James Cameron's Avatar

ok, as a guy who has spent a large portion of his life working professionally in 3D, I have to say that is an impressive image. Only part of the shirt that fails is the rolled cuff. Everything else about it is perfect.

Yeah that really does look like a real person, especially the neck and arm, covored in make up, very good indeed.

So who still thinks this is going to be a waste of money?

Me, because British cinema now charges about £275 for a ticket. Thats not even 3D, and if you think I'm going to the cinema to watch this in anything other than 3D you can fuck off.

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:08 AM, abusivegeorge said:

Me, because British cinema now charges about £275 for a ticket. Thats not even 3D, and if you think I'm going to the cinema to watch this in anything other than 3D you can fuck off.

Thats a shame... see it in RealD if you see it in 3D... I just saw Christmas Carol in RealD and watched it last week in IMAX 3D and RealD jizzed all over the ghosting/blurriness I got from IMAX

We don't even have RealD in England. Is that where they use real people for actors? We can't afford that over here. See the Guinness advert. Largest Budget piece of filming in British history and all we could manage was a computerised horse running through a field. 7 and a half million fucking quid.

I saw Christmas Carol myself at the cinema a week or so back. An extremely dark and sinister film which made me jump and I thoroughly fucking enjoyed it. Did you?

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:16 AM, abusivegeorge said:

We don't even have RealD in England. Is that where they use real people for actors? We can't afford that over here. See the Guinness advert. Largest Budget piece of filming in British history and all we could manage was a computerised horse running through a field. 7 and a half million fucking quid.

 

I saw Christmas Carol myself at the cinema a week or so back. An extremely dark and sinister film which made me jump and I thoroughly fucking enjoyed it. Did you?

Yes I did, I saw it mainly to continue testing out different theaters for 3D but Jim Carrey is excellent and the story is pretty powerful. And RealD is just a different company which is producing 3D theaters... they use digital projection, which helps prevent the glitches/ghosting if you see 3D on film.

karmakramer is to Avatar what Joyrex is to PS3.

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:23 AM, beatfanatic said:

karmakramer is to Avatar what Joyrex is to PS3.

I have no problem with that

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:23 AM, karmakramer said:

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:16 AM, abusivegeorge said:

We don't even have RealD in England. Is that where they use real people for actors? We can't afford that over here. See the Guinness advert. Largest Budget piece of filming in British history and all we could manage was a computerised horse running through a field. 7 and a half million fucking quid.

 

I saw Christmas Carol myself at the cinema a week or so back. An extremely dark and sinister film which made me jump and I thoroughly fucking enjoyed it. Did you?

 

Yes I did, I saw it mainly to continue testing out different theaters for 3D but Jim Carrey is excellent and the story is pretty powerful. And RealD is just a different company which is producing 3D theaters... they use digital projection, which helps prevent the glitches/ghosting if you see 3D on film.

Ah I see, well maybe we do have it here then, I'll look out for that.

Apologies for slightly aggressive posting, sometimes I slip.

As I said before, I think this movie will have all the quality it needs to get lots of money from teenagers: brand new cgi-effects, a story trying to be deep, identifying with different types of characters (because of their awesomeness) and stuff like that. As a film it will fail utterly. Because a good film gets done from the depth to the surface not the other way around.

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:32 AM, gaarg said:

As I said before, I think this movie will have all the quality it needs to get lots of money from teenagers: brand new cgi-effects, a story trying to be deep, identifying with different types of characters (because of their awesomeness) and stuff like that. As a film it will fail utterly. Because a good film gets done from the depth to the surface not the other way around.

He wrote the screenplay about 14 years ago and has waited until the CGi effects were up to snuff to tell it... Cameron film's may not have a lot of depth on the surface but even Titanic is quite a bit more thought provoking then many might believe. The story is quite powerful when you think about it in terms of class warfare and the nature of a capitalistic society. Titanic holds a shit load of symbolism thats not entirely obvious if you just view it as a romance flick with special effects.

I honestly prefer Cameron's style then what other directors do by trying to feed/teach their audience lessons or something (Crash for example). He focuses on making an entertaining tale, and from that if you want you can think about it in deeper ways. Fuck, I've had some pretty philosophical revelations from watching kids movies for fucks sake.

I still think this is going to be shit, fair enough it looks convincing in stills, but judging by the previews I've seen the animation really ruins it, not as much as the inane dialog though, not by a long shot.

I would like yo go and see this film with karmakramer, I believe his enthusiasm alone would make this film worth watching lol.

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:45 AM, Gocab said:

I still think this is going to be shit, fair enough it looks convincing in stills, but judging by the previews I've seen the animation really ruins it, not as much as the inane dialog though, not by a long shot.

I think the animations are the absolute best parts... main thing they could improve on is compositing (judging from the part when that monster starts clawing at Jake under the tree, waayyy too blue on the monster's skin imo).

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:49 AM, abusivegeorge said:

I would like yo go and see this film with karmakramer, I believe his enthusiasm alone would make this film worth watching lol.

Haha, you'd hear a lot "holy fuck" - " mother of god" and "jesus fucking christ" coming softly from my mouth if you saw this with me.

anybody see the 60 minutes james cameron interview about avatar yet? this one's for you karmakramer :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXVIzc7OeuU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGdozbBM4Cs&feature=related

I started watching it but minimized the video when they showed new shots... listened to the audio and it was a good piece. It'll be interesting to see how this performs opening weekend. I think Cameron and Fox Studios is hoping more on word of mouth like they had with Titanic cause going into January there is very little new movies coming out to compete and if people start raving about the 3D, then I can see people seeing it in 2D first and then seeing it in 3D again... and again... (and in my case)... again... and again... etc.

