-animation, as it has to shake, wave and shine in a way that has so far been elusive. Recently, artists from both schools labored to get a 2-foot section of Rapunzel's legendary mane to behave properly. They are now working to gradually lengthen the hair to its full fairy-tale length."
(Judging from the clip on Youtube, where the hair is blowing in the wind, things seems to be going in the right direction.)

Guess it doesn't hurt to repeate another quote. As we all know, at first Keane did not want to do it as CGI, but agreed when he was allowed to do it his way. Which is why he decided to continue to improve the medium:

"Keane admitted that he considered starting over in 2D with RAPUNZEL after Lasseter took over Disney Feature Animation, but was too committed to 3D to abandon it. “After two years of finding that there is something special about hand-drawn pushing CG in a direction that can happen, I realized that this is a necessary drive. I want to make the computer bend its knee, to execute what an artist envisions, to make it respond like a pencil."

http://news.awn.com/index.php?ltype=cat ... m_no=17907

Even before this, it looks as if he was interesting in experimenting with computers, like he did with John Lasseter when they made the short test footage fo Where the Wild Things Are, with drawn characters and digital colors and backgrounds:

"We're at a crossroads,' he says. 'Disney is a very odd place to be these days... I'm trying to take my future into my own hands, and figure out a way I can be married to the computer and continue to draw.' He's thinking Rapunzel could show off a fusion of hand-drawn figures with computer-animated clothing and hair--'as long as I can make the face."

[Disney Duster]

No 3d/CGI character will ever look like this:

But the problem is that the characters in 3d/CGI will never look like a painting.

Marky, don't you know that the Rapunzel on that swing was made in CGI? At first to Lasseter it looked like a hand-painting, but then the person who made it rotated it in 3D for him in the computer!

And the Rapunzel in the pictures we've seen look a little like paintings, sure, still a little like CGI, but also a little like paintings.

[yukitora]

Just something interesting, I always thought the paintings of the renaissance always looked a little 3D to me.

They had great depth and this unnatural realistic look which is much closer to CGI animation than 2D animation ever was, despite the similarities in medium.