All Hail Analog! (Read: Balls to CGI)
26 04 2007I used to be a 3D modeller. I worked in Alias Studio on an SGI back when the idea of layers in Photoshop was unthinkable. The idea that we would all soon be able to use our laptops to run high end animation software to make our own movies was ludicrous… But here we are.
I’ve never been a fan of the big Hollywood animated feature. I’ve never seen Toy Story or the sinister Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo or the majority of the genres œuvre, but for a long time I was still “wowed” by CGI in a technical sense. That one concession ended a while back though. We’ve reached a technical plateau in the sense that the visuals being presented aren’t compromised by the softwares inability to deliver, aside from those projects which try to achieve human realism.
So I’m at the point now where I resent much of the CGI I come across in movies or on TV. It’s formulaic and gimmicky, redundant and conspicuous. Oh look, penguins dancing again… Oh joy, the talking dog offers me delicious death by E. coli, and the talking baby wants me to eat a sandwich… Color me “wowed.”
For these reasons and countless others, I champion projects like those below. Please, isn’t there a single director in the Hollywood system with the tenacity and resources to make a sci-fi movie the old school way? Where is the next generation Ridley Scott? Somebody bust out the glue and make some goddamn miniatures. I’d put 2001 or Alien up against any CGI malpractice from the last decade.
All hail analog!
Categories : Design, Motion Graphics, Music, Technology







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