Week 7. Comments on "How to Make a Monster" exhibition.

Well I was actually feeling pretty good going to this gallery. The title just made it interesting. Although I expected a bunch of monster paintings, the exhibition still greatly surpassed my expectations.

Its was a really practical and educational environment which showed us the procedures of production including character designs, storyboarding, sculpting, right up to the final product. I felt it was rather enlightening seeing how these unreal creatures come to life in the movies we watch today.

So anyways my questions are:

1. Is CGI going to make animatronics obsolete?
2. Well what’s in it for me? (show me the money)
3. My goodness how hard was it to make that gorillas lip sync so well with the voice?

In response to question one, I found an interesting article which basically discusses CGI and animatronics. Marc Savlov’s ‘Godzilla vs. Green Screen’ (retrieved 11/6/06 at http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-04-22/screens_feature.html) pretty much talks about how CGI is superseding animatronics and puppets. I feel it’s a slightly bias article considering the fact that hardly any good points are talked about animatronics and puppets. Nothing bad is really said about it, just that it implicates that CGI is generally easier, cleaner, and better. His supporting points for CGI are valid, but as some movie reviews like this "Alien vs. Predator" (retrieved 11/6/06 at http://www.dvdfanatic.com/review.php?id=avpur) indicates the movie only used CGI only when necessary. People in suits were still in this recent movie. I believe the same concept is evident in "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen". The Invisible man is partly CGI and partly man. I guess the lack of human touch in a movie will render it cold and unrealistic. Therefore, I conclude the CGI is probably never going to wipe out animatronics, but I think it will steal a large share of the market from it.

Well the second question is pretty simple, so I just looked up some websites will average job salaries. This website (retrieved 11/6/06 at http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/cgi.do) states that the average CGI salary is around £40 000 a year. This is around $67 000 AUD. Hmmm that’s quite good.

Wow I’m surprised. According to this website (retrieved 11/6/06 at http://www.androidworld.com/prod56.htm ), there is a microchip which can pretty much do the work of an animator by telling you the mouth positions. What can I say? It must be pretty easy then. Probably not as hard as my egg lip syncing I had to painfully do.