Yoda before and after CGI
To be fair, they added way too much hair to that puppet. It does look better than the dated CGI though.
Original Yoda looks great. That puppet from TPM has too much hair, has its eyes too wide open, is lit poorly… it’s just a laundry list of how not to use a practical effect.
That picture is a great example of how to light a puppet. Overhead diffused lighting gives the hair an airiness that makes it feel like an aura around the puppet head. TPM is diffused side lighting like they are lighting a person, but it highlights the differences that make it not a person. Plus the puppet is ugly and only tangentially like Yoda.
The death star trench run briefing was one of the first computer generated sequences in a movie.
But as for CGI good or CGI bad, you don’t notice the good CGI. But models are definitely more fun to look at behind the scenes.
Relevant no CGI is just invisible cgi https://youtu.be/7ttG90raCNo
Damn I’ve been watching this all morning. Really interesting watch. The main takeaway is that the “practical vs CGI” debate is entirely fabricated by the media, but doesn’t exist in the film industry. Though it seems likely that studios have something like Non-disclosure Agreements with actors and directors where they have to talk around it.
The public have no idea what CGI even means. Technically something like The Volume is CGI, but most people would look at it and think they are seeing practical effects, because, in a very real sense, they are seeing a practical effect, a practical effect that’s also CGI.
The fact that an effect can be both, undermines the whole definition the public have in their minds.
For those who haven’t seen it yet, this is a great video series on why practical effects and CGI aren’t mutually exclusive, and why the backlash on CGI is mostly unwarranted.
(In a deleted scene in ANH. Obviously he’d gone full slug by the time of his first actual on-screen appearance in RotJ.)
George Lucas after CGI
