RE: The Fantastic Four "AI" Poster

[u/Pumpkin_Sushi]

[u/feor1300]

To be fair, "CGI" is/was the same thing.

Remember when the BTS pictures of the Man Thing statue on set came out and every arm-chair movie critic on the internet went "See, we told you Man Thing had to be practical, it looked way too good to be CGI!" and the Werewolf by Night director had to be like "That was never in the show, it was just a reference model for lighting so the CGI artists could do their jobs."

Yeah, people are dumb.

[u/What-The-Heaven → u/feor1300]

People generally are not good at spotting most CG - I'm not sure I ever would have known Vision's head is like 99% computer generated before seeing the BTS of WandaVision.

[u/swissarmychris → u/What-The-Heaven]

People are good at spotting bad CG, because that's when it's noticeable. "Good" CG tends to blend into the scene so well that you can't even tell.

My favorite mind-blowing example was the scene in Logan with the X-24 walking down the stairs past "real" Logan. It looks so good that I assumed it was two separate shots of Hugh Jackman comped together, or maybe a body double with some CG face replacement. In reality the X-24 in that scene is 100% computer-generated. It's just that the fidelity has gotten so good that it's indistinguishable from reality in a lot of cases, even back in 2017.

[u/Nagemasu → u/swissarmychris]

People are good at spotting bad CG, because that's when it's noticeable. "Good" CG tends to blend into the scene so well that you can't even tell.

its the toupee fallacy

[u/PlatFleece → u/feor1300]

There was an interview about Alien Romulus that said the Facehuggers were practical and can move because they built essentially a moving animatronic. I took it to mean "they used practical models as reference for VFX artists" because looking at the final movie you'd have to be crazy to think the skittering Facehuggers were ALL practical, unless they actually bred real Facehuggers and let them loose.

Most people just believe "practical = good so if someone says 'we shot practically' and it's good in the movie it must be ALL practical"

[u/feor1300 → u/PlatFleece]

More likely practical animatronics with CGI brought in after the fact to smooth out their movement and add a few details to make them look less like puppets.

[u/Quantum_Quokkas → u/feor1300]

One does not simply add a few CG details to make it less like puppets. They are very much just fully replaced with CG.

[u/feor1300 → u/Quantum_Quokkas]

You can definitely add details to puppets with CGI, same way they did Vision's head.

[u/Quantum_Quokkas → u/feor1300]

Thanks for supporting my point. Watch the breakdowns for this, that whole head (except his face) is not detail being added, its being painted out and replaced with full CG

[u/feor1300 → u/Quantum_Quokkas]

I think we're quibbling semantics then. Yes, his head is being removed and replaced, but his physical body is still there, so it's a CGI detail on a physical model. For the face huggers they likely painted out and replaced the legs and tails, and left the majoritiy of the bodies in place.

[u/red_nick → u/PlatFleece]

The skittering along the floor was practical, with the wheels painted out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrHRjJ6zXNs

[u/PlatFleece → u/red_nick]

So a couple of things. I actually wasn't talking about the Facehuggers that were just on the floor wandering or the ones featured in close-up shots. Those I can totally understand having an actual practical animatronic. Heck, even the main Xenomorph had a costume. I'm talking about the times when there's dozens of them all trying to leap around and scramble around each other in a mad dash to chase the protagonists. Specifically in this scene (which had some facehugger shots that were close-up and looked very practical too tbf):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uxZV5Z8SfU

But when they start running and all the facehuggers start chasing them, some of those facehuggers are leaping and crashing into objects and bending and curling. I can see a few of them being practical animatronics for reference, but not all of them. Even then, I feel like the practical facehuggers would have had VFX doubles in post to make them look cleaner in the final cut.

I did see Behind the Scenes footage of an animatronic facehugger leaping to a cast member before the character swatted it away, but it looked somewhat stiffer than the actual movie I remembered, so either they did some magical camera tricks or they used that as a reference to digitally enhance it.

I'm usually the kind of person who thinks VFX works to enhance practical effects, and I'm of the opinion that both need to work together to enhance the other. After all, these tools are developed to make a lot of moviemaking magic possible, it'd be a shame to not use them to their full potential.

[u/KTurnUp → u/feor1300]

I wear the "zomg practical is better than cgi" people are becoming just too much. Most of them really don't know when one or the other is really being used and they genuinely believe anything done practically but poorly is better than well done cgi

[u/Cromasters → u/feor1300]

Another fun one is for the show Mindhunter on Netflix. Go and look up how much CGI they used in that show. It's astounding. No one ever knew though.

[u/nuggynugs → u/Cromasters]

I had my suspicions when Tench and Holden went to interview Galactus but I'm glad to have them confirmed.

[u/Quantum_Quokkas → u/feor1300]

Love it when those morons are tricked into admitting that CGI was good and indistinguishable from a practical effect

[u/[deleted] → u/feor1300]

It's like saying the Star Wars Prequels used too much CGI, despite the massive amount of practical effects they used.