Remember When 3D Animation Looked Like This?

[Music] if you grew up in the 2000s like me you grew up witnessing the rise of 3D animation Studios that previously made films using costumes and puppets were trying out 3D animation or mixing it with live action I find this time period kind of fascinating because not only can you visibly see the technology develop over the next 20 to 25 years but also how some of the visuals and art styles shifted once the new and exciting Technologies became standard and expected but there was that period in the Middle where if you heard there was a film coming out that was adapting an animated series or comic chances are good that it wasn't an animated film but instead a live action one with a horrifyingly hyper-realistic CGI version of that character alongside real actors that was just the way it was for a while take a beloved animated character and put them in a live-action film it doesn't matter how weird it looked because it was seen as a fresh and exciting update to that character but over time that strategy ended up with smaller and smaller returns and nowadays we're back to making animated films about animated characters that actually look like those characters for the most part and what I find fascinating is you can even see this art style shift over time within the same series moving from realistic appearances to more stylized and Faithfully cartoony ones which is really cool to see but for a while it was all live action and they all looked like this and it is hilarious to look back on so I want to talk about a few of those films and try to understand not just the spark that created this trend but also how it slowly died out and that visual shift towards the more faithful and stylized versions of these characters first let's back up and provide some context of how we got here before the 2000s 3D animation was usually used to augment practical effects rather than replace them like they do today the concept of animating a main character in a computer was fascinating but not yet possible so to make a live-action adaptation work you can't take yourself too seriously or be too realistic which is why I think it worked in Casper from 1995 which visually still holds up pretty well actually out of anything that could have been the first fully 3D animated main character Casper is a pretty good pick given that a floating transparent 3D ghost is by far the easiest thing you could integrate with live action you don't have to align them with the environment of the scene cast them in Shadow or lighting have them interact with objects or characters too closely it's pretty clever but I think what deserves more credit in retrospect is that they made an effort to retain a lot of the cartooniness and 2D style this sort of thing is not as easy as it looks especially back in the 90s but it's worth it because it Justified why the film exists in the first place you can have super fun interactions and cartoon logic with live action characters which previously was never possible doing all of that the first time this was ever tried is pretty impressive and in a more Ideal World would have set a precedent don't make them too realistic or else it just doesn't work unfortunately not long after this was Rocky and Bullwinkle from 2000 which maintained the cartoony style of the original but ended up tanking at the box office and combined with 3D animation getting more and more realistic and raising audience's expectations I can imagine Executives saw that film tank and said we have to make this dog as realistic as possible Scooby-Doo 2002 is more or less the start of this trend I know a lot of people watching this will be very nostalgic for this depiction of Scooby-Doo and up front I'll say that this looks way better than some of the other characters we're going to be looking at but set aside your Nostalgia for this film and ask yourself should he have these gigantic realistic irises should he have kept this big snout but with realistic fur and teeth I think a lot of films in this decade fall into this trap of going half in on realism and stylization which I don't think looks very good there's this piece of concept art from the film and uh yeah I can see why they didn't go with the cartoony one but originally the film had a more adult self-parody tone and a PG-13 rating and development and I actually think that this version would fit that pretty well I don't think the final Scooby looks bad at all the film actually has some solid practical effects and it fits pretty well into but now 20 years later we have an actual animated Scooby and I don't think our Nostalgia can hide how much better this Scooby looks the animated film has its own flaws there is a corporate stink that plays it extremely safe but its animation is pretty stellar and they absolutely nailed how Scooby looks in that film in those two decades I feel like we learned how to depict cartoon characters with fur and details in a much more appealing and subtle way and it does a pretty excellent job transferring a lot of what makes him iconic into 3D obviously I don't think if you took Scooby from the animated film and put him in the live action film it would work perfectly there's an art Direction and aesthetic to a live-action film that Scooby does fit into when it works it works well I just find it kind of fascinating to compare the two side by side so after Scooby-Doo it can only get better right I may not think Scooby aged that great but surely what comes after looks better and better right right Garfield's 2004 film is a fever dream look at this poster just look at it they made his face longer than it is in the film so it's closer to the comic but it just ends up looking bizarre whenever I stare at it too long I can feel my madness meter rising and I'll get a status effect if I don't close my eyes [Music] Gustav technological limitations aside I can't even begin to wrap my head around how badly it's aged in the near 20 years since its release his eyes are so big they're constantly bloodshot and pink so you have these giant Pink bloodshot eyes with gigantic irises that just stare into your soul at all times and then in every