What are we thinking now that Pirates 3 has run its course, which character reigns supreme in terms of SFX?

Oh, it's definitely Davey Jones. Just the fact that he is 100% CG'd, including his eyes... Well, you know how people were complaining about Polar Express's characters having "soulless eyes".... Not here, mates. Davey Jones is so believably expressive, it's just... amazing.

When watching DMC, I found myself every so often going out of focus on the character and looking more at the technicalities... But with AWE, I discovered that I got so into the plot, and the graphics had improved just enough that the improvement wasn't quite noticeable but still there, that it wasn't 'til the credits rolled that I realized I hadn't ONCE thought of Davey Jones as a technical masterpiece... I hadn't once thought "god, the CG just gets better and better".

I swear, if I'd never heard of CG and hadn't seen any movie in the world except AWE (aka, if my mind was "pure" and unable to elapse into technical thinking).... I would swear that Davey Jones is real and I want to know where they found such a creature.

I can't wait to see what ILM comes up with next. I think what I want to see next is them tackling a human being as opposed to a "fishface". They've risen above the "soulless eyes" problem. Polar Express also had problems with stiffness and a tad bit with the way the bodies didn't seem to perfectly interact with the environment (at times they didn't seem properly affected by gravity)...... ILM's gotten past those, too, with Davey. So, now it's just a matter of making sure the textures and clothing are believable enough, and I think ILM's next great achievement will be a CG human so believable, people will think they've come up with a *real* "Simone".

So... yeah. I'm excited about the future of CG. I'm not worried about the whole argument people make about "oh, well, actors are going to become unnecessary"... Because that's not true. Without Bill Nighy, Davey Jones would still be soulless, no matter how well he was CG'd. The motion capture and the voice were integral in creating a believable character.

So, even once we perfect CG humans, we're still going to need human actors.

Okay, I'm done for now...

Joy

Kong.

Had more emotions in one eye than Jones/Gollum had in their entire bodies.

Davy Jones looked the best of the three, but Gollum was the best character.

Like Lecter, I think Jones looked the best, but he was the least interesting out of the three. I like Kong better.

Davy Jones.

I'd say kong, not just becuase of the fx but his mannerisms and movement were spot on. Jones would come a close second. Gollum isn't even in the running for me he hasn't aged well.

Who the hell is voting in this thing?!?!

Since Gollum came before the other two, he wins by default.

I don't get the love of Kong. Jis movements and facial expressions look great, but while watching the movie, the hosts of him just look bad. I can see the green-screen lines around him. And the lighting on his hair was horrible. I honestly don't get the love.

Davey Jones looked fantastic. The texture looked spot-on. However, the introduction of Jones in DMC has a lot of flaws - composition of the shot when he's smoking is really erratic. He is supposed to be one the same plain as that random sailor, but it doesn't look that way (again with green-screen flubs) and the smoke just makes his skin texture look pretty bad. There's also a shot of him in AWE that reminds me of effects from a decade ago. Luckily, everything else outside of these tow shots are quite phenomenal.

Gollum wins, though. I've watched the trilogy much more than Kong and even Pirates combined, and I still can't find a flaw in his animation. On top of that, he came quite a few years before either of the other two characters. So he wins twice.

Davey Jones looked amazing - was sometimes hard to believe he was all CG. Kong and Gollum were great too (especially Kong), but I'll go with Jones here.

None of the above...

I don't quite see the superiority in any of them. All equal...

Gollum with ease

Well, Davy Jones has the benefit of a later release and the entirety of ILM focusing on him, so he is definitely the most realistic. It's a different matter entirely if you're asking which is the more groundbreaking.

considering people were arguing that gollum should be nominated for best supporting actor and kong and davy weren't, i'll go with gollum.

I think Gollum has the best/most interesting character. The CG on all three is so good and they're all so different it's hard for me to say that one is better than the other. I think we're at the point where an untrained eye can't really see the difference.

Davy Jones. I didn't follow anything about DMC before it was released, and learned days later that he was pure CG.... >.< He looked just tooo real.

Animation: Jones

Character: Gollum

Kong just sucked.

There are severaL ways on how one can interpret best. In terms of SFX, its definiteLy Davey Jones but its GoLLum for the overaLL (i.e. character, impact).

I didn't really like the ending to Return of the King when Gollum and Frodo fight. That scene looks horribly done, espceially the way Gollum looks. We all know Gollum and King Kong were CGI characters, and don't get me wrong they were both very well done, but before I read this post, I didn't realize Davey Jones was all CG. I didn't keep myself abreast of the filming of Pirates but it really says something when you have a character done in all CG and you don't even notice. Granted, I did figure parts of him were CG, but I didn't think all of him was. That is impressive to me.

Davey wasn't ALL CGI.

I mean, sure, everything you could see was CGI... but he was on set, doing the motions, making the mouth movements and everything.

It's not like they pulled him out of thin air and the cast would be talking to a ball on a stick.

The only reason we knew Kong and Gollum were CGI is because... there are no giant apes or morphed hobbits around...

Haha, I thought the Davy jones one was a joke at first, they look like prisoners for some reason.

I mean, Davy Jones looked great, but at the same time, his character did very little. He was almost forgettable. Davy Jones does look the best, but he was no where near as good or groundbreaking as Gollum or Kong. He looks the realest, but at the same time, you know Kong and Gollum werent, so I dont really see the relation.

The thing about that is, though, is the makeup and dots on Bill's face were put there because ILM didn't know how well they'd pull off the CG and wanted something to fall back on, but in the end, they didn't use any facial motion capture and didn't even use Bill's real eyes like they thought they might need to do. They hand-animated all the expressions and lip-synch.

So, in terms of how much of the actor was pulled from mocap, it's about the same as Gollum was.

See the paragraph on the bottom of this page/article:

http://features.cgsociety.org/story_cus ... ry_id=3680

Joy

Davey Jones was the best one. Gollum was to cartoony and King Kong was too a few times...