MovieChat Forums > The Adventures of Tintin (2011) Discussion > This was animated?

This was animated?

posted 10 years ago by Crustacean_Predation
16 replies | jump to latest

I guess I'm behind the times a bit, but I just saw this and assumed it was live action with a layer of CGI touch-ups placed on top, like virtual prosthetics so to speak. Clearly some characters were more cartoony than others, but I still thought underneath it all there was a real guy that had been filmed and they just exaggerated his features in post production with a computer. But reading about it a bit it seems this isn't the case.

So was anything in this movie real? Were the cars real? Because I thought at least a lot of the filming locations and interiors were physical. I know the animals were all CGI, that much was obvious, but a lot of the stuff like detailed cloth and skin textures, I didn't think computers had reached that stage of realism yet.

[–] Rumble_McSkirmish 10 years ago

All animated

Panzer vor!

[–] nospam-235-614491 10 years ago

animated as in "motion capture" animated.
So, a lot of live action actually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Tintin_%28film%29

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] chocolate_dingo 9 years ago

Ehhh well... If you were going to split hairs like that, you could just as well say that most of the textures are 'real' because they are derived from real photographs.

The point of these kinds of movies is that they are entirly computer rendered.

I like to view them as demonstrations of how far CGI has come.

Of course, like with all other forms of CGI, the final result comes down to the artists & their interpretations.
& yeah, photography is art too ;p

[–] jezfernandez 9 years ago

It's not splitting hairs. Motion capture is completely different to other forms of CGI. It's the difference between freehand animation and rotoscoping.

It's still a visually stunning movie and the mo-cap works exceptionally well. Of course, there's lots of "traditional" CGI in it too. The lighting, for example, is phenomenal.

I loved the fact that the story and characters were still the focus; Spielberg opted for animation in order to capture the spirit and palette of the comic books.

[–] Mhjm6 10 years ago

Yes, believe it or not although I swear I've never seen a more realistic ocean. The animation is mind boggling ain't it?

[–] terryperring104 10 years ago

I thought the animation of water was one of the weak links. That and the eyes..

[–] spazzymagee_drummerboy 10 years ago

Could not disagree more

[–] chocolate_dingo 9 years ago

Water has historically been a difficult thing to get right.
That goes for games & movies alike.

[–] chilone 8 years ago

I too, thought the ocean looked very real.

I don't love her.. She kicked me in the face!!

[–] skoobydoo6789 10 years ago

Yeah, the animation in Tintin was amazing. That's one of the main things that I liked about the movie.

If it's all the same to you, I'll have that drink now.-Loki (Marvel's Avengers)

[–] jajceboy 10 years ago

It is fully animated but in "motion-capture" style. There were all real actors acting in front of a blue screen, with spots on their bodies, and then animated.

I think it worked really well. Made it more alive.

[–] kartoon-1 9 years ago

'Motion Capture' or 'MoCap' is the descendant of Rotoscope animation.

Where live actors go through the motion and then images are traced onto them.

Many Disney films did that so as to create realistic scenes that would be next to impossible to animated in the traditional way.

[–] Robbmonster 9 years ago

My favourite aspect of the animation lay not in the characters, but rather in the way Spielberg was able to design his shots. The way the 'camera' moved really had a kid-in-a-candy-store quality to it, as though he had always dreamed of being able to make such shots, but had been held back by the physical realities of the universe.

But yeah, the whole thing is computer generated.

Too bad they couldn't use the computer to generate some character development for Tintin, though. Most static character in cinema history!

Never defend crap with 'It's just a movie'
http://www.youtube.com/user/BigGreenProds

[–] michaeldinan 8 years ago

Motion capture was used for performance so all the actors could perform as if doing a live action movie

[–] gnasher328 8 years ago

Fully agree, especially the water;-) Normally I don't like the 'realistic' CGI as used in modern cartoons and the new 'Thunderbirds', I find it a bit weird and prefer a cartoon to be just that as in things like 'Ice Age'.
Only drawback was that it distracted me trying to figure out what was real and what was not!