Cool behind the scenes Avatar clip
Heres a cool behind the scenes clip that I’m sure you have seen… Yeah, we get it… This is not animators doing the performance… Cameron did everything… 
I wonder if they should have given another name for the “animators” working on this project since they don’t seem to respect the job of what an animator does. I am blown away by the work on Avatar, but I don’t understand how the animators did not get any love on this film… There was so much great creature/robot stuff. I’d love to hear from some people on the crew about how the roles of an animator were defined on this picture…Expressions must have been pushed, Physicality, interaction… What is the Motion capture to animation ratio?
-Andrew
Dan Wong
Do animators get love on ANY film? Like that chart you posted before, the rendering farms are more famous than the animators.
Sam
Animators are normally known as the ‘behind-the-scene Heroes’.
Then again, I don’t think I have heard any animators that had become as famous as actors, to the general public that is. Most people don’t even know how animation are made and thought everything they see on screen is ‘made by computer/s’. So to answer Dan Wong, I personally don’t think animators in general get a lot of ‘love’… But a passionate animator have more love to the medium and working with it, that would make up why they are still in the biz.
Maybe the animators are more like ‘Fix performance 3D artist’? After all, they are doing mostly the ‘fixes’ and are not taking over the acting part of the project. I am blown away with Avatar just as much as I was being blown away by Davy Jones though.
Philippe Duvin
I think the way the studios advertise a movie on its release depends a lot on what the marketing department is saying. Basically they goes : ” hey what do you have interesting on that movie to say ? new technology, performance capture ?? great let’s focused everything on that.”
Peoples need simple things to understand sometimes and when you say, the computer you have at home,on avatar they had 2000 thousand like that to CREATE a single frame over 2 weeks and ziullion of processors blablabla, peoples are amazed and moire amused by that than listening to an animator who talks about his work. It’s totally dumb !
I found that everything around Avatar ( even Cameron on some interviews) was really offensive toward the animators and totally disrespectful.
such a shame…
Oh and I love that chart you did andrew
so TRUE, I pictured it immediately 
a computer being interviewed