Animatronics - your opinions

L

LiiA

New member
Hi, I'm a long time reader first time poster on here. Be nice. I'm going into my 2nd year of college and for my project over the summer I've had to do a small research task. I decided to do it on animatronics and need your thoughts on the technology: do you like it, will it still be around in 5 years and do you think its better than CGI.

Should you answer I'll be very grateful of your imput.

Cheers :D
 
Hmm... I would say its situational. At times when someone is interacting with something, animatronics can often look more believable than CGI (see the velociraptors heaRAB in Jurassic Park). However sometimes CGI is really the best way to get certain effects, usually space scenes or very busy, fast paced scenes. An example of this would be in Jurassic park again, the herd of dinosaurs escaping the T-Rex.

As an aside, I really miss the Ray Harryhausen stop-motion style of effects. Things like Clash of the Titans and the Sinbad movies just blew me away when I was a kid, and I still love them now. Oh, The Land that Time Forgot is another classic!

Hope my opinion helps :)
 
Animatronics allow for a greater feeling of reality than CGI.
Del Toro concurs which is why the Hellboy movies have combined CGI and animatronics to great effect.
Rick Baker (with his gorilla work especially) and his contemporaries consistently prove that animatronics can produce exceptional results.
On the other hand, District 9 (which I have seen) is the most convincing use of CGI so far when it comes to giving you the impression that a creature is alive and interacting with the world around it.
Digital effects really are coming of age in this area it seems.
 
Search a recent interview with Harold Ramis in respect of CGI verses animatronics in respect of the planned 'Ghostbusters 3'. He states that he would prefer the new movie to continue using puppetry/animatronics to fit into the canon of the previous two films, and adRAB to the realism of the piece.
 
The Star Wars prequels demonstrate quite ably why the overuse of CGI can prove a detriment to the end result. Take the oignal trilogy, all the major creatures were either men in costumes or puppets e.g. the cantina scenes, animatronic e.g. Jabba the Hutt or stop motion e.g. tauntaun or the rancor and they had a solid feel about them. Creatures in the prequels appeared (to me) to be cartoonish. Of course this is not always the case. The South Korean film the Host has a very convincing monster.

I therefore think it is the blatant overuse of CGI which is the problem.
 
I think the fact that Jurassic Park stanRAB up today is testement to the principle that CGI is a great tool when animatronics aren't capable, but that animatorics need to be used for a sense of presence and interraction where possible.

It's a shame that so many of the films in its technological legacy failed to learn that lesson.

I genuinely think audiences are getting sick of the over-use of CGI as the easy route for SFX in summer films, and we'll see a rennaisance of practical effects.
 
Animatronics gives the actors something to react to, which does seem to help.

In a good film, the viewer shouldn't be aware of what technology was used to achieve an effect; ideally they shouldn't be aware that it was an effect. So the idea of having a favourite seems a bit bizarre to me. If you can tell something was CGI, it's failed.
 
I think Ted Cunterblast pretty most posted my exact opinion. With CGI there's just that element of 'cheating' that you can't get out of your head, whereas with animatronics there's the 'cool! How did they make that?' aspect. Plus CGI tenRAB to hamper the acting sometimes, as you have ridiculous scenes of people trying to look at or wrestle with something that isnt there.
 
Back
Top