Why are there no hyperrealistic animated feature films?

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iMax

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I've been admiring the work of Blur Studios over the past couple months and I'm trying to understand why there haven't been any high-profile animated films shot in a realistic style (to my knowledge); or at least why they haven't been successful on the level that even B-rate live-action films have?

I'm assuming it's just a perceived lack of demand at the box office—but when you have content like this, with top-notch performance capture, it's mighty compelling.

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I know I, and others, would be particularly receptive to a Halo film, for example, produced this way, based on the incredible performance and production in Halo 2: Anniversary. It just seems there isn't a wide market for it.
 
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Animated anything is usually presumed to be for children. It'd be really risky to make a high budget animated film for adults when it's cheaper to just use actors and a green screen.
 
sn00zer said:
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MetroidPrimeRib said:
Extremely expensive, and also very risky.
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More expensive than a film containing equivalent set pieces?

Mr.Swag said:
You mean a movie?
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Huh?
 
Despite the enormous amounts of CG used in movies these days, "animation" still means for children to most of the american movie going population.
 
Money. If you're making something that's real, like a person, it's FAR cheaper to just put an actor in front of a camera. There is no reason whatsoever for them to do it any other way.
 
iMax said:
Yes. It's about 40% live-action. I'm talking about a fully animated, realistic film that isn't stylised in the way most animated films are, with comprehensive performance capture.
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My guess is that it'd be perceived as drastically increasing the costs over just green-screening some actors without doing anything new to attract an audience beyond those people drawn in by the novelty.
 
DiipuSurotu said:
Square tried with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It bombed.

Zemeckis tried with The Polar Express. It bombed.
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Maybe that's because those movies were bad/mediocre? I think all it takes is for one of these "hyper realistic" films to actually be a winner as a movie, something that can get ahold of skeptical audiences to convince them that it can be done.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if uncanny valley plays a role. Polar express and that Jim Carry movie look just weird to me

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iMax said:
Not what I'm talking about. That's stylised.
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Somewhat sure. But its still going for a realistic style. And every character is based on an actor thats had their performance captured.
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If youre talking about making a movie that doesnt take any liberties at all with the style then I would think that would be even more pointless.
 
DiipuSurotu said:
Square tried with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It bombed.

Zemeckis tried with The Polar Express. It bombed.
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Wasn't The Polar Express fairly successful? It was Beowulf that bombed.

Anyway, I'm sure someone will give it another shot in the near future when we get closer to photorealistic humans. We're not there yet, though.
 
Gravidee said:
Maybe that's because those movies were bad/mediocre? I think all it takes is for one of these "hyper realistic" films to actually be a winner as a movie, something that can get ahold of skeptical audiences to convince them that it can be done.
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There's no guarantee though, there are a lot of great movies that do terrible in the box office and vice versa.

Essentially, people don't want to risk millions on dollars on a genre that hasn't had a good run in the past.
 
iMax said:
Why didn't Microsoft just shoot the cutscenes live-action then?
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Because at that point, if you're working on a top of the line console and you have a talented team of voice actors, it's less expensive and time consuming to do it via cg than hire a whole slew of actors, scout a location and fly out a camera person to that location. It's all a matter of what you have available. Plus Vg players expect CG over live action where as for movie goers it's nearly the opposite.
 
It's not because of this perveived idea that studios think they're only for kids. It's because it'd be a foolish waste of the medium to do hyper realism in animation. Animatiom will never be as good as a real actor, so why would you try to compete on that front? Instead, animation can bend reality and exaggerate human expression far better (or more easily) than live action can. It's about sticking to the strengths of the medium. Yes, we're all sick of the kid/Disney/Pixar style, but hyperrealism is not the solution.
 
iMax said:
Yes. It's about 40% live-action. I'm talking about a fully animated, realistic film that isn't stylised in the way most animated films are, with comprehensive performance capture.
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From an animator's perspective.
Because that's incredibly expensive and there's no point in doing so because you risk uncanny valley which is avoided completely by having stylized characters with good expressions that resemble something hand drawn.
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Not only that but there are plenty of actors that most likely would give a better performance in an actual set, and because animation isn't about realism, it's about showing things that aren't possible in real life while retaining relatable characters with a relatable premise, like the story of two sisters who have conflicting ideals.
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Try watching the new tarzan movie to see why a nearly perfect example of how everything can go wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzhDgbURwUU
It's still stylized but it's all motion capture and still more realistic looking than something like a Disney movie, uncanny valley before the trailer reaches ten seconds.

Daniel Jackson said:
The uncanny valley.
Technology just isn't quite there yet. Almost but not fully realistic animated humans are creepy.
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No the technology is already there, it's just incredibly expensive and would be very time consuming to do that for a full film. Just the CGI in Maleficent which looks amazing and certainly not uncanny was very expensive, can't imagine a movie making any money back with a full film of CGI with this fidelity.

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You also struggle to wonder what's the point when live action is a much more viable option that will likely result in a better end project than a film with a set, costume, practical effects as well as CGI. Like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
 
I don't know about similar works but Robert Zemeckis's movies were incredibly and tragically boring.

IMO uncanny valley should already be avoidable. They just didn't have the right artists. Like everything else in Zemeckis's movies, the rendering, animation, and scene compositions looked like they were from the 90s.
 
The Adventures of Tintin is incredible. And if you like 2D animation, Fire and Ice is some of the best rotoscoping ever made. Sadly, I can't find too many gifs of it.

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and

NSFW
 
Crossing Eden said:
No the technology is already there, it's just incredibly expensive and would be very time consuming to do that for a full film. Just the CGI in Maleficent which looks amazing and certainly not uncanny was very expensive, can't imagine a movie making any money back with a full film of CGI with this fidelity.
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WHAAT. You have to be joking, I wanted to bleach my eyes everytime CG old ladies were on screen, in motion they looked like something straight out of my nightmares
 
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