Key Frame Animation Still Reigns Supreme Over Mocap

Unfortunately, Disney’s Mars Needs Moms opened today. I have no plans on watching it... ever. Not even on TBS. I don't even want to post an image or video on my blog. "Why?" you ask...I tell you why. I don't like motion capture and I don't care how people try to push the term "performance capture" just to make it sound better, it still sucks. Many animators agree with me other don't. But it's ultimately up to the audience to decide. Granted, the technology has improved and made some interesting innovations. But it does not replace artistic talent. Some may say, "but no mocap is ever done without an animator cleaning up the motion" (I'm not calling animation, it's just motion). That may be true, but common sense just tells me, if you need an animator to clean up the mocap, then why bother with mocap at all. It's just a plain waste of time. A skilled and talented animator can and will always do better than mocap. It's true. I'll go on explaining more why mocap sucks later in another post. But I wanted to pass along some interesting reviews and ratings about Disney’s Mars Needs Moms. Hopefully the people at Disney have learned their lesson and never use mocap again in a fully animated film. Leave the mocap for video games and live action films (although key framed animation will always be a better choice).

So, Disney’s Mars Needs Moms came out today. It's gotten pretty bad reviews. Over at rottentomates.com you can read some of the reviews and it received an overall rating of 41%. But a more reliable movie review site IMDB.com gave it 4.6 out of 10 stars. That's bad, anything less than 6 stars is pretty much unwatchable.

Mike Hale from The New York Times said this in his critique:

“It seems that it’s time to admit that dressing actors in LED-studded catsuits, asking them to give performances on sterile white sets and handing the results to a team of computer animators is not a way to make a good movie. It didn’t work for “The Polar Express,” “Beowulf” or “A Christmas Carol,” and it doesn’t work for “Mars Needs Moms,” the latest product of Robert Zemeckis’s obsession with motion-capture animation.”

Writer Betsy Sharkey from The Los Angeles Times wasn't all that enthusiastic about the film either:

“Live versus lifelike continues to be problematic for this particular technique. Despite refinements in the years since filmmaker Robert Zemeckis — a producer on “Mars” — pushed it into the long-form, storytelling arena in 2004 with “The Polar Express,” its characters still carry the Stepford look.

Let me say this before I continue, I understand what the process is for working and creating mocap. I know it's not easy and it takes skilled people countless hours to work on it. I appreciate the hard work the people at ImageMovers Digital put into the films that made.

However, mocap does NOT work for fully animated films. It doesn't. It looks bad and lifeless. The comments about mocap is that it looks dead, zombie-ish, and creepy. Mocap just does not belong anywhere near animated films. Every fully 3d animated that used mocap did not do well in the box office and/or did not receive good reviews by critics and audience alike. Now the argument will arise..."but the audience can't tell the difference!" True.., maybe.., they can tell technically the difference and most of them won't care, but the can feel that something is not right. And because of the negative feeling, all of 3d animation gets a bad rap. And people will tie key framed animation together with mocap when they should be far from each other as possible.

A funny side note, Rango is doing great at the box office and has received great reviews. And many critiques talked about how great the animation was. Many of the reviewers would say that the animation itself was the real star of the film. Some people that the animation was so good that it was mocaped.... but it wasn't. No motion capture was used at all in Rango. It was 100% key framed animated. So it goes to show... many things make a good movie. Story, characters, direction, cinematography, and more. But animation plays an important part as well, especially if it's a fully animated feature. Rango is prime example of this and the Mars needs Moms is an example of how mocap can ruin a film. Maybe in a 10 years motion capture will improve more and look better... who knows... I'm not holding my breath. But no matter how much motion capture improves, technology is not and will never be a replacement for artistic talent.