www.hollywoodreporter.com: "Our challenge with Smaug was making him every bit as engaging and believable as his live-action counterparts," explains David Clayton of Smaug's Oscar-nominated VFX team from Weta Digital.
Clayton tells THR that to get started, Cumberbatch came to Wellington, N.Z.'s Weta in early 2012. "Using our motion-capture stage, we recorded his performances, which focused on the conversation with Bilbo sequence. Having Benedict in a mocap suit was lots of fun -- for us, and hopefully for him, too -- and seemed to help get him immersed and home in on the character."
8 comments:
As ridiculous looking as this is, I really appreciate what they have done with Smaug. While personally I prefer practical effects, I understand why it would be impractical for this character and Motion Capture seems like the next best thing. It makes the animated character behave like a puppet, rather than a robotic entity, which allows it to feel more organic. In real life a creatures motions aren't perfect, and with motion capture this unpredictability is transferred to Smaug on the big screen. Also, I just find it really fun to watch Benedict Cumberbatch pretend to be a dragon.
This is pretty cool, the amount of technology and detail that goes into creating the dragon is amazing. It is also interesting that they used Benedict Cumberbatch acting as a dragon to influence the behavior that Smaug has. I do not know much about this technology but it seems like they went the extra mile to make him a little more realistic and give him a bit more personality. The fact they had to CG the coins also and make them move at the right time with Smaugs body is really cool.
I'm jealous! I want to be animated into a dragon!!! I enjoy the fact that they are really trying to get the animation of the face as real as possible by imitating human facial movements while talking. I know a lot of 2D animators have to do this, but they are just doing simple mouth shapes and flat faces. 3D gets you into a whole different ball game. Each of those facial movements is now textured and have to move like real facial muscles would. They didn't have to take these extra details into account. They could have animated Smaug like people have been making dragons for a while now. It feels so much more real when they attach actual face movement to the animation so that all the little quirks of the mouth are captured when they might have been forgotten about.
It truly is incredible to see all of what is put into making a film. I was especially amazed to hear that out of the million scales that Smaug has, every single one had its own unique look. It is amazing where animation has taken us. Another thing that struck me was Benedict hooked up and becoming the dragon literally. In my acting class we had just done our animal projects so it is nice to see that it is used for even the professionals.
I was initially confused by this article, because dragons aren't humanoid and therefore would be difficult to transfer directly from human movement to CGI. However, when I read that they mostly used it for facial movement and general head nuances, it made more sense to me. I didn't think of how challenging it would be to animate a reptilian face to allow it to talk. The video was really impressive- I can't even imagine what goes into animating one million individual scales!
The massive growth of realism in characters through the integration of technology and art for film continuously fascinates me! I remember watching the ends of Disney movies and seeing the amount of time artists took to draw each frame and now it is the actor that is being translated in the animation! The first time I recognized motion capture was being used was in Monster House when I was in about the 8th grade. It's pretty amazing to see it applied more realistically. I am looking forward to how much more realistic artist will make fictional characters look in years to come. However, I am also curious how animated children's movies will continue to grow in the process. They already look much different from the movie I watched when I was younger and personally, I still like the drawn look. This opinion, I understand, is very biased but how realistic or non realistic will children's animated movie become?
I think this is pretty cool. Yeah, the whole movement and getting the mouth to move properly is really cool. I'm actually more fascinated at the details that went into making the dragon digitally. EVERY SCALE IS UNIQUE! THAT'S INSANE! The time and the focus it must take. I always found that so fascinating and amazing about film and theater! Like in costumes, the tiny details that are put in the clothes, the tiny beads that are hand sewn in that no one even sees yet they are still so crucial to making the outfit what it is. Oh oh, I know. In Wicked, the ball scene is around 10 seconds long. The dresses in that scene are some of the more expensive dresses in the entire show. They have so much detail. That is the one scene I didn't even remember and after asking around, not many people remember that scene! It's crazy. Smaug's Eyes are incredible too. The detail and how they open and close is so real. I'm excited!
The realization was definitely stunning. I could only imagine before this how much work must have gone into this. I knew Benedict Cumberbatch did the voice and motion capture, but I did not know what the creative team did after that. The detail that went into creating Smaug is absolutely remarkable and I greatly admire how much effort CGI artists put into their work to make it look so realistic and convincing in movie theatres and homes, alike. Congratulations on suspending my disbelief
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