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Digital
Media FX News Archives
Friday
- July 13, 2001
- Final Fantasy has $5 Million
Opening
- Alias/Wavefront
- "Maya Used in Final Fantasy Movie"
- Disney's Pepper Ann Being
Added to Toon Disney
- News Link of the Day
- Final Fantasy's Reality Needs Work
 Final
Fantasy has $5 Million Opening
(by digitalmediafx.com) Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
took in $5 million in its opening Wednesday. The single day opening
numbers that are respectable, but far from spectacular. Wednesday
openings are usually reserved for "event" movies which
make closer to $10 million or higher on opening day due to overwhelming
demand.
Analysts are
predicting that between Friday and Sunday, Final Fantasy
will bring in $23 - $25 million. Final Fantasy is playing
in a low 2,649 theaters.
Final Fantasy
opened to largely negative reviews. One of the few exceptions
was well-known critic Roger Ebert who usually gives any animated
movie a big thumbs up, including last year's Titan A.E..
Final Fantasy
must bring in big numbers if it wants to make back the $150 million
that went into creating the film. Some added bonuses will be increased
interest in the Final Fantasy video games even though the
movie and games have very little in common.
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If you're
looking for the second set of stills from Osmosis Jones, click
here.
Alias/Wavefront
- "Maya Used in Final Fantasy Movie"
(by digitalmediafx.com) Alias/Wavefront is publicizing the
use of its Maya software in Square Pictures Final Fantasy: The
Spirits Within movie. According to Alias/Wavefront, "Maya
software played a pivotal role in allowing Square USA to create
a 23-digital-person cast... Maya was the only commercial 3D software
package used by Square on this project, and it served as the hub
of their pipeline for creating the film's hyper-real 3D human
characters as well as all the backgrounds and effects."
According
to Final Fantasy producer Jun Aida, "Alias/Wavefront has
been key to the success of this production, both in terms of the
technology and support they have provided. We brought Maya in
at the conceptual stage of the project in order to convince the
director, Hironobu Sakaguchi, of the feasibility of this film.
Using Maya we produced characters so life-like that he agreed
to take on the project. Two and a half years later the result
is a CG film so unique that it could be said to establish a new
cinematic genre."
The 107 minute-long
futuristic action/adventure film consists of 1,300 computer-generated
shots and stars a cast of eight digital leads with 15 secondary
characters.
According
to Alias/Wavefront, "Each character is finely detailed down
to the freckles and pores of their skin. Each is also slightly
flawed -- asymmetrical and blemished -- thereby adding to their
humanity. Moreover, throughout the course of the film's compelling,
complex story, each digital human expresses a full range of motions
-- and more difficult still -- emotions.
The entire
length of the Final Fantasy film project for Square, including
the initial R&D phase and proof of concept project, was four
years. During the height of production, close to 200 Maya artists
were involved in the making of the film, creating effects, sets
and of course the polygonal characters. The Square team began
by using NURBS models for their characters and environments, but
eventually chose to switch to polygonal models because of their
flexibility and the fact that fine details could be added by way
of Maya's subdivision surfaces. The incredibly lifelike character
animation was achieved through a combination of motion capture
and keyframing. Some of the most difficult aspects of the animation,
hair and cloth for example, required the writing of custom tools.
The Square R&D team found themselves turning to the Maya API
(Application Programming Interface) and MEL (Maya Embedded Language)
for solutions."
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Disney's
Pepper Ann Being Added to Toon Disney
(by digitalmediafx.com) Toon Disney, Disney's 24-hour all-animation
network, is adding the "Disney's Pepper Ann" animated
series to its lineup this fall.
"Disney's
Pepper Ann" joins "Disney's Doug," and "Rupert"
to round out Toon Disney's new fall schedule, which will begin
airing Labor Day weekend.
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News Link
of the Day - Final Fantasy's Reality Needs Work
According
to The Honolulu Bulletin:
"One
of the neat things about animation is that it can be tweaked to
death. Don't like that color, that angle, that lighting, or that
expression? Redraw it, rerender it, re-imagine it. That's why
animated films are so good at conveying a rush of information:
All the distractions are edited out, erased by the process.
What's not
so cool is that this can make a static film, one in which any
element of visual surprise or of storytelling verve have been
hammered away, flattened…"
Click
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