Stop Motion Vs. CGI

[Ghetsis-Dennis]

In the early days of Hollywood, films used stop motion animation to bring non-human characters such as King Kong to life. Then in the 90s came CGI, which were made popular from Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park, and became a groundbreaking phenomena that killed off stop motion. Now we're fast forwarding to the 21st century, and people are beginning to grow tired of CGI and wish for Hollywood to retire from them and go back to using old special effects such as stop motion. An example of these people is James Rolfe, a.k.a. the Angry Video Game Nerd, who complains about CGI being overused, especially on the Transformers films, wishes to see the vintage effects back. It's one of those issues where it's hard to find out about Hollywood's future, and it provides another example of nostalgia filter, which has proven itself to be a dangerous threat to the entertainment medium, especially on the internet. So I ask, should fully retire this evolving technology and go back to using stop motion effects in order to please the audience who grew up in the 70s and 80s, or should we keep them and find a way implant stop motion in these films where it's a mix of both stop motion and CGI?

 

[Cap'n Jack]

Completely get rid of CGI? Hell no. They provide fantastic visual effects in live-action productions. As far as complementary visual effects go, I highly support CGI. I don't want a wire model Optimus Prime, I want a realistic one, and to date, CGI is the most realistic we can get. Stop-motion effects might provide a neat atmosphere for something like, say, a drama about a gold-plated automaton in Victorian England or something, but when the crew of a production wants the characters to be realistic or more articulate and ambulatory, CGI all the way.

Now, as for entirely animated productions, both fields have their advantages or disadvantages. CGI films such as Up and Toy Story have an undeniable charm to them. They allow films to be more ambitious in design or such, in a more practical manner than stop-motion. And they can be surprisingly detailed, too.

Stop-motion films such as The Nightmare Before Christmas also have a charm to them, a different sort. They allow for more "personality" (if that makes sense), atmosphere, and sheer wonderment when people watching go "wow, this was all done with little models and a camera?".

They both have advantages to them. Different kinds of films are done better justice using one method than the other.

 

[RaccoonGoon]

Stop Motion is so damn cool.

 

[TFSpock]

We should stick with CGI. It's more realistic and allows more to be done with the movie, whereas with stop motion it can't be as detailed and takes up more time. Stop motion gives a movie a nice atmosphere, but like I said, is impractical compared to CGI.

As for stop motion replacing CGI, that would be pretty much like getting rid of all cars and replacing them with horses because they've "been around longer".

 

[Te-em]

CGI is overused, but I must agree that both Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 have very good CGI effects. CGI isn't perfect though. You often see if something is animated with CGI. Like Gollum in LOTR for instance, he would have looked much better if he'd been an actor with makeup. I've seen old movies with very good effects, because of makeup and use of dolls, miniatures, stop-motion etc. I think CGI is overrated, but it can make good effects as long as it's not used just because it's CGI or because its easier/cheaper. In Jurassic Park, sometimes the heads of the dinosaurs where not CGI when close up, to increase realism. So the makers of that movie didn't use the effects from their Amiga computers when there was a better solution.

I'm not very happy with the CGI version of Mewtwo Strikes Back, because it feels so pointless. That 3D effects are replacing 2D animation is not good, and if you've seen films like Heavy Metal you'll understand why.

There is also some kind of art I like in old movies. Like in Metropolis from 1927.
And I would never want to see Darkness in the movie Legend being in CGI, so I should be glad it's from the 80's. There also the 80's movie The Never-ending Story, CGI effects can't beat that.

But maybe in the future, 3D effects will look real. A friend once told me one of the things he likes about making movies is that if you could push a button and everything appeared as you want it. If I made a movie, I would actually enjoy the problem solving in getting where I want, so "pushing a button" to get your effects would be rather boring.

I think, when making a movie, you should use CGI when you get better results from that and stop-motion when that is better. You can pick the best of each. Then, it also depends on in what style you want your film to be. I think CGI is often picked because it's easier and cheaper than other techniques, which of course make the movie lose quality, like I am Legend for instance.

 

[Shinobu]

I do agree that CGI is being overused, but I don't think stop motion figures can replace it. Mixing live action and CGI elements has been going on for a while, and it is effective. People just need to stop using CGI nonsensically (I'm looking at you, Green Lantern).

 

[Cap'n Jack]

I do agree that CGI is being overused, but I don't think stop motion figures can replace it. Mixing live action and CGI elements has been going on for a while, and it is effective. People just need to stop using CGI nonsensically (I'm looking at you, Green Lantern).

Exactly. Jurrasic Park is a good example of a movie that mixes live-action and CGI elements. And look at how fantastically its special effects hold up even now, almost twenty years later.