Oh, for fuck's sake

[yvannairie]

So, yay, the internet wheedled a promise out of the director of the Sonic movie that they'll "fix" his model, and everyone is jumping out of the woodwork to convince everyone else that This Is Good, Actually, b/c with 3D animation you can just port motion over from one rig to another and do "minimal fixes" to get it looking right again.

And, sure, as far as lighting goes, that's valid; as far as texturing goes, it's mostly valid -- but as far as the actual animation of the thing, "minimal fixes" is gonna mean "retiming the entire thing, which can take anywhere from half the time to just as long as the original animation", depending on just how different the new rig is. Even if they just change his face, they're gonna either have to try to recapture the performance, or ship a flat-at-best-uncanny-at-worst unpolished animation.

Not to mention, redoing effects, redoing compositing (yeah fancy that, if they change his shape and dimensions they're gonna have to change the way he's drawn into a scene) and redoing various simulations to make them match his new mass, or make him look like he's either made of lead or filled with helium.

And people are treating this as a good thing.

"But the movie looks kinda dumb!" Yeah no shit, it's a Sonic film. Take it up with the script or the concept! I thought the trailer looked fucking fun. Appeal is subjective!! Who knew???!?!

Comments

[cassini]

[bit of a shitshow, right? i love a good bit of mockery but its all a bit much in this sitch, like, i don't think anyone's looking pretty good rn. not the people making the artistic choices, the people who shit on it, the people who are changing the direction of the product, the people celebrating... idk, this thing seems like im dreaming it ]

[yvannairie]

I'm the most appalled by all the 3D animators who keep saying "it's no big deal b/c you can share animations between rigs" -- like, even if that is true in a sense that it's sometimes done

a) those rigs are designed in a way that allows them to share animations and

b) movie animation uses multiple different models, usually, for different distances and levels of detail, and since they've already shot the plates they're forced to stick to Sonic being roughly the same size anyway, that's still way more animation than is sensible to resynch across camera angles, distances and lenses

c) ...*drags hands over face* either way the compositing and effects teams are going to have to redo literally everything and even if the best-case animation-wise is not going to help them because 3D models need to be lit and composited separately since, may I remind you, the rest of the movie is not in 3D.

So, yeah, it's a bad look overall.

And I can, like, suspend my annoyance with people who really fucking hate how Sonic looks? Fine? Taste is subjective, I think he looks fine except from a few highly specific angles, I think he looks good in motion, I think he has a nice expressive, and people are free to disagree with that, but this is just fucking gauche.

I really hope this was a publicity stunt, and they cut the trailer from shots finished with some old model before they decided internally that hey, we gotta rework this, it Looks Weirder Than Intended.

[cassini]

[that definitely sounds like a lot of work i do not understand at all ]

[its, again, the connectedness that is rattling me most because it's something i comprehend - the inescapable nature of the criticism, it's everywhere, you can't block it. if you're working on the product, whatever your opinion of it is, you're gonna see the extreme criticism and that. don't sit great with me. Vicious Mockery sucks and when the whole party, all the npcs and the furniture are casting it at you it's gotta be hard to deal with ]

[yvannairie]

Yeah, that's the other thing. Like, IDK, if it were me I'd be actively avoiding looking at reactions anyway (also, believe it or not, most people know the thing they're working on is Kinda Crap and find their joy in it in other ways or just... power through it) but in case this isn't a marketing trick, I don't like the precedent it sets, either.

The Internet Hate Machine got James Gunn fired, and it "made Sonic 'better'." I dread to think what happens next.

[cassini]

[gods art and criticism and creativity and people are so complicated - no wonder i opt out 3: ]

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

To be fair, my coworker's theory was that they used a different, uglier model for just the trailer, and that the movie as it will be released has been as it is the whole time, so there's no actual extra labor going on right now, and that the whole "the animators are going to fix it" was a planned publicity stunt, and that the ugly model was meant to drum up public outrage and disgust.

[yvannairie]

I'd honestly be happy if this was just a publicity stunt that will undoubtedly create a bad precedent. I'm still prolly gonna Remain Mad about the "as an animator" takes (yeah, no shit they can do that, but whether they should is another matter and hey, you can't prebake compositing like that) and also, just... I do not like the precedent this sets. I do not.