Forum - View topicREVIEW: Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker
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Kazemon15
 Posts: 400 |
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Funny you say that, since there are still a ton of shounen anime unlicensed that Funimation isn't even willing to pick up... Dragon Age huh? ....Played like....16 hours of the game, got bored and sold my copy....and it seems that this isn't that great either. Funi, instead of making crappy movies, do what you do best and just license more anime. |
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EnigmaticSky
 Posts: 750 |
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Finally. God, I'm just excited for Funimation to stop promoting the hell out of this. After ME the hype onslaught should finally be over. After all the promotions it gets a D.
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GhostShell
Posts: 1009 Location: Richmond, B.C., Canada |
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I'd be interested to know how Theron or Carlo would have rated it. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4426 |
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I was worried about the visuals when they said the same studio that made Appleseed would make this. And considering that the next movie that Bioware and Funi are making is apparently going to star the most boring sqaudmate in the Mass Effect series, this doesn't seem to be going well.
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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Funi should probably get out of bed with Bioware if they want to continue making this American anime stuff.. Bioware has a habit of running their stuff into the ground at this point. 8 months after this movie is announced they release Dragon Age 2 and alienate all their fans.
Then they announce a Mass Effect movie and then Mass Effect 3 comes out. Even if they didn't botch ME3, is anyone still going to care when the movie finally comes out? They should have released it before when the hype was high. It'd be like if Nintendo just now released the Pocket Monsters Best Wishes anime, almost 2 years after the game came out. Or Best Wishes 2 in a year and a half after the 2nd games come out. Timing is a key component in adaptions. |
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marie-antoinette
 Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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I've been reading a few reviews of this and Zac's is by far the most negative. I even found other people who liked it so I think I'm going to definitely buy it, since I love the franchise (even the oh so maligned Dragon Age II). Also I'm a bit of a completionist in this since I've got all the games and the novels and read the comic and watched Felicia Day's webseries.
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pipermisa
Posts: 3 |
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honestly i cannot be arsed with it wasn't the game enough of a movie to begin with
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Stullz
Posts: 96 |
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I hate to say this, and I rarely post here, but this was a horrible review.
Yes the animation wasn't all that great but the background scenery and improvements to skin tones and the overall cell-shaded look have come quite a long way since the 1st Appleseed. Hell, with a higher budget (seems like it was pretty low to me) the animation could have been excellent, the foundations are there but the 'human' (polish/realism) of motion isn't there. Dialogue scenes weren't all that great, but many of the fight sequences were a lot of fun to watch. (from the fight/choreography and camera choices) It just seems to me that this reviewer wanted to hate the movie from the get go. Granted I am a huge fan of Dragon Age, I still find the movie a disappointment considering my hopes for it, but a D just doesn't make sense. I'd give the animation a B for the action and a C- for other scenes and the story was very cookie cutter average (C again) Also, anyone who actually finished DA2 would understand that Cassandra could very well play a huge role in the next game. Sorry Zac, I normally see decent reviews from you that are justified and well thought out, but not this time PS. as a Graphic Designer myself I see a lot of Cell-Shaded animations and the 'horse outline' you mention is one of the components of that. Most cell renderers or 'Toon' shaders use that outline effect. |
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yu_samson
Posts: 49 |
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Hello everyone,
Recently, there's a growing number of animation studios moving to CG styles similiar to those used in Dragon Age, which some people seem to dislike. I'm curious to know how people believe productions such as Dragon Age and future anime works could have been better produced with CG. Trinity ------- Several years ago, Shinki Aramaki pioneered a new way for animation studios in Japan to produce fluid life-like character movements and facial animations in their productions at a reasonable budget. Mr. Aramaki debutted this new technology with Appleseed. The computer generated animation and motion capture (mocap) technology works hand in hand to produce the final CG looking animation where character movements are fluid and character polygons are flat with a cell-shaded look. This is intentional, which gives the animation a cell-shaded appearance. Examples of recent works incorporating this new style include Vexille, Appleseed, and TO. Mr. Aramaki believes there's room in the animation world for this new style. It's a style in between traditional looking anime and the more expensive realistic CG. Highly detailed animation such as seen in Final Fantasy Advent Children and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within feature highly detailed textures in their animation which gives the characters and objects a very realistic, hollywood-quality appearance. However, it takes significant man hours for animators to "paint" and is very expensive to produce. Trinity is the name of this CG animation engine/software which