TROLL TIME: Do you like modern Disney 3D "stylized" characters? I don't!

[NodeX]

In fact, I consider those characters the lowest point in Disney’s history…

I have thought of this a lot, especially every time I attempt to watch a Disney animated movie, “for the art alone”, and most times I quit watching, not because the plot is boring or uninspired (which is rather common), but because the 3D characters are soul-less, un-expressive, cold (despite jumping up and down), and in general too fake for my taste.
So I only keep watching when the plot and/or the originality really shines.

For example, I can’t find anything of emotional value or emotional expression capability worth mentioning on this character, no matter how hard the animator is pushing the rig’s limits, the expression is still fake with those plasticky, soul-less eyes (and the rest of cheap toy looking features):

I’m not saying that I don’t get the intended emotions, I’m saying that I have to interpret them from what the characters do using cold-reason, instead of getting them directly, subconsciously.
An analogy would be like watching a movie with bad actors who violate the “don’t act like acting” principle -you’ll still get the attempted emotions, but you won’t enjoy it. At all.

The reason
The reason is simply oversimplification of facial features (including the eyes).

That’s because emotions from the facial expression alone (except posture, motion, intended action, etc) depend exclusively on the detail and manipulation of facial features.
So when you smooth-out, and oversimplify the facial features, it’s inevitable that you’ll also dramatically reduce the range, quality, specificity, and subtlety of expressed emotions, like reducing the colors from 24 million to 64 for example, in order to make a gif.

Why they do it?
I think they do it only because the animation difficulty increases exponentially to the amount of facial detail, and the cost skyrockets due to the time and effort required to avoid all side-effects, including the most dangerous: the “uncanny valley”.

And no, they don’t do it because they want to make “stylized” characters.
They could make detailed stylized characters that they would be exceptionally expressive ones, but they prefer to choose the easy-path of easy to make and animate characters, with the least amount of development and animation effort and cost.

I predict that we’ll get past today’s era of poor 3D character art, when special software will be able to assist dramatically the artist in making and validating flawless, highly expressive characters -stylized or not.
Then the difference on emotional expressiveness will be like night and day, which will render all today’s characters and movies unwatchable in comparison.

Having said all that, it doesn’t mean I don’t like some of Disney’s characters, especially when they are the product of inspiration and thus they are original, but I’m not talking about likeability of some designs here, I’m talking about emotional expressiveness and thus what they can offer in an animated movie.

For example, at first glance, I like this one -which reminds me the actor in the movie/series “The One million dollar man” - Steve Ostin):

…but then, when I see screenshots from the action:

…I its FAKEness becomes apparent!

FAAAKE!

I know that the vast majority of 3D artists prefer those Disney-style characters, as there are so many software apps, and ready-made rigs, tutorials, etc that assist in rigging and animating that same style, so everyone is making them, and it’s the beginner’s only way to heaven…
…like when the first clumsy personal computers were made available - that’s where we are today in 3D character animation ( I’m not counting the A.I black-box approach, it’s too early for that, they are still too dumb and primitive too).

My point is that difficulty should not be the excuse to follow the easy-path that leads to mediocre results, and there is not such a thing as a current “fashion”, it’s more like preference to mimicking (easy), than innovating (hard).
If more artists invested time and effort to animate more detailed characters (stylized or not), most problems would have been solved today, and we would have more and better software to assist making and animating them. So as I see it, the solution is a detailed stylized character.

Personally, I would always choose to watch a failed, risky innovating attempt (eg Polar Express, Final Fantasy, and some less failed ones like the awesome Harlock: Space Pirate, etc - see this list for more: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls070935008/ ) than watching risky-free, one-of-the-same, boringly expressionless ones.

What do you think?

[joseph (J)]

@NodeX

The reason
The reason is simply oversimplification of facial features (including the eyes).

