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Marvel [MCU] Infinity War trailer DOES put a smile on my face
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Have you ever even touched a VFX program, or done any vfx stuff even in passing? Because you're basically talking nonsense. You have plugins that help you build very basic VFX effects, but you have to layer the effects on top of each other and do a lot of fiddling with the variables and scripts to get any good results.
AoS was, at best, using the same plugins. And none of the physical props.
Ava just figured out how to scientifically build what Dr Strange was creating.
Spiderman: Take away his costume and he looks like a dude.
Wolverine: Looks like a dude.
Cyclops: Dude in glasses.
Squirrel Girl: Just some chick.
Nice.
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Supposedly the tail is real, so I wouldn't say she was average.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I was being facetious about the language being used and the comparison to other heroes in the same vein.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Like, superheroes who can look normal and potentially lead normal lives is definitely a thing. Superheroes who actually are normal and just have a lot of money/resources/whatever are also a thing. Superheroes who look normal but don't have separate lives because everyone knows who they are is a thing. Superheroes who don't look normal and can never live "normal" lives is also a thing.
But I have no idea what it means when you say that "Hero X looks totally normal if you remove Y aesthetic that makes them unique." Are you arguing that it is indicative of poor superhero design? If so, why?
It's about having a variety of super-heroes, body types are a big thing in super-hero comics and women/girls tend to get a short stick of choices. Male super-heroes can be numerous ways, the average woman or super-heroine in a comic book is drawn like a Victoria's Secret model.
That said, being attractive isn't necessarily bad either, and this also is elected by body types since female characters usually have one or two while the modern Squirrel Girl is breaking said norm.
Except I never said that they just copied and pasted stuff. I said they saved money by using resources that were developed and used by the movie. I never said that redoing the same VFX is exactly the same as just taking a physical prop or costume from the movie. Of course it's more complicated than that and won't save them as much money as reusing the same prop. But they save money just by virtue of the fact that they don't have to come up with the idea what the portal should look like in the first place. It's more akin to reproducing a costume for a new actor. Sure, it won't save as much money as reusing a costume but you save money just by having a template and people that already know how to make and assemble the costume.
Or are you saying that they did everything completely from scratch? They didn't use any of the research and conceptual work done to come up with the ideas and visuals of the effect. They didn't take advantage of any of the testing and practical techniques that got the effects working. They only looked at the movie as a reference and didn't see or ask about how any of it was done. Then they came up with everything completely on their own in order to create the exact same effects.
But next to the CGI spectacles of the movies and the generally more crisp and cool Netflix shows, AoS feels like the direct-to-dvd sequels to each MCU movie.
Because it is a Whedon show, I wouldn't call their production low budget. They've come along considerably from season 1, where Inhumans and Ghost Riders became re-occuring things and joined the cast on a regular basis. The stakes aren't lower either,
No tv production was ever going to compete with the movie division and the Netflix shows are very low stakes which focus on the street level. It remains to be seen how large scale the threats will be on Cloak and Dagger and Runaways, and I assume the shit is going to hit the fan massively in Runaways.
They had already come up with their own version of a teleportation effect for Gordon in the previous seasons, which got reused by another character in the new season alongside the 'sling ring' version. The copying of the effect from Doctor Strange was deliberate and probably specifically written in the script, as any cost saving initiative would have meant using the Gordon effect instead.
But the whole sparky thing matched the aesthetics of Ghost Rider's chain.
I know that's what they were shooting for, they said so from the start (even though they brought back Coulson against his wishes).
It just naturally feels like the cheapest section of the MCU and is thusly less exciting to watch. I consume most MCU material but don't really feel like I'm missing much by skipping AoS... and while they make nods to the shows sometimes, I get the feeling it's a Star Wars scenario where the movies are canon and supersede all other formats.
It's a Jed Whedon show, not a Joss Whedon show. AFAIK he has no real involvement in the show past sort of helping it get off the ground to some extent in the post-Avengers-1 era when he had his hands in most things MCU to some extent.
I would say it definitely feels like a show written by Whedon's non-union mexican equivalent.
SHIELD agents are not supposed to be like that. They're highly trained spies, soldiers, scientists, etc. They have to go through rigorous training just to become an agent in the first place. Sure, they have their own personal stuff to deal with but it was their choice to make that commitment to join SHIELD and make those sacrifices to be an agent. They're not like Buffy or Angel, who had huge responsibilities thrust upon them and were forced into a life they didn't want.
