.. they still use a load of post production techniques to remove rods, puppeteers and whatnot. Which kind of defeats the object, in my book, of using puppetry and animatronics.
If you have to rely on CG augmentation (unless such augmentation is done in real time, on set, and without days, weeks or months of post-production), then what’s the point?
It’s one of the reasons why I hate Disney’s The Muppets movie. I felt they went overboard with CG post production removing rods, puppeteers and green screen composite effects.
It’s ironic.
I tried (and failed) to get work experience with the Creature Shop back when it was in Camden Town – long before Soho VFX Subsidies Mafia effectively shut them down and forced them back to Los Angeles. I wanted to work on the real-time performance computer systems that translated the puppeteers movements into control signals for the mechanical apparatus within the puppet.
When I worked for The Moving Picture Company we were actively replacing animatronic puppets at a super furious rate. Heston from Ella Enchanted was originally going to be an animatronic puppet, but it was decided that it’d be better off as an animated CG character instead.
Jim Henson’s Creature Shop has been at the forefront of realtime character performance, but when I look at the showreel below, I think that post-production and CG is once again winning out to the wonderful performance given from puppetry and generally hiding things without the aid of a blasted set of computers and a team of animators and system administrators behind it.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