That’s because emotions from the facial expression alone (except posture, motion, intended action, etc) depend exclusively on the detail and manipulation of facial features.
So when you smooth-out, and oversimplify the facial features, it’s inevitable that you’ll also dramatically reduce the range, quality, specificity, and subtlety of expressed emotions, like reducing the colors from 24 million to 64 for example, in order to make a gif.

I agree with some of your points, but this simply isn’t true. Studio Ghibli has made some of the most expressive animated characters of all time, with facial features that are far more simple than your examples. If the complexity of facial features determined expressibility, no anime or cartoon would have expressive characters. It’s about the skill of execution, not the quantity of detail

[sozap]

Did you said troll-time ?
I tend to agree that there is a kind of generic / pixar like human style that is maybe seen a bit too much. That doesn’t mean it’s always the same. Each movie as a particular design that make it’s characters design unique to their stories.

In the same way we could say that japan anim is all about big eyes and big breast… While there is a generic anime/manga style, there is a lot of variety within that manga and jap anim style.

You talk about more risky innovating attempt like Harlock, but it’s a very different genre and target audience than pixar’s one. It’s unfair to compare them side by side. Maybe it’s just that you prefer different kind of animated movies and get a bit bored by pixar’s family comedies/feel good movies.
To me Harlock isn’t very innovative in the character design either, it’s just different. It’s more risky in the sense that teenage/adult animation movies get less audience, but graphically it’s not what I call innovative or risky.

Also indeed, as you pointed out, these generic style becomes generic also because they tend to be technically simpler to make. Which allow the production to invest time and energy in different aspects of the movie. Or just take that generic style that every CG artist involved knows about, and improve things like rig, cloth ect…

If you take the movie “Peanuts” while the design is known from the start, how they pull out in 3D is quite innovative. Technically it was kind of uncharted territory. That means a lot of R&D just to get the characters. And they need to invest extra time and money to get every artist on board familiar with these new techniques. Models, textures, rigs, animation teams need to adapt to these differences.
While in a “pixar” movie the R&D can focus on hair, cloth, or more fine tuned expressions. Every artist is familiar with the workflow, so you don’t spend too much time and energy because of the particularities of the design.

All that said, I’m all in favor of innovative styles, while in 2D animation there is a lot of original designs, in 3D we are a bit behind and that’s sad. In the other hand , I can understand producers that don’t want to take risks. When you put a few millions on the table you want to make sure that you get your investment back. Taking risks is really a double edges sword, while making non-risky product makes the result more predictable.
In the end, the sad truth is that’s an industry, not an art. Producer want safe placement of their money, they don’t care that much of being innovative for the sake of it.

[alekba (Alek)]

… Well, you give a examples of work which you don’t like, but nothing which you like. Take look on your gallery to see what is your personal taste trough your work and see…
Also your IMDB link show completely different genre or style, so you de facto compare oranges and apples. Really man, WH 40k and Disney Princess.

Disney make oversweetened movies for ‘entire family’. Not only humans also animals, robots all are coated with ‘curtness’. We all are aware of this, Disney are aware that we are aware, we are aware that Disney are aware that we are aware…
Aaand? Nothing. You can freely accuse big majority of studios or individual artist for same ‘sin’. Also 'cuteness" are not Disney invention. This style is product of long evolution… Disney are just most prominent. Just look here on BA and you will see tons and tons such stuff.
Also this is not only style of oversweetened style. Japan Manga - Anime are even ‘worse’ if you decide to look in this way.
Every merchandise have his customer. I don’t judge artist which work in this style or people which love such style. Sometime for fun I draw or sculpt in this style… not my favorite, but again don’t have nothing against.
Of course for such stylized style have other ways. Repeat, STYLIZED, not semi realistic like Appleseed. But in such stylized characters which are risky, innovating are something for totally different audience. And NO Polar Express and FF are not something different, they are same as Disney or worse. At least from my point of view.
So I wait to see your work which are innovative, risky, different, not intentionally cute… or mediocre like you say.