other way from the head down he's just a realistic fat orange cat why again it's this halfway between stylization and realism that just ends up looking kind of weird and creepy his fur also has this fake quality to it that kind of looks more like a carpet and less like cat fur it never quite catches a light correctly so he's always sort of pasted onto the background like a sticker I can't really super blame them for this 2004 was fairly early in the first simulation game but it's still their choice to make his fur really dense and fluffy other films at the time because fur simulation wasn't quite there yet they chose to have their fur more subtle and shorter which I think looks better in comparison also his silhouette in this film doesn't really end up looking like Garfield like he's a fat cat but he has thin Limbs and fluffy fur would hide all that so it ends up messing with his silhouette compared to Scooby Garfield actually has a lot of 3D appearances in the same amount of time and I think a lot of them look pretty good I'm slightly biased but I think his depiction in Nickelodeon All-Star brawl probably looks the best it captures a lot of the original Comics expressions and personality in 3D that I think most other depictions lack there is a 3D animated Garfield film that will be released in 2024 and there is a teaser image but I actually don't really like how this looks the fur details look way better in comparison to the 2004 film particularly these little Stripes but there's some subtle character design changes that don't sit super well with me he's a bit too Stout and his face is a little too big I think if I wanted to see a 3D animated film Garfield it'd be the fur of this design but on the Nick brawl model I guess we'll have to see when it comes out it'll probably look better in motion okay that was 2004. let's enter a new decade 2011 baby what have we gotten sore for us now okay so around this point was when I remember hearing a lot of people starting to get really annoyed by the style of Animation CG was getting really good at this point so computer generated characters integrate into real environments super well compared to Garfield I have zero complaints about how characters fit into the scene they look good the only thing that still needed to catch up was art style and my god do the smurfs look horrible I don't think you could get a Charming shot out of this film if you tried something about the hyper realistic eyes and cheeky Mouse just feels so wrong they have wrinkles and crow's feet and pores in their skin and I just hate looking at them they don't look horrible at a distance but anytime the camera Cuts in close I just physically recoil in fear like I'm a prey animal trapped in the corner by a terrifying Predator this film has the same director as 2002 Scooby-Doo and I think it lends just a little bit of weight to how I feel about Scooby in that film if Scooby-Doo would come out later and taken in some of the technological improvements this film takes advantage of I don't think people would be nearly as nostalgic for 2002 Scooby-Doo as they are now the lesser amount of detail Scooby has in that film due to the more limited technology was a blessing in disguise compared to the Smurfs because the detail in this film ends up being a huge detriment but what's interesting about the Smurfs is that after a sequel in 2014 they rebooted it into an entirely 3D animated film and it actually looks really really good the original Smurfs Comics are by Belgian Comics artist peo and I absolutely love Franco Belgian comic art they're sort of an art style associated with them that's pretty easily identifiable so even though I have zero attachment to The Smurfs as a franchise any Franco Belgian comic art style captures my heart like nothing else they're all just super Charming so a film that captures that but in 3D and does it well is a huge win in my book and I think they pulled it off but that also means you have a direct comparison between art styles not far from each other timeline wise and I find that super fascinating in 2014 you've got hyper realistic horrifyingly hideous Smurfs out here looking like my worst nightmare and then not even three years later in 2017 you have this super lovely art style that captures everything I would have wanted out of a 3D adaptation version of a Franco Belgian comic it's kind of mind-blowing comparing the two side by side and it shows that a lot of this nowadays isn't a matter of Technology but a matter of art direction we have all the technology we need to execute any art direction we want we just need to do it and going the hyper realistic route was very much not it thankfully over time this trend began to fade away more films Embrace stylized animation and character design creating a much more Charming look to their characters obviously it's still done every now and then but at least in more recent cases like Sonic the Hedgehog people are pretty loud and clear that nobody wants characters looking like this I don't think live-action adaptations of Animation are off the table entirely but with some recent successes like Barbie in one piece as well as 20 plus years of hindsight from Bad live-action adaptations they seem to work best when they're self-aware and embrace what makes the original work as we enter a new decade for 3D animation I feel like it's important to keep this in mind prioritize art Direction not realism we've recently entered an era where 3D animation is highly experimental and I think that's because we tried realism and we found it didn't work and it just looks even sillier when companies keep trying to make it work and don't learn anything so in some ways I hope this video is a reminder a reminder to respect and Champion art Direction Over realism to appreciate what we have and to experiment that's all remember to do all the usual YouTube stuff check out my patreon for behind the scenes on all my videos and thanks for watching goodbye [Music] thank you

Channel: Doodley

Views: 499,256

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Id: LeEHnWSeXLA

Length: 11min 0sec (660 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 08 2023