^ I know that they spent a very LONG time on motion capture.

As Kevlo9 stated, motion capture

From Avatar:


From Lord of the rings:

Ah. That's not really how it works. It's not rotoscoping but it is a combination of a whole lot of work for the motion department to capture and solve the performance and a whole lot of work by the animators to match the performance using that data.

Those images are shot for PR/marketing.

--
jJ

There is one thing that always gets convoluted in the discussion of this movie - its the use of the term 3D which is used to discuss 2 entirely different aspects of this movie.
On one hand this movie has stunning 3D CG animation - they avoid the "Uncanny Valley" syndrome really well.
There was a preview trailer here for a new Final Fantasy CG Animation that still had that hyper detailed glassy eyed mannequin thing going on - I felt bad for them - but it was nice to have the vivid example for compare and contrast right before seeing the film.

The other is the head-ache inducing "Coming-at-You" 3D Glasses aspect to the film. God I hated this more than anything else.
I don't know if its me but this sort of 3D effect still looks like a a pop-up book to me. Sure they have more levels of 2D elements floating around the screen but it still feels totally like a gimmick. Additionally I found the glasses totally diminished the color of the film. What looks so vibrant on the trailers is seen through basically sunglasses in the theater. I found myself taking off the glassed often when I really wanted to admire the color aspect of the film - some bits were blurry - but it helped relieve my aching nose (I wonder if the glasses were a different form factor here in Japan to account for asian nose shapes??). Personally if you can see this movie in plain old 2D that would be my first and foremost recommendation.

Lastly my perspective on the "story" is this - even though they spent a lot of attention trying to get a realistic aspect to the Human tech side - this movie is not Science Fiction - its Fantasy. It has the Gaia message that is so common in Japanese anime films. The characters are indeed caricatures but they wouldn't seem out of place in an anime. I think if you go in with this frame of mind you can really enjoy it for what it is.

My 3.5 cents (the yen is strong!)

Hey Data, what type of glasses are they using in Japan? I saw it with Dolby3D glasses (very light and crystal clear lens). After about 10 minutes or so I totally forgot that I had the glasses on.

The colors were very vibrant and were not faded at all in the 2 screenings that I atteneded (Dolby 3D screening).

This technology is incremental and viewers adapt to the technology. Before Avatar, there was a preview for Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland, which did not have the 3D 'resolution' of Avatar. Your pop-up book analogy is exactly what I thought of when I saw this preview. But 5 years ago, it would have blown me away. And 5 years from now, Avatar will probably be perceived as gimmicky as 'House of Wax' or 'Flesh for Frankenstein'. (Especially since the story is so uninspired and unoriginal.)


1950's State of the Art 3D

it was interesting to see it for the eye candy aspect/technological wizardry..

but ultimately,,
i fell asleep 2/3rd of the way through

and it did look like a pop-up book...

What's funny is that typically I at least click on nearly every thread to decide if it's something I'm interested in reading, but for some reason I never clicked on this one. I didn't know what "Avatar" was (other than a movie) until last week, and typically I always watch the trailers posted here - but not this time. Well, until friends of ours asked if we wanted to go see Avatar. So I finally watched the trailer and couldn't even make it all the way through - not a good sign.
I'm not sure if I want to go back and read through all of this, but if I'm really bored I might - knowing you folk it's probably better than the movie!

I heard the plot is stolen. I did however enjoy the movie. Feel free to shoot me with arrows.
http://web.me.com/pascalboogaert/Site/foto3.html

Is this what your talking about?

There was a few different posts that the plot was stolen from some book, I had never seen those still though, totally different theft I think.
lol

Don't tell me this blue space Smurf film is going to spawn a whole world of "He bit this from..." reports like Reservoir Dogs and such.

Everything is ripped off from everything else. But if you create something new and better from what you took, it's respected. That's reality.

So James Cameron really has to be credited for taking an abysmal skeleton of a fantasy story and wrapping it up in visuals so new and compelling it's unique. Just like George Lucas did and just like others did.

If you don't like something just say yo don't like it; this schoolyard "He ripped this off..." stuff is nonsense.

No, its copyright infringement if he took someone's story and "wrapped it up in visuals."

Delgo is actually ripping Avatar...I was actually joking around with someone who said Avatar is Disney's Pocahontas, but my link was pulled. Here it is:

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/3867/poca2u.jpg

I love that Pocahontas link I've seen it a few places. I'll have to find the links to the novel the guy is suing/threatening to sue from.

Um ... anyone remember Roger Dean?

Yes (unintentional humor)

Agreed that every story is pretty much ripped off. Hell, Benjamin Button is pretty much Forest Gump. http://www.break.com/usercontent/2009/1/The-Curious-Case-of-Forrest-Gump-649781.html

I wouldn't hate Avatar because it has a similar story, or even if it was stolen. I loved the movie. It was great visually, but it had a generic story Soldier is sent into a new culture and falls in love with that culture more than his own and fights along side them (i.e. Dances with Wolves, Last Samurai, fill in the blank).

I always enjoy fresh looks at older stories and don't think people should automatically hate a particular one just because its basically the same premise. As long as its a good experience and it gets people out of the house, then I say go for it.

Opiates for the masses.

Exactly, and long before him, Rene Magritte had painted "floating mountains."

There's not a single image, creature, or landscape in that Delgo art that is original.

Whatever.

--
jJ

Does anyone want to go watch w/ me?
Seems like everyone I know has already seen it.

I saw it already. There was a tremendous amount of effort and skill put into the film. And on the surface..it's a tremendous technical achievement. Everything seems vibrant and vivid. However, the story is so vapid and I didn't care for the characters. They seemed so hollow that I was bored. It reminded me of the second Matrix. There were a lot of cool things that happened but the script was terrible.
I like James Cameron's films and am always in awe...but with this movie..the script was just bad, boring and predictable that you could predict what was going to happen.
I would be proud to work on this film and can't even fathom how it's done...but the reality is is that the script was not that good.

This film truly deserves 2 reviews. 1) script and story versus...2) the cgi element.