superDrool
Sr Member
Never played the game, but watched some of the gameplay through youtube. Ended up viewing the bosses and end scene. Pretty neat ending.
MaCready FTW!
MaCready FTW!
The Thing prequel
- Thread starter ghostryder
- Start date
JiminSTLouis
Sr Member
OK, that officially freaks me out! :sick
God, what have I gotten myself into...
....Screw it. I'm just going to go to see the movie, sit down, relax, and see what happens. I don't care if what I see is practical or CGI. I'm not going to discriminate CGI just because it's CGI. I've seen CGI look better than practical effects, and I've seen practical effects look better than CGI. I'm going to let my imagination tell me how I think it would feel like, and that clip does a pretty good job at letting me know what it might feel like.
JiminSTLouis
Sr Member
I don't think we can judge from these on-line and youtube videos. They will probably look significantly different (I hope better) on the big screen.
CB2001
Master Member
Part of it was due to the fact that you couldn't really make fluid looking stop motion at that time. Nowadays, with the advent of digital cameras and After Effects, you can make amazing and smooth stop motion sequences like it was a breeze.
superDrool
Sr Member
I don't have any references that come to mind. Do you have any films you can recommend that show this smooth blending of old and new? Nightmare before X-mas?
CB2001
Master Member
I remember talking with one of my teachers at film school about how I wished that some old school methods would be brought back and used for special effects sequences, and I brought up stop motion as an example. The teacher explained that when it comes to stop motion, it is actually several individual images that make up the motion. That means that if you played it a frame at a time, that is what it is, a frame at a time motion. When it comes to watching someone walk, running or throwing a baseball, the natural motion causes a blur that doesn't take up many frames and when watching a movie, our eye tricks us into thinking we're seeing 24 individual frames of motion, when it actually could be less than that. He also explained that unlike nowadays, when you were doing stop motion, you were using film, meaning that you were guessing about how it looked and you weren't sure about how the animation appeared until after you developed the film (to which if you ended up having a hiccup somewhere during the animation, you end up having to go back and redo it). He said explained that when it comes to CG, you could easily recreate the motion blur with the animation itself, thus not having to create the animation one frame at a time and take up time doing so.
For old reference, the original King Kong comes to mind. Pay attention to the movement of Kong, to which is doesn't have any motion blur. There's test animation from Jurassic Park back before Spielberg went with CG which shows that the movement is too clean (there's no motion blur). Basically, anything before the advent and common use of CG are clear examples, as you can see there's a lack of motion blur, as a result it stands out as unnatural.
As for examples of newer stop motion with smooth motion, there's a few I can think of that are actually on YouTube. But the work of Patrick Boivin alone shows how stop motion can look nowadays and done right.
1. Iron Man vs Bruce Lee - YouTube
2. Bboy Joker - YouTube (behind the scenes showing a breakdown of the stop motion and adding of motion blur)
superDrool
Sr Member
I guess if the animated object goes past the speed of a walk or like it, it does look unatural, but that clip could convince me at that walking pace, just not any faster than that. I guess that's the point that is being made here about the dropped thing footage, that the speed at which the tentacles were going, no matter the added techniques, it still wasn't convincing.
CB2001
Master Member
Right. When it came to the speed variation, it looks quite unnatural and it pushes the viewer out of the film. When it comes to stop motion animated movies, there's not much of a problem because everything in the film is animated and not meant to have a sense of realism.
Another reason I heard of why Carpenter cut most of the stop motion figure footage out, from what I remember reading a long time ago, was that the stop motion version of the creature didn't look as terrifying as the real puppet they used for the reveal.
superDrool
Sr Member
Carpenter's a good honest man for doing so. That's why I respect him and most of his films.
Wakeem
Sr Member
I'm really starting to dislike all these reboots, remakes, re-imaginings, different spins on characters, prequels to movies that don't need prequels, etc. Even more so, I hate it when the movie in question takes the original title so new audiences might never watch the original film. The Thing is one of the best horror films and the idea of a prequel is kind of wrong. However, I read a few bits from Mary Elizabeth Winstead comparing her character to Ripley and I think I'm going to give this movie a chance. Just maybe they will have some sort of twist that adds to the original Thing. Even though the whole prequel alone damages the opening suspense and discovery in the original.
Colin Droidmilk
Sr Member
But dinos aren't horror, so I'm fine with Jurassic cg. Nevertheless, the Tyrannosaurus in that film remains the all-time highpoint of cg. That is, the most non-'floaty' cg animation ever done, the only cg creature I've ever seen that fooled me into thinking it might actually be a practical effect (the final fight in the rotunda - despite the other cg in the film, I just couldn't believe that the close-ups on that T-rex could've been done with anything but some miraculous walking animatronic!!).
I think you may be taking it too literally, even Weta and ILM have never achieved true life like CGI, after all its CGI! My ref to jurassic park was more of a ratio or CGI to practical. HAd it have all been practical we wouldn't have had some of the tension in the scenes and had it of all been CGI, well! WHo knows what that would've looked like, not good.
This is all down to budget, if they had the budget to go the way they wanted then I'm sure it will be great, a small production cant afford the best in the industry and have to make do with the best they can afford.
This is all down to budget, if they had the budget to go the way they wanted then I'm sure it will be great, a small production cant afford the best in the industry and have to make do with the best they can afford.
Have you seen the tarantula in Eight-Legged Freaks? I swear, you'd think they really had a monster spider there, stunning piece of work.
I'd kinda like the Thing to be a great movie, but i'm torn as the JC version is one of the best monster movies ever, IMO. what is intriguing me is what they're going to do w/ the music - the original Morricone score is absolutely phenomenal.
superDrool
Sr Member
I saw the trailer for that 6 months ago, and for it's budget was awesome.
GOING SOLO
Well-Known Member
hows kurt feel of this???? you know the are talking of they live remake!!!! escape from ny!!!!!!!!!!! nooooooooooooooooo! lol!
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