i'm off to see FF tonight...

seen it, it was pretty gravy...

i liked it...it was cool...

i'll probably rent it on DVD l8r...

I was going to use pictures to illustrate a point... but I can't be bothered surfing the web to look for one!!! Anyway, back when I was saying about the animation... the point I was meaning is the "realisim" of the animation. The animation in FF is as realistic as there currently is.

Now taking away that example, most animation so-far is not involving humans, it is using imaginary characters. When you look at the characters in movies so far, they have that animated, plastic look. Which could be what the creators are after, but when I see CG that I like, it's usually the realistic look that I go for.

Now on the other hand we look at the Oddworld CG and even though the characters are not human, they still have the realistic look that the humans in FF have. I believe a lot of it comes down to the use of textures and lighting. OWI is able to use textures to effectively display a characters skin, etc and use of lighting to show them in the environment. To some extent this is the same with the FF movie.

Lampion, even though I love the storyline, I guess it is a storyline you need to be somewhat of a sci-fi fan to follow. I must admitt though that the storyline is not as in depth as those of the FF games which are known for having many twists and times when you think that the game would end. FFVII is probably the most popular of all FF games overall... now if they made a movie based on that I am sure a wider range of people would have loved the storyline.

Actually I went to see FF the other day in what we call "Gold Class" cinemas over here. It was pretty awesome. Gold Class is a cinema with reliners and where you get food/drink delivered to you. I had never been before, but I just had to see FF in Gold Class. You could even feel the vibrations of some of the parts where things are blowing up, etc.

Abe Babe...

Gold Class rocks. I've only been in it once, for Star Wars (I think)...you can order champagne and food during the film, which is a cool novelty, I guess.

I tend to disagree with the idea that textures and lighting make a character look more realistic. This might apply for still shots, but Dr Sid was still a lot more believable than Aki (in my opinion) throughout the film. Being the main character, I don't think they skimped on Aki's modelling - eg. that hair. The difference in realism came from something other than image quality.

I don't think that Final Fantasy's motion was more realistic than anything else we've ever seen, it's just that nobody has tried a CG 'live action' film like it before. When OI animates Glukkons, they move like you'd expect a creatures like that to - the animation is believable because it's realistic to the artistic context. The only difference with Final Fantasy was that its characters were humans, and wouldn't look real unless they moved like we do.

Whoa - that's true in some cases, but look at anything Pixar has churned out in the past...that's far from plastic.
Companies have stuck with bugs and toys for so long because we don't have the technology to make humans seem as believable as the characters in Pixar or PDI's films.

As a sci-fi fan, I found the storyline very easy to follow, and as I said before, it had a great potential, with very interesting ideas (the connecting dreams, the spirits within, the whole Gaia concept, inspired on an actual theory about the Earth), ideas that could be well developed.

Actually, watching the movie, I didn't fell so thrilled as I felt when I watched Toy Story 2, for instance, not because of the visual, but because of the story itself.

As an animation movie, Final Fantasy is the best I've ever seen so far. As a sci-fi movie, I've seen better. Sorry. Maybe that's because I was expecting a more epic film.

the FF peeps are the most realistic humans i've ever seen...
and Oddworld do the most realistic Muds...

i think Pixar could've done a better job on the humans in ToyStory 1/2 if the storyline was closer to them...

congratulations abe babe.
:D :D :D :D

Lampion's right, they didn't put the same effort into anyone...but that's because some people are more central to the storyline than others...