Thats why the best part of the show is FitzSimmons
What are you talking about the whole thing about SHIELD is they are attempting punching way above their pay grade spy shit and planning.
The show regularly depicts SHIELD agents as being far less competent than they should be to artificially inflate the conflict. Its take on the whole spy thing is almost cartoonish.
To be fair, SHIELD is still rebuilding from Winter Soldier, which basically upended all of their prior resources and authority, so it makes sense that the show depicts them scraping by.
Series 4 spoilers
It's not the same effect, I will grant you that some of the details are similar on first look, but not in action. The one in Dr Strange wobbles, the emitters rotate, and doesn't have the same path for the particles. The particle emitters for Ghost Rider's are set up like a pinwheel and are stationary and almost visible, while the one for Dr Strange has the particle emitters set up behind the open portal and they spin with the portal which wobbles on the sides.
Ghost Rider (from the studio's VFX reel for the season)
Dr Strange
Note the differences in shape and details, that's the key to noting that they didn't use the same effect. Oh, very similar style, but not even close to perfectly reproduced.
And yeah, it's actually fairly common for someone in VFX to look at an effect and puzzle it out on their own to recreate it.
Right after Dr Strange's debut we had a lecture in our VFX2 class by a professional VFX artist who did just that with the same effect.
There are multiple tutorials for how to do it, with a variety of methods and plugins from different VFX artists.
Yes. VFX artists regularly reproduce effects just by seeing the finished product without a tutorial from the person who did it.
Looking normal is fine. If I implied that was the problem, my mistake. It was her looking dumb doing her thing that's the issue.
Spiderman doesn't have spiders, Cyclops doesn't use a huge eye, Wolverine... they all look fine without their thing and then get better.
But why would a VFX artist reproduce someone's work from scratch when they actually have access to tools and information on how the original was made? Especially if they were under budget and time constraints?
Sure, the MCU TV and movie executives don't get along that well but the TV people are clearly allowed to to use stuff from the movies.
Because they don't. Marvel doesn't do VFX in-house.
Yeah like, VFX houses sharing work is pretty much unheard of. Sometimes the studios don't even own the models, rigs and effects. Stargate Atlantis famously had that problem when they swapped VFX shops and the new place had to recreate Atlantis from scratch.
Yep.
I'm unclear if this is a diss or not. There are times I feel the show runners are better at doing their job than Whedon himself is, Spartacus was brilliant and something he wouldn't do in a million years. That said, they do share a love of killing beloved characters and romances are doomed.
And aside from Skye and a couple Inhuman personnel they're all 100% human.
I disagree, they match the tone in the series, and overall are pretty competent in their own right. It's not like being fiction spies can't get silly RE: James Bond.
I guess Atlantis didn't get the best contract. Star Trek owned their models.
And they don't just hire one VFX company to do big movies and even some TV shows. Several VFX companies are needed. They'll sometimes get help from other companies when there's too much work to be done.
Also, does Marvel not re-use the same VFX companies? I believe Star Trek had pretty good relationships with the VFX companies they've hired, some VFX artists even did quite a bit of uncredited work. Does Marvel/Disney not have that kind of relationship with their VFX companies?
Genuinely curious here. Do you have a citation for that?
Which is horseshit.
"hey, you're both millionares. You're welcome. Now, you goddamn well owe it to every single fan to put everyone in Infinity War 2. We dont need some half hour long explanation as to why anyone is there. We just need a big huge wide shot of everyone kicking ass"
Drexler did the Star Trek ship models while he was working for Foundation Imaging, which was an independent company not owned by Paramount or CBS. They did things for Babylon 5.
I guess I should thank @Spoit for bringing it up, apropos of nothing. I've gotten a little obsessed with it again.
They're all going hang it up soon, maybe they'll do some farewell cameos if the show is still around?
For all those, they had to drop a lot of cash to get them there, especially the ad deals for RDJ/Holland. Sony monetizes the ever-loving shit out of their Spidey movies. I saw Holland talking up computers for Dell and it was so weird.
Also if they have to pay you boatloads to make a small cameo on a TV show then you're a dick. I mean get yours, but if you appreciate the work/fans at all, just make your brief cameo for a reasonable rate.
I can picture Pratt showing up at meetings being mad he can't background cameo because his character stuck in space. Pratt will cameo anything, even when not actually asked heh