animation studios can just buy "off the shelf" and incorporate into their productions without having to spend lots of money on in-house developed software and computer hardware (because the hardware can be outsourced to graphic rendering companies offshore). The final effect of the Trinity generated animation is an anime with unusually fluid animation which fools the human mind into thinking it's realistic. However, because of the flat cell-shaded look of the characters, and differences in how Japanese and western actors perform stage work, some people feel uncomfortable with the resulting animation. Trinity is capable of rendering animation with highly detailed textures such as seen in Space Pirate Captain Harlock (2013), Halo Legends (The Package), and Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012). An example of differences in stage performances (because mocap work is the captured movement of stage actors that is incorporated into the animation) would be CG animation in Appleseed (Japanese actors) compared to animation in Disney's Toy Story (Although no motion capture was used, the movement of the characters are more exaggerated). This is in line with the fact the Japanese people in real life are more subtle and don't really express themselves openly in general. Whereas, people in Western societies are more emotional and "animated" when expressing themselves. This is further exasperated by the fact that many people who grew up with traditional looking anime are not used to seeing this new style. More open-minded, technically curious anime viewers and younger audiences who are growing up in a world filled with computer animation in TV, film, and animation will usually be more open to this new type of animation. Today, several animation studios in Japan have already moved to using Trinity in their productions like Oxybot, the production studio behind Dragon Age. Many video games companies developing games for Nintendo and Playstation in Japan have already moved to Trinity for generating their story sequences/cutscenes. Does it work? ------------- The producers have to keep one thing in mind when producing anime with Trinity. Can the director deliver an enjoyable animated story using Trinity and earn a profit? Trinity is a reasonably priced solution for production companies, but can its style reach a large enough audience to make it worth the effort? It's a give and take because the director has the opportunity to deliver a potentially life-like character performance, but the director needs to convince the audience that the characters' performance is not overshadowed by the style of the final animation which some people may perceive as lower quality or distracting. From my experience so far, since more Japanese animation studios are trying to market more of their work overseas, they may to need change some of their direction to use more western actors for facial and motion capture so the character performances are more exaggerated/animated. Since it is animation we are looking at after all, a lot of the focus by the audience will be on the "animated" performance and not just the dialogue. In traditional Japanese anime, character animation is already exaggerated and non-lifelike which is accepted because it's "animation" after all. The human mind has accepted this because we know it's obviously not real. However, with computer generated animation, the human mind begins having trouble to judge CG animation as real or not. In this case, we may have to settle for something in between. How would you have animated Dragon Age with CG? ----------------------------------------------- So, now that I've given everyone some background into the CG production behind Dragon Age, I would like to hear from you. If you were the animation director of Dragon Age, how would you have used CG to create your ideal style of animation? What would it look like? Please give some examples if possible. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Regards, Sam Tokyo, Japan Last edited by yu_samson on Sun Jun 03, 2012 5:02 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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reanimator
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@yu_samson
I haven't watched Dragon Age movie, so I can't say much about the movie itself. However, I do have some comments for CG after coming across with Japanese CG movies like Final Fantasy and Appleseed. 1. Design and rendering Using recent Appleseed movie as example, cel shaded animation character design doesn't work out well as 2D counterpart because it lacks appeal. How so? It tries to have trapping of cliched anime style character design elements, but final rendition is boring because nothing stands out. From design perspective, It tried to look somewhere between realistic look and anime look. However, they cancel out because viewer is lost at what to look at. Having seen the design arts for the Appleseed Ex machina movie, toy figurine maker would come up with better looking model than the movie version. When a drawing is translated 3D model, every little thing, both good and bad, comes into spotlight. Designs may look good on paper, but once translated as 3D model, it needs experienced artist's touch to exaggerate, simplify, edit, emphasize, and express as needed. As rendering is concerned, it lacks qualities of 2D art while trying to look like 2D. In traditional animation, cel shadow shapes works well with line drawing because flat shadows don't clash with lines. Cel shadings on 3D model don't look great because rendering doesn't provide enough rich thick & thin line quality that emphasize the core shape of an object. Instead, over-rendering of cel shade shapes, along with soft edges, creates clashing elements uncomfortable to look at. 2. Don't accept motion capture as it is: When something is simply motion captured, it still needs artist's touch to emphasize critical motions and edit out unnecessary minor motions to make best expression. It's all about perception. I can go on forever on how things should move, I'll just leave it to visual designs for right now. |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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@yu_samson