[sacboi]

TROLL TIME: Do you like modern Disney 3D “stylized” characters? I don’t!

incoming - me neither!

this conglomerate’s DNA seems to profligate a sanitized generational mid 20th century euphemism for a ‘cotton candy’ snow white Stepford thesis, initiated by it’s founder…

and this offering was particularly offensive, as someone with Maori heritage:

How the Story of "Moana" and Maui Holds Up Against Cultural Truths

or frozen

[alekba (Alek)]

Well, let keep this thread in ARTISTIC domain. Otherwise this will easy stray in brainless discussions about… y’know. Leave politics and ‘science’ to politicians and ‘scientist’.

[NodeX]

@ josephhansen

I agree with some of your points, but this simply isn’t true. Studio Ghibli has made some of the most expressive animated characters of all time, with facial features that are far more simple than your examples.

First, Studio Ghibli is a completely different genre, it’s hand-drawn based animation, which is no “modern” as I wrote on the title -because I consider Disney’s old hand-drawn animations more expressive.

The big difference of hand-drawn vs CGI is that you can draw only the important lines if you want, while with CGI you are stuck to visually repeating all the boring uninteresting or fake features in every frame.
You can resort to lighting in order to hide stuff and enhance CGI, and BTW, Disney doesn’t seem to use lighting much… if at all, which adds a lot to the cheapo-look.

Second, Studio Ghibli is actually passionate about …realism! (Disney’s opposite).
They have more natural movements (instead of the extreme jumpy style), they pay attention to the little nuances of character’s movements and actions, they pay a lot of attention to what’s happening on the background, etc all in order to make it more believable and realistic -despite being fantasy. And they even make realistic faces, and body features, eg:

If the complexity of facial features determined expressibility, no anime or cartoon would have expressive characters. It’s about the skill of execution, not the quantity of detail

Hand drawing is selective, compression-like, so it can carry more information with less features, but we’re talking about CGI here.
There are no expressive characters in CGI, of Disney-like style, that’s my point.
And when I say there are no expressive I mean compared to humans, humans are the reference.

I suggest you pay close attention to the nuances of human expression in various real (not stock video or movies) situations, to realize the amount of information (bandwidth) that is transmitted with every little adjustment of the complex facial muscles.
Even the human eyes, never stay still, they move constantly.
That comes in high contrast with the dead-look of a character that is doing something while having the eyes still, or almost still (robotic motion)! Very common mistake.

Another great exercise is to try to animate a very realistic human head.
Then you’ll start to see the rainbow of emotions, and how they change at milimeter range, that are simply impossible with such simpleton characters.
That’s how I was convinced about the importance of detail in facial features.
Even the features themselves tell a lot about the character-personality before you even start to animate them… however I look at it, I stumble upon evidence that proves my point.

Of course, I’m like a non-believer inside a church, LOL I don’t expect that everyone will understand and accept what I’m saying, but the replies are quality ones.

@ sozap

Did you said troll-time ?

Well, making heretical claims is somewhat synonymous to trolling…

You talk about more risky innovating attempt like Harlock, but it’s a very different genre and target audience than pixar’s one. It’s unfair to compare them side by side.

I also compare them with humans, since I’m talking about their limits on expressiveness.
Detailed characters can be made for any audience – but Disney mostly tries to impress the babies in the family lately…

Maybe it’s just that you prefer different kind of animated movies and get a bit bored by pixar’s family comedies/feel good movies.

Nope, I get bored when I realize that I watch for 1 hour the same few cliché expressions repeating, again and again, with nothing else on the menu.

To me Harlock isn’t very innovative in the character design either, it’s just different.

By “innovative” I didn’t mean the realistic ones. They are risky, not innovative.
But the stylized realistic ones can be innovative.
Also, the tools and techniques required to successfully animate realistic characters, have to be innovative, because that is still unexplored territory.

I can understand producers that don’t want to take risks.
[…]
In the end, the sad truth is that’s an industry, not an art.

Exactly, which is why I mentioned the cost factor as the main reason for mediocre results.

@ alekba

… Well, you give a examples of work which you don’t like, but nothing which you like.

