Tintin

[Ben]

Made some comments on the front page of AV. I'm fairly happy but interested to see how this mo-cap way of doing things works out...

[ShyViolet]

Not much, but cute cartoon!


http://www.instacritic.com/entry/spielb ... ig-screen/

[Daniel]

Here's a rumor about Tintin:

Rupert Grint to play Tintin for Spielberg and Jackson in the upcoming mocap trilogy? That's the rumor out of Bulgaria ...

The first Tintin movie is due to be finished in production by the end of 2009 and rumours abound about who will play the famous Belgian boy detective. There have been many people linked to the film in the past but the latest story is that Rupert Grint of Harry Potter fame will get the nod for the Tintin role...

[Ben]

Why-o-why-o-why do they not get MOTION CAPTURE actors - people who understand movement - to act these things out and then hire in the names to provide the voices??

Sorry, but Grint may be the most natural of the three Potter kids, but a mo-cap expert he is not, and neither are the other actors who have stepped into those funny golfball suits.

Get in experts for the visuals, and leave the emotional "acting" via voices to the actors!

[clabot2700]

Ben seems that your wishes will be partially granted:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/con ... 3ae2e2a83f

Andy Serkis is a terrific actor and a very experience mocap performer!

saluti

[Ben]

Cool...not surprised to see him turn up again in a Jackson mo-cap project!

[ShyViolet]

Interesting:


http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 774264.ece

[Dan]

Just so people won't forget about it, if they haven't, the Tintin movie is slated sometime in 2011 (one report says October, another in December).

The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn is based on the three stories (Crab with the Golden Claws, Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure). Spielberg is primary director with Jackson overseeing post-production. Edgar Wright co-wrote the script.

Jamie Bell will be playing Tintin, having replaced Thomas Sangster after production was delayed in October 2008.

Andy Serkis will play Captain Haddock and his ancestor Francis Haddock.

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost will play the bumbling detectives Thompson and Thomson respectively.

Daniel Craig will play Red Rackham.

As of right now, John Williams is wrapping up the score.

[droosan]

The upcoming issue of Empire magazine has an article featuring a first look at the Tintin movie.

“With live action you’re going to have actors pretending to be Captain Haddock and Tintin,” says Peter Jackson. “You’d be casting people to look like them. It’s not really going to feel like the Tintin Hergé drew. It’s going to be somewhat different. With CGI we can bring Hergé’s world to life, keep the stylised caricatured faces, keep everything looking like Hergé’s artwork, but make it photo-real.”

.. I'd have preferred making it look like Hergé’s artwork, but ditch the photo-real.

.. ever heard of the 'uncanny valley', Mr. Jackson ..


Oh, well. Maybe the story will be good, at least.

--------------

addendum: I just noticed that Cartoon Brew posted an article this afternoon highlighting the same Peter Jackson quote, and expressing nearly the same opinion. It seems I can agree with Amid Amidi on rare occasions ..

[Dacey]

It looks like "Polar Express." Like a lot.

But we won't know anything for sure until we actually see them move, and that's where I'm still going to have faith that the film might work. If anyone understands bringing Mo-Cap characters to life, it's Jackson.

[EricJ]

.. I'd have preferred making it look like Hergé’s artwork, but ditch the photo-real.

Same here: With all images under wraps, I'd been stoked about the project for eight months convinced that they were going to give us some kind of immersively solid watercolor version of Herge's comics...BUT:

It looks like "Polar Express." Like a lot.

Yeah. A LOT like the Zemeckis movie directed by Spielberg's buddy--To the point that Spielberg would probably see it as having done no wrong, and that it was now the pursuit of the artistic elite to "innovate" the cinema with the next Beowulf.

(sigh)...For a while there, I thought the Mo-cap Carpetbagger age was over.
(But then, they'd started filming it before "Christmas Carol" brought the hammer down, so there's realistically no guarantee it's still going to be a trilogy.)

