Hey! It is Marc Spess from animateclay.com again and today I am going to talk a little bit about Neil Gaiman’s new film. Neil Gaiman is an author. I think he played bass in a punk rock band in the ‘70s. He is really creative. He has books. He had some comics. Theater, you know films, all sorts of stuff. I never really heard of him until Coraline was created at Laika Studios. You can go to his site. It is neilgaimanbibliography.com and you can read about him and see what his done. I cannot really say anything good or bad about him. I have never read his books so we will just leave it at that.
Now, I guess either he approached Henry Selick at Laika or Henry Selick approached him about his film Coraline which is sort of like an Alice in Wonderland kind of film. It is done stunt motion and you can see here, here is Coraline, the main character. And it is done by using replacement of faces. This piece of plastic here actually detaches from the upper part of her face. So, her head is actually--her face is in two parts like a mask made from plastic that pop-off and then gets stuck on and then they remove that seam line between these two parts in a computer. So, you get kind of a like a seamless look. The replacements allow lot of flexibility and variation in the faces as suppose to the corpse bride which was more rigid and you could not get this sort of very strong shapes, this mouth shapes and you can see her nose kind of curves here with her mouth.
So, artistically what they have done is they created almost like a computerized look to the characters and there has been some debate over at stopmotionanimation.com about the look of the film. Because the look of the film looks like it is computerized and that sort of why some stop motion people and actually I am not going to say who this is. If you know where to look you can read it about it yourself. But this guy here who has had lots of experience and who I respect a lot because his work is really excellent in stop motioning. He basically said that, you know his first impression is that it looks like computers. So, why have stop motion artists create the look of computers? Why not just use computers? And those artists to make stop motion films where you know you have this talent as an artist to make stop motion films and stop motion is known for having finger prints and brush strokes and some texture and a human a touch to it. Whereas, well Coraline has a human touch to it, it is so sanitized and clean and perfect and another thing that they seem to be doing is the sets themselves. I guess what happens is Coraline goes into the-- there it is. Let us see here. Let me go back. Let us pause it here. And then I will explain it how you can watch this videos yourself here. Okay and where that scene is, I just saw it. Well, the point I am trying to make is that the sets seem to be lit from the inside. They seems to be making plastic props and set pieces lighting them from the inside and then using translucent paints and so forth to give that look of the sets and the set pieces.
Here we are. You can see what I am talking about here. We have a chair which is lit from the inside. We have a table lit underneath. We have a background which is clear and is lit from behind with more translucent paints and maybe decals or something. And then if you look at this, just look at the scene here and then if you look at something that is computerized, a computer animated film, there is really no difference. I mean, I do not think anybody can argue that. Let us see if I can look up just for an example, The Incredibles. Very popular film; looks great as a computer generated film. And if we look at the characters and then we look at Coraline, you know, can you really tell the difference between which one is computerized and which one is stop motion? Yes you can but it is like the line is really being blurred. You cannot really tell so much anymore because it is so unnaturally clean. And so, a lot of people are saying that is not good. My take on it is also I do not really care for the look. And it is sort of so sanitized and clean and it just it is not as nice.
A lot said, the film might be a success, the story might be great. Maybe there is a way you can relate to the characters and maybe it just does not matter. You know because stop motion or computers is just a tool to tell the story anyway. But for stop motion purists, you know, a lot of people are saying it is not that nice. So, what do you think? Is it okay? Is it not okay? Does it make a difference to you and what do you think?
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