I implied that I like realistic characters, albeit they only have a few moments of awesomeness.
I also like stylized realistic ones, but I haven’t found any from the big studios – that’s what I’m experimenting with myself.

Disney make oversweetened movies for ‘entire family’. Not only humans also animals, robots all are coated with ‘curtness’. We all are aware of this, Disney are aware that we are aware, we are aware that Disney are aware that we are aware…

Too much sugar becomes boring, and limits the variety of taste.

Quality comedy could also entertain the whole family, while having the widest range of emotions, especially with the type of characters I’m proposing.

Anime are even ‘worse’ if you decide to look in this way.

I can’t stand them at all, LOL, though mostly because of the plot…

@sacboi
Interesting, and there is more happening lately with Disney, but let’s not open Pandora’s box…

[zeauro]

Goals of examples, you took, are to sell dolls or to celebrate current stupid race of spatial tourism.
But Disney animators did a much better job than Mattel Barbie movies.

I have not seen Lightyear movie. But I am already disgusted that the plot seems so far away from 2D animated series.

I think that main problem are main intentions of the movie. We can not blame artists to follow main intentions of the command passed to them.

[Ace_Dragon]

In my opinion, I do believe something happened with animation starting in the 00’s that made it ‘feel’ a lot cheaper than it used to be. Many new cartoons (at least in 2D) replaced the sophisticated shading and effects seen in the 90’s with simple shapes that moved by tweening (so many shows ended up being like Kongregate or UGO Player on your TV screen, which by the way were sites that hosted Flash cartoons).

To Disney’s credit their focus stayed on quality for the most part, but there have been cases where their animation studios made puzzling decisions such as canning high quality animated TV series in favor of fare that cut corners (even if it was generating a profit). Their CG studios however remain a fairly decent quality compared to what competitors are doing (which again, are choosing to cut corners rather than take full advantage of new technology). I would also keep in mind that a lot of animated stuff just looks better when it is in motion and in a completely uncompressed format.

[rigoletto]

No, its ok, but i dont like the the disney style.

Just a guess, cause for disney its alot about money. Maybe they just choose this style because it is easy to produce their merchandise toys in this style is much cheaper and increases the profit.

The Techniques That Gave AKIRA Its Unprecedented Quality

The Influence of Akira

[sozap]

@NodeX

but Disney mostly tries to impress the babies in the family lately…

Indeed, in fact it has always be the case, all the Disney movies carries a cheesy feel and they target young audience. At some point Pixar succeeded to make movie for young audience that could be interesting for the adults, but it was always about making films for children in the first place.

When you talk about stylized realistic characters is it something along these lines ? :

Tintin (Spielberg) [VO]

Anyway, given what you said I’m curious about seeing something that works well for you.
I’m not particularly a fan of a regular Disney human style either, and I’m sure it’s possible to do things more interesting visually. But I’d probably do it in a really different direction that you point out.
It’s great if you look for different style in your work, you’ll probably find something interesting !

[joseph (J)]

Tintin was, sadly, not a great movie, but it had a lot of artistic potential. I honestly appreciate that they tried something new, bold, and daring, but it just didn’t land super well. I’ve read many Tintin books and I think they missed the point of Tintin by making something artistically beautiful but lacking in content. That isn’t to say that Georges Remi isn’t a talented artist, I just feel like Tintin is more about the wit and less about the art. The movie was very focused on being beautiful, but I think somewhere along the line they forgot to make it witty

I also find that movie and The Polar Express great examples of why realism isn’t a good thing in 3D. Two of the unintentionally creepiest movies ever made, squarely in uncanny valley territory… I dunno, stylized 3D may have its flaws but at least it’s not as creepy as realistic 3D

[sozap]

Yes, I agree with you on all points !
But maybe someone will manage to pull something that will prove us that it can work ! But yeah it’s challenging !

