Chris Appelhans and Monster House

I've just watched "Monster House", which is an enjoyable movie made by motion capture (putting dots on actors and recording them, including facial motion. Actually it is called "performance capture", and captures faces as well as bodies.) and computer graphics.

The Monster House DVD has a good documentary about Performance Capture and the making of the movie. (I almost missed it because it was labelled "Inside Monster House" and I thought it was something like layout of the house in the movie. I suggest to DVD designers that they make labels more descriptive, rather than imaginative.) They have two hundred cameras capturing the motion of the actors!

The film looks good. That is, I think the settings do. To be frank, I thought the characters look a little... plasticky. The hair for instance looks like it's made in play-doh. This is nowhere near the pictorial sophistication of Over The Hedge for example. I admit that abstraction is good. But then it should be more... deliberate. This looks like they tried to make naturalistic humans and just didn't get there.

Almost the best part of the DVD is the concept drawings done before the film was made, by artist Chris Appelhans.


I am always surprised to see how few artists and actors have their own home pages. (Photographers and writers seem more up on this.) It is really not tough to make a simple one or get somebody to do it for you. And if you have or are trying to get a career selling your creations, I can't see anything more basic than at least having a web site so people who are looking for you can find you.