Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Avatar Less Animated Than Expected?


From cinemablend, If we’ve heard anything about Avatar, it’s that James Cameron’s next epic-blockbuster is going to be a CGI bonanza. In fact, if you’ve read any of the older versions of the scripts floating around, there’s every reason to believe the film will almost be a completely animated movie. That notion has been supported by the short length of time Cameron actually had allotted for filming, a month or two, while the effects work and post-production on the movie is supposed to take years.

Now though a site called Marketsaw is challenging that notion, and claims that Cameron isn’t shooting the entire thing in front of a green screen. Instead, they say he’s actually building massive, elaborate sets to shoot in front of. Those sets include massive steel transport ships, and building interiors all constructed life-size. That’s actually not so much of a surprise. A lot of the interiors and space ships would be live action shots, so it would be possible to construct actual sets for those. Unfortunately, those scenes only comprise about 10% of the movie. Most of it takes place in a massive, lush, jungle environment without any human presence whatsoever. Those scenes you’d think we be entirely animated. Not so.

In addition to all the buildings and spaceships, Marketsaw claims they’re working on lifesize version of the plants in the lush, alien environment featured in the film, and working on cool practical effects to show off the way the planet’s alien plant life communicates. I still think 75% of this movie is going to be computer animated, but it’s nice to know that the parts they aren’t rendering on a computer are getting done up in style. Maybe that’ll help compensate for the lack of real environments in the rest of the film.

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