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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   2165 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 3, 2023

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The Lego Movie plays to the strengths of 3D CGI on account of the subject being made of countless tiny pieces of uniform rigid 3D shapes. I imagine it was a huge effort to make in CGI, never mind trying to do it freehand.

Replying to you and @RaiderOfALostTusken

I agree the Lego movie did a good job with the CGI and certainly wasn't lazy. But I think my point still stands of, would it have been better if they had done a more traditional 2D animation? Might the character movements have been accentuated in specific ways, such that it could have connected even more with its audience? Is there any particular strength of the way they animated the characters in CGI that would have been less effective if they had used traditional animation instead? The fact that you say:

I imagine it was a huge effort to make in CGI, never mind trying to do it freehand.

doesn't contradict my premise that the primary thing that CGI is good at is cutting cost and effort. It kind of supports it.

Only because the movie is about a real world dad and son relationship, making the lego scenes appear as realistic as they would if you were the kid playing with them helps put you in the kids shoes. If the movie was done in traditional 2D style, I believe you could tell the same story but I'm not sure if it would land as well emotionally.

In general I'm not sure. Would I like Toy Story as much if it was a standard cartoon style? I like the Miyazaki films well enough I suppose. Other than those I don't think there are any traditional 2D films I like as much as say, Ratatouille or The Incredibles. And I don't know if that's because of the animation or in spite of it

I totally agree with the broad thrust of your post, just pointing out that The Lego Movie is the rare example that justifies its use of 3D and CGI where something like Toy Story, another genuinely good 3D CGI film, could quite conceivably have been rendered freehand in golden era 2D style without any great loss, and probably faster and for a smaller budget - it's the script, the characters and the top tier voice actors that make Toy Story good, the CGI was a technical novelty.

You can't render complex mathematically accurate physics in freehand - and I'm not saying I'm certain they did in TLM - and that's okay because 99% of the time you don't need to to tell a story. But if you want a convincing effect of a tidal wave of tiny Lego pieces crashing over a Lego city, a box full of loose pieces being exploded, or a Lego model that accurately models the qualities of the real product then CGI is going to give a "better" result, and faster. I'm not actually sure it would be cheaper though, 3D rendering is notoriously intensive and the credits for that film are vast.

A talented artist certainly could draw something that looks like a lot of Lego pieces interacting, but the emphasis is on like. CGI will be more immersive for that use even if perhaps it's less graphically expressive in its line-work and frame advances. A hand drawn Lego Movie would give you the "what if you could draw Lego coming to life" feeling where CGI is that much closer to "what if Lego could come to life". The artificial plastic-ness of Lego is an ideal match for the blandness of CGI where something like The Jungle Book or Lion King remakes will fall into the uncanny valley by trying to make singing animals look realistic (I assume, I haven't watched either of them).

In short putting aside cost, speed and effort I think The Lego Movie really would be at the very best no better if it was made without CGI.

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