Sunday, August 03, 2008

The Were-rabbit

I just re-watched Wallace and Gromit: The Curse Of The Wererabbit.

Like I said, you can't go wrong.
I'm particularly impressed by the sets. The buildings, landscapes, vehecles, rooms greenhouses. They are just gorgeous. Detailed, huge. Realistic, yet somehow meta-real.
And they way they've filmed it, the lighting and the movement, it creates a world in a way I can't immediately compare to many, if any, other animated films.

See these pictures, for lord's sake: can you believe these are sets from an animated movie?


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11 comments:

  1. I certainly share your awe for the sets. The amount of detail just baffles me. I would love to be part of the creation of such a movie, just to get a feeling of what's really involved. Like, how long does it take to create sets like that? One may be aware that making such a movie requires hundreds of man-years of work, but still... wow!

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  2. Gorgeous CGI.

    When I was learning CGI many years ago, one of the first things that hit me was that the things that appear to be demanding are usually very easy to do. And likewise, stuff that one wouldn't think much about, like human hair, or grass, are difficult.

    One of the nice things about making CGI films is that delegating tasks to a distributed group is easy. In a live movie you need a big team to be present at the same location for extended periods of time, which brings up all kinds of issues.

    The guys who are working on Iron Sky (teaser) have launched a website where people can co-operate over the Internet on film productions, perhaps without ever even seeing each other.

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  3. The Wallace and Gromit films aren't done with CGI -- they're actually hand-animated figures. There are a few CGI shots in Were-Rabbit, such as the floating bunnies, but CGI is used more as a special effect than as a core animation technique.

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  4. Agreed, the animation is clay-based, but the scenery backdrops are obviously CGI, they have that unique look & quality...

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  5. This film seems to have some Steampunk or Dieselpunk traits... which I like :)

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  6. "the scenery backdrops are obviously CGI,"

    No, no, no. I've seen making-of featurettes, with the animators walking about arranging things on the sets like giants.

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  7. Aardman are famed for stop motion/claymation.

    Can I just point out to everyone "Creature Comforts", there was the original award winning film, then later a TV series. All very funny.

    We should dust this off and watch it again. I like the old A40, nice touch. Heck I want to watch all 4 W&G films, were the shorts ever collected to DVD, or just on Atom Films?

    Oh, if any of you have ever seen British "Watch with Mother" stuff, or any kids claymation, then you will love "pib and pog", it's almost as funny as "Not without my handbag"

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  8. I'll check it out.

    "Heck I want to watch all 4 W&G films, were the shorts ever collected to DVD, or just on Atom Films?"

    Yes.

    Also on iTunes, I bought them a few days ago.

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  9. Hmm, must be something wrong with Amazon, I can only find the original three half hour films bundled on one DVD, boxed sets including Wererabbit, but not one of the shorts. The only one I remember seeing was the one where they were playing soccer.

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  10. Oh I thought you were calling the half-hour ones "shorts".

    I bought a bundle on iTunes also which has real shorts. It's different gadgets which Wallace invented. Maybe 8 shorts, and like 17 minutes total.

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  11. Cracking Contraptions"

    I see they were shown on the BBC between shows over Christmas one year. Atom films used to have them.

    There was a DVD release with CC as the extras instead of a making of. I see they also changed some of the music in Wrong Trousers. I wonder what that is all about.

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