With regards to rendering and the kind of look produced by the Trinity engine, at least how it has been used so far, personally I do not prefer that particular look so much. I have no problems with cel-shaded CG, in fact, I like it and I think CG in general should be used in order to make animation production more efficient. There's a tradeoff with the time and effort needed to model, rig, create backgrounds, custom scripts, but the investment pays off with reusable assets and saving on things that would take much more effort with frame-by-frame animation. But the problem is that most have been unsuccessful at simulating the 2D look, or illustration-style NPR in general. I will just concentrate on the rendering and not the animation for now. Good examples, as far as rendering or design goes, are: Tron Uprising: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wE7qsfQQGGs The anime OVA Koi Sento http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu2XPqP9arg Music Video for Meaw virtual idols: http://www.starchild.co.jp/special/meaw/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k0iemsLUPk production, with 3DS Max: http://cgworld.jp/feature/making/meaw-pt1.html http://cgworld.jp/feature/making/meaw-pt2.html Other amateur works using the Freestyle renderer for Blender: Tomo's works: http://vimeo.com/user379696 Persona model: http://vimeo.com/30932023 non-freestyle blender cel shading: Maria Shidou model: http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/female-male-girl-3d-model/580480 Hito Nami model: http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/hito-nami-3d-model/587523 Also freestyle can do much more, as is probably the most flexible NPR as far as I know, where it can do things like: http://freestyle.sourceforge.net/GALLERY/GUIDING-LINES/model.php - something I think no one expects is 3D CG However even with the above, there are many "tricks" to get the look right. For example, Koi Sento (and many others) does not succeed in the mouths from the side view because it uses a direct 3D to 2D projection transformation, where the mouth is part of the mesh and just rendered as is. For example, in order to get that 3/4 view mouth on a pure side-profile view or other stylistic expressions commonly seen in anime, some people separate it, like on the Hito Nami model. Likewise, separating mouth from mesh in order to have lips move without jaw moving as in 2D for casual speech (most natural, as in real life, we don't notice other people's jaw muscles move and flex every time we casually talk) I think this is one of the main areas where the NPR technology can advance, in stylistic expressions that is less dependent on the base model or something that can maintain an perspective or orientation independent designs that characterize most 2D stylization from cartoons to anime: http://www.alecrivers.com/2.5dcartoonmodels/ Freestyle is advancing in this regards, IMO, such as with line control, to for example, have the ability for eyelash outlines to appear from underneath the hair, again as seen in anime, etc. If something is not possible, you can also render to SVG and then tweak that. As far as animation goes, there are multiple approaches and I can appreciate them for their purposes. There's the ultra realistic approach as seen in Far Cry 3: Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYPnDDr7sMk In Gameplay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBDi0iM2kcU And the usual exaggerated, cartoony, large arcs and squash-n-stretch Pixar and Disney style and animation. But I also like the more subdued anime style, which I think works well, where it's more "punctual" as in, more still but naturual and more explosive where it needs to be. I think the main issue in animation, and one that gives rise to the floating-in-water, too-smooth transitions issue commonly seen is that the methods are different from frame-by-frame 2D with onion skinning, where you are drawing new poses that feels more natural (you know how it should look like at what point in time) as opposed continuously tweaking rig controls, and where you get a better sense of timing and tweening is much more strictly controlled. I think there are some tools to help out, like Anzovin onion-skinning plugin for Maya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO1MyGUDYlI |
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ladybastet
Posts: 21 |
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I did watch Dragon Age in part because I played the game for a while. Unfortunately, I have seen what good motion capture CG animation can look like and this wasn't it. I thought the dragons looked pretty good and the basic story wasn't really all that bad if the look of it all didn't interfere with the enjoyment. I find that to be a problem in a lot of anime. Either the story is good but there is something in the visuals that drag it down or it is basically eye candy.
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Ashen Phoenix
 Posts: 2909 |
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Sad to hear this turned out so awful. I was really trying to keep an open mind and at least maintain cautious optimism since FUNi has been a name I've come to associate with quality in the industry.
Aside from the dub work, I can see nothing of value in this movie, which is a real shame. I've only experienced the DA games secondhand by way of Let's Play videos, but its story and characters have fascinated me. I had thought, "It's always great when different companies come together to do something different," but if the results are things like this? We may even be better off sticking to those tired old cliches of anime and manga. |
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j Talbain
 Posts: 279 Location: Toronto, Ontario |
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Rent this, it's nothing special.
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crytigerwarrior61
Posts: 3 |
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I'm a fan of Dragon Age Origins, and I thoroughly enjoyed this prequel, funi did a great job dubbing it and the 3D modeling and animation was very cool, and I can't wait for the mass effect anime.
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