The best CG compositing is the stuff you don't know is CG or compositing.
This is what I meant when I was saying minimalist. Instead of trying to be flashy (ignoring their color palette), the aim is "less is more" and a natural sense of blending.
Life of Pi is far from a minimalistic approach.
They blur a lot of the effects with rain or zooming out, and a lot of the strength in the choices for things like The Zebra came from using animals with less movable hair. They did a very nice job with the tiger, it's where they clearly put most of their effort, but compared to the lack of constraints of today it looks a bit cartoonish and clearly stands out from the frames (especially the eyes). The bright colors help more than not for hiding the CGI elements by making the real world look that much less gritty and realistic, but yeah, the project is a series of visual tricks to work within the former constraints (and frankly it was better because of it, it squeezed out more effort from them).
The green screen wasn't all that obvious for some shots and at times quite believable.
I have a really hard time not seeing green screen effects. The lighting is never right they never get it right.
It's too soon to say if Sonic has better work, but at this point I don't think so. The CG in the Sonic trailer is a joke compared to Life of Pi, which is among MPC's better projects.
It's going to be hot garbage, and I plan to see it with the same zeal I had when I watched The Last Airbender in theaters.
It'll be all about the audience.
Also one doesn't just mocap these kind of animals, so on the whole the animators had to take in as much reference as possible and animate like their life depended on it.
This could also be a sign that this company works better with real life references instead of cartoon drawings. This could be them being thrown outside of their strengths twice in a row.
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