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:51 AM, karmakramer said:

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:45 AM, Gocab said:

I still think this is going to be shit, fair enough it looks convincing in stills, but judging by the previews I've seen the animation really ruins it, not as much as the inane dialog though, not by a long shot.

 

I think the animations are the absolute best parts... main thing they could improve on is compositing (judging from the part when that monster starts clawing at Jake under the tree, waayyy too blue on the monster's skin imo).

 

If you think the anim is good you're smoking crack...I agree the anim is shockingly bad for a first-tier VFX studio.

  On 11/24/2009 at 9:14 AM, lumpenprol said:

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:51 AM, karmakramer said:

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:45 AM, Gocab said:

I still think this is going to be shit, fair enough it looks convincing in stills, but judging by the previews I've seen the animation really ruins it, not as much as the inane dialog though, not by a long shot.

 

I think the animations are the absolute best parts... main thing they could improve on is compositing (judging from the part when that monster starts clawing at Jake under the tree, waayyy too blue on the monster's skin imo).

 

 

If you think the anim is good you're smoking crack...I agree the anim is shockingly bad for a first-tier VFX studio.

Even the facial animations? Looks very real to me. The slow down effects that are thrown in there are a little weird, but the flow of the action seems pretty natural. What specifically looks shockingly bad?

When the monster head comes into the frame under the tree that looks a little cheap and sped up perhaps

  On 11/24/2009 at 7:58 AM, lumpenprol said:

ok, as a guy who has spent a large portion of his life working professionally in 3D, I have to say that is an impressive image. Only part of the shirt that fails is the rolled cuff. Everything else about it is perfect.

  On 11/24/2009 at 9:14 AM, lumpenprol said:

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:51 AM, karmakramer said:

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:45 AM, Gocab said:

I still think this is going to be shit, fair enough it looks convincing in stills, but judging by the previews I've seen the animation really ruins it, not as much as the inane dialog though, not by a long shot.

 

I think the animations are the absolute best parts... main thing they could improve on is compositing (judging from the part when that monster starts clawing at Jake under the tree, waayyy too blue on the monster's skin imo).

 

 

If you think the anim is good you're smoking crack...I agree the anim is shockingly bad for a first-tier VFX studio.

I'm confused mate?

the anim in the first avatar trailer was shockingly bad, but since then it seems to improve in every trailer, which makes me think they are actively trying to fix it before release.

The prob is not so much the facial anim, it's the body/bot/animal anims. In the original trailer, the bad anim that caught my eye was: Jake's avatar bangs on the glass in the OR, the timing is wrong; Jake (or was it Naavi chick?) plays with some jellyfish at night, the timing of the arm with the jellyfish was off; horse thing runs along, anim felt wrong; bird-thing launches from a cliff, anim felt wrong. Oh and actually some facial anim was off, the blue guy doing his war cry looks really weird, he's stiff and his mouth just falls open, it's clear they didn't spend enough time on it. Oh there's another scene with bad anim I remember, when the evil sargeant dude is in the mech suit talking to Jake (am I just imagining he's called Jake?), when he says "I'll get you your legs back" it's a digital double but something about the timing between the way his head bobs and the arm moves feels off. Lots of telltale signs if you keep your eyes open for them.

Having worked in both film and video games, the funny thing about film is they are proud of not using mocap if they can, whereas with games it's more like "whatever is fastest." So you'll get a lot of hand animation in films which looks worse than mocap, just because they want to be "arteests." Of course for non-human characters you usually have no choice but to hand animate, but still, they could have done better from what I've seen so far.

  On 11/24/2009 at 9:56 AM, lumpenprol said:

the anim in the first avatar trailer was shockingly bad, but since then it seems to improve in every trailer, which makes me think they are actively trying to fix it before release.

 

The prob is not so much the facial anim, it's the body/bot/animal anims. In the original trailer, the bad anim that caught my eye was: Jake's avatar bangs on the glass in the OR, the timing is wrong; Jake (or was it Naavi chick?) plays with some jellyfish at night, the timing of the arm with the jellyfish was off; horse thing runs along, anim felt wrong; bird-thing launches from a cliff, anim felt wrong. Oh and actually some facial anim was off, the blue guy doing his war cry looks really weird, he's stiff and his mouth just falls open, it's clear they didn't spend enough time on it. Oh there's another scene with bad anim I remember, when the evil sargeant dude is in the mech suit talking to Jake (am I just imagining he's called Jake?), when he says "I'll get you your legs back" it's a digital double but something about the timing between the way his head bobs and the arm moves feels off. Lots of telltale signs if you keep your eyes open for them.

 

Having worked in both film and video games, the funny thing about film is they are proud of not using mocap if they can, whereas with games it's more like "whatever is fastest." So you'll get a lot of hand animation in films which looks worse than mocap, just because they want to be "arteests." Of course for non-human characters you usually have no choice but to hand animate, but still, they could have done better from what I've seen so far.

Oh I thought you meant in the new chase video... I actually agree with all the parts you mentioned from the trailers except the war cry guy, I actually thought that looked quite cool/natural. Did you see the chase video? If so, do you find it to have bad animations?

nope didn't see that one yet :p