[droosan]

Just as a re-cap .. it is perfectly possible to realize Hergé’s 'clean-line' style in three dimensions:



(and, yes; I know I'd posted this on the previous page -- a few years ago!)

[scrantov]

Remember, Speilberg is Zemeckis protege. And Speilberg has never done anything in animation worth watching--like Zemeckis. Why would anyone expect anything different?

It looks awful. And no, motion capture is not "animation." Animation means to "breath life into." Not to "move around" like a zombie.

Not to mention, less than 1% of the world know or care who TinTin is (I love the original comcs myself, and those figurines are beautifully crafted--what a shame the film didn't look like those).

Epic fail.

[droosan]

While I am obviously a bit disappointed with the 'photo-real' art direction depicted in the Empire article .. the fact remains that Steven Moffat is the screenwriter for the film .. so (as I'd noted), it is possible that the story may be good, at least.

And the visual 'look' might be gorgeous, too; three 'publicity stills' is certainly not enough to judge the movie, as a whole. It does certainly seem to be a 'missed opportunity,' in terms of what it could have been .. but, we've yet to really see what it actually will BE, in terms of a moving action-adventure film.

[Ben]

Well, when Jackson and Spielberg announced this, I knew that it wasn't going to be a literal CG interpretation of Herge's art, as in the figures depicted in Droo's post. If they wanted to go that way, why mo-cap anything at all? Surely that's Pixar or Blue Sky's kind of territory, to go for stylized human CG?

So photoreal was always going to be the ambition, as Jackson said: "they're going to look like real people, but real Herge people". Now, let's be honest...there's a vast difference between Zemeckis mo-cap and what Weta do: Avatar, anyone?

Imageworks, who BZ uses through Imagemovers, has never quite gotten CG people down, from the differences between the Quidditch players in the first Harry Potter to ILM's better ones in the second film, to Spider-Man or Superman in the air (I can't be the only one who cringes when the swap from actor on a wire to CG replacement takes place?).

But Weta have been masters of it right out of the gate, from The Frighteners, through Lord Of The Rings, to King Kong, District 9 and Avatar, and when I knew they were doing Tin Tin, I was very relieved. And the result is pretty much what I expected: "real" people that look how they would look if they were who Herge "caricatured" for his books.

Now, I will admit that the center image (assuming that's Haddock?) isn't as impressive as the rest. BUT we're a year away from release, this isn't moving yet, and don't forget that Jackson issued images of Kong before he got a complete overhaul. So let's have a bit more faith!

It's true that they don't look exactly like Herge's characters, but then what would be the point in just doing a CG movie like that? It couldn't beat the original animated films, or might just look like it was jumping on the CG (Smurfs, Yogi) bandwagon. At least here there's an original visual approach going on, and something we haven't seen before.

And look at the plusses: those clothes fit and drop on the figures for real, unlike BZ/Imageworks' rubber outfits that stretch with the characters' arm movements. The rumpling on Tin Tin's jumper in the main cover image: wow. His uneven face, yes hidden by the shadow lighting, but it's not all smooth and perfect: he's real!

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the release of these images is to get early feedback - something Jackson usually acts upon - and once we see these things moving without the uncanny valley feel that BZ/Imageworks has (it's not just their eyes, but the entire movement that feels "stagey" as opposed to Weta's lifelike feel achieved through the use of mo-cap and then augmented keyframing), I think you'll be more impressed.

As for the film itself...Moffat has shown he's a tight writer (check out the recent Sherlock mini-series for a start) and despite Spielberg directing the actors, this really does have Jackson's fingerprints all over the final visual result. And don't forget he's been pretty quiet of late, in terms of effects. Yep, Lovely Bones had a lot going on invisibly, but the length of time Tin Tin will have been in production suggests leaps and bounds in terms of the jump between Gollum and Kong, Kong and District 9, and what Weta's state of the art will be by mid next year.

Personally, though I'm not blown away by these sneaks, that's probably because it's what I was anticipating. But in that aspect, it's absolutely what I was hoping for. I'm still stoked!