Anyway, I don’t think, given the same story, having more realistic character / expressions will help us to connect more with the story and the characters, like it’s claimed in this post. It’s just a style that fit more or less an universe and a story.
South Park or Lego Batman movie got really minimalistic character design but I enjoy very much their stories and I can connect with the characters.
These very same styles would make a total failure on Arcane, and the opposite is also very true.

Disney movies designs are simplified on purpose. I think they nailed their style very well for their movies and that reflect really well the intentions behind these movies. It’s more than ok for us as movie consumers to look for something else. Because we are definitely not the targeted audience anymore. As a 3D artist I can look at them and be inspired by animation work, lighting, cinematography, but as a consumer it’s generally not the kind of movie I like and enjoy.

[calpgrmr (Cal the Programmer)]

@joseph

Two of the unintentionally creepiest movies ever made

I’ll chime in on this…

Pixar showed us that if you want to animate toys or bugs, it doesn’t have to look realistic to tell a story. They have not IMO even tried to make a realistic human.

But, admit it… wouldn’t you love to see a movie - and at the end say WHAT !?! That was CGI ?!? Fantastic !!! ???

[sozap]

why not use real actors then ?

[calpgrmr (Cal the Programmer)]

@sozap

why not

That would be called photography. I’m talking CGI.

[NodeX]

In my opinion, I do believe something happened with animation starting in the 00’s that made it ‘feel’ a lot cheaper than it used to be. Many new cartoons (at least in 2D) replaced the sophisticated shading and effects seen in the 90’s with simple shapes that moved by tweening (so many shows ended up being like Kongregate or UGO Player on your TV screen, which by the way were sites that hosted Flash cartoons).

Yeah, a lot happened around the turn of the millenium, in my view all art forms from movies to music, started to go downhill…

I would also keep in mind that a lot of animated stuff just looks better when it is in motion and in a completely uncompressed format.

That’s due to the reason I mentioned previously: we get most of the information from what those characters do, and very little from their simplified facial expressions.

[NodeX]

The Techniques That Gave Akira Its Unprecedented Quality

The influence of Akira

Such hand-drawing studios earn my respect, for the amount of work they put on their animations, most likely more than10 times more man-hours than the CGI animators…

[NodeX]

@sozap

When you talk about stylized realistic characters is it something along these lines ? :

Tintin (Spielberg) [VO]

Tintin - the main character is just a realistic face, but some other secondary characters seems to be close to what I mean, but I noticed on that trailer that they have NOT given attention to the subtle facial expressions, and the motion is rather unnaturally smoothed-out by tweening.

But thanks for reminding me this movie, I had forgotten it included those characters, so I’m going to re-watch later at least some part of it, in 3D.

But I’d probably do it in a really different direction that you point out.

I wonder how…

It’s great if you look for different style in your work, you’ll probably find something interesting !

I’m curious myself too, as I haven’t made the critical tests yet - but I’ll know in a week or so.

@ josephhansen

I also find that movie and The Polar Express great examples of why realism isn’t a good thing in 3D. Two of the unintentionally creepiest movies ever made, squarely in uncanny valley territory… I dunno, stylized 3D may have its flaws but at least it’s not as creepy as realistic 3D

You can’t blame the medium for the failure of the artist, it’s just because:
a) the art of animating realistic characters is still in its infancy,
b) the studios do not invest the required amount of time and effort to make it successful.
…for economic reasons, of course.

Undoubtedly, any of us can make a clip with realistic characters successful, if given unlimited amount of time.

@ calpgrmr

But, admit it… wouldn’t you love to see a movie - and at the end say WHAT !?! That was CGI ?!? Fantastic !!! ???

That would be awesome, and it will become reality some day for sure, but it’s not what I’m proposing.
I propose stylized realistic characters with attention to realistic expressions, in order to dramatically increase expressiveness.

[calpgrmr (Cal the Programmer)]

Also… remember… “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.

The Simpsons has been broadcast for 33 years. That’s a long time.

However, if Pixar put out “Toy Story 12”… and it looked like this…

I think that the profits would be much lower. I’m just sayin’…