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who will animator going to replace specially 2d animators by AI?

There's a video going around of a "puppet" of Hugo from the Iron Giant. The video uses a puppet for very basic movements. But the entire face and body is basically fully replaced with a CGI version. HOWEVER, the comments of the video, and it's reuploads, are over flowing with people that legit believe it's completely animated by hand in real-time! Thisnis in large part to a 2-5 segment where they puppeteer is seen animating the puppet. Although the description of the video clearly states the face is replaced with CGI, these commenters/viewers believe it isn't enhanced at all. Even when you point it out to them.

For decades we have had debates about CGI vs Practical effects, many showing CGI’s weak points from rushed and overworked departments. Overtime I have seen more and more people respecting the artistry of good well done CGI and the creators/studios that put in the work for it. I feel like history is going to repeat itself here where AI will be used to rush things out and save costs only to be widely panned for looking bad, and that the studios using it as a tool and putting in the real work won’t get recognition for doing things well until much later.

I have a lot of thoughts, I'll admit they're a little disjointed. 1) There is such a thing as squash and stretch in stopmo, just watch any Will Vinton film. I think if there's any question that stopmotion has something unique to bring to the experience, it's the very natural and organic feel of the way the clay figures move and stretch and mold from one thing into another. 2) I don't think LAIKA knows why it's doing stopmotion anymore. I agree with people saying that they should just switch over to CG if they're going to use so much of it anyway, but this is a LAIKA specific phenomenon more than it is for anyone else. I remember seeing some of the sets and puppets in person, and was struck by how much more real they looked than on camera. Meanwhile, puppets for Pinocchio or Vinton projects looked just as beautifully real on camera as they did in person. While LAIKA started out with a lot of Vinton crew (that's a whole other story), most people who were there in the early days have since left for different studios who embrace the unique aspects of stop motion as a medium. 3) That's the fundamental question then, why is this stop motion? In the early days it was because that's the only way to do special effects. But now that we have other options, it should be a deliberate choice to use the medium. You can tell a Wes Anderson stopmo film loves being stopmotion. Or a Will Vinton. Or Selik. I want to see that this style was considered and chosen as the best way to tell this story. The extra time and effort taken is worth it when you have a studio who loves the medium itself. I don't think recent LAIKA films love being stop motion.

interesting

I really appreciated Henry Selick’s choice to not remove the face seams in Wendell and Wild, it added a lot more charm to that movie.

I wonder if the effort LAIKA put into their first three big movies - ParaNorman, Boxtrolls, and Kubo overwhelmed them too much, and if that's partially why Missing Link relied even more on CGI than the previous 4... and why it's been taking them so long to develop the next one? Either way, I'm just glad they're still around.

Cool vid. I love stopmotion and I kind of like the marriage of CGI for things that would otherwise be impractical or impossible to achieve. I feel like stopmotion should have a very intentionally "raw" look to it but as long as the CGI doesn't take away from it I think it's fine.

In my honest opinion. Just go all in on CGI. I see no reason to still use stop motion with todays tech.

All movies are ‘CGI’ these days, as everything is computer generated images in many ways. Stop motion puppets and background assets are designed/modelled/3d printed for speed. Crowds are 3d, matte painted skies and backgrounds are a mix of 2d and 3d work. Compositing is done in CGI, as is grading. What this video should have said, is that ’CGI’ is amazing and in every film, but it allows for vignette stop motion to continue to be made, despite being able to have been done faster, better and cheaper than full stop motion. You might even conclude, that the small amount of stop motion projects, which include all that CGI, is really a marketing strategy, to imply that it is in some way harder to achieve? Just like all the ‘VFX’ movies, which again is every movie, the director pretends that it is all ‘In-camera’, which is so ridiculous.

dispise how much Kubo and Missing Link relied on CGI to tell the story. the reason Stop motion works as a medium is because of how tactile it feels. Laika's newer films feel so cold compared to Coraline or ParaNorman

At its best, CGI can do anything that any other kind of cinematography can do and do it just as well if not better. That said, CGI artists are rarely given the respect and time needed to demonstrate their best work.

Stop motion looks so good, it might as well be CG at half the cost.

I really enjoyed this video. Thank you Here is some amazing stop motion animation from Rymdreglage that you might not have seen before. (They have a lot of videos, their Lego animations are also incredible, but I have shared here the first video of theirs that I saw, and one that I think is quite impressive) I hope you find the time to check these out Insert Coin: th-cam.com/video/0sNxRji1STg/w-d-xo.htmlsi=kblRXQLfLZYqV1Q4 Terminator 2 th-cam.com/video/a4mWyeVitNQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=pVIxNFIwEZXUcwV3

Using this mix I feel is the most harmonious/ best way to go about this type of storytelling.

I always thought that effects in horror films would look scarier if they were CGI that was trying to look like practical effects. Make a CGI monster, but shoot it only from the waist up like they used to back in the 70s and 80s.

Realistically lit objects with a specific frame rate, it’s all the same banana

Cgi and stop motion shouldn't be pitted against each other because they are the same form of art just a different medium. They deserve to be collaborated

I think stop motion looks too good now.

wonderful video mate! Loved the breakdowns!

Better CG than AI. The hill I’ll die on

Blurring the lines is not a good thing. CGI is stealing EVERYONEs style - from 2d to stop motion. Which sucks. And then stop motion, and 2d is trying to look as 3d as possible (hello Klaus). It's kind of sad. All of the 3d printing, and post FX make stop motion and 2d less of their own thing. And a host of new cgi tools are just stealing these other aesthetics faster than ai is. While if I were to do 3d - I'd do just that: try to blend it into a 2d look - I still have a love-hate relationship with this. It's tasteful when a 2d artists it blurring the lines themselves and exploring. But it gets more distasteful when cgi artists are now just grabbing the style into their arsenal. There is SOMETHING to be said for the pleasure that stop motion is an object. And that 2d is a series of drawings. And not just an aesthetic to apply to your cgi. There is so much cgi can do all on it's own. I do just kind of find it offensive to steal from these other artforms. Stop motion, cut out, and hand drawn is where the REAL animation happens. To make it all cgi is simply lesser. Everything is efficiency now.

Thanks for making me convinced that stop motion is not the way to go. It has its niche place, like film camera does, but it's becoming irrelevant.

Absolutely amazing. I can’t get enough of the BTS for Laika and I’m always excited to see more of it. Looking forward to more content to come from you!

I became an animator and started a youtube channel. It was fun but after 3 years I was kinda sick of it xd

I rather have Stop Motion movies with CGI than no Stop Motion movies with actual puppets, which I think would be the alternative, because it's just seen as too expensive now.

not a big fan of 3d faking 2d. Wasnt a fan the other way either. aus lookwd fine - but the 3d shading went so far it actually hid too much of the amazing drawn animation. Each has its own looks and powers. I actually find 3d artist stealing the 2d look to be disrespectful. Do your 3d thang. I do like 2d and 3d blended together though. Like Treasure Planet - and Arcane’s 2d FX

amazing video, thanks for sharing. Great insights on production

The way they animate the robot is so mind blowing

there is a great explanation for background characters using CGI - animation library - you can make a bunch of animations like idles, walkcycles, etc. And reuse them as the production goes. i would love to know if any stop motion studio has tried gaussian splats per frame - this way they would have the same freedom with the camera as CGI animations.

Having the main character be stop-motion makes it easier to have a reference on how the CGI background character should look. Something similar happen with CHAPPiE the robot. They made a puppet replica of the CGI model to reference on how it looks from environment lighting/physical damage on it. Then recreate it in CGI. People are fooled into thinking there are some practical effects of the character when its 100% CGI.

Aardman were using PVR recorders and frame stores from a prism take off on the viewfinder on Mitchell cameras for a number of years before Dragon software came along. And long before that there were EOS systems tape frame grabs before PRVs. they crash recorded a single frame onto a Umatic video tape machine. These were used with a video camera fixed as close to the actual camera as possible but they werent great and ruined the tape machines.

first

Who came from andymations community

CGI > stop motion

we need to show this video to every person claiming "CGI = bad, practical = good". bc these people clearly don't even know what they're watching lol

Good stuff Zaid!

Why aren’t people subscribing to this dude ? This is good content right here

Tim Burton said when Corpse Bride came out that so many people thought it was done in CGI that they intentionally wanted to do something a little rougher and less polished when they did Frankenweenie. That was a cool response, but you could easily see how someone would just get frustrated and give in to using more CGI.

This is one of the reasons to why Henry selick uses less frames on stop motion, so it can show its stop motion since he noticed this issue too that its gotten to the point its hard to tell of which other.

6:58 "just as difficult or more difficult ... at times" I would have agreed with you 10 years ago, but now I can just type what I want into a prompt box, and I will get realistic CGI clip for free with AI. I really hope stop motion stays stop motion

Thankyou for a wonderful video.

To be fair the Lego Movie was trying hard to look like not CGI.

I have been saying for ages, if you 3d print each frame, that's CGI with extra steps.

I love that stop-motion got so good it looks like CGI, meanwhile CGI got so good it can imitate stop-motion

What film were the old men with mustaches from? It looked like a Victorian era piece? Anyone know?

Super super well made video

Incredible! Very informative. Stop-motion, hand-drawn and computer animation all have their own unique challenges, don't they?

As Hand drawing with CGI were great combo together so I gotta say same can go well with stop motion.

If laika uses cg models as a reference for the stop motion, not only that, they animate them, then why they haven't done any cg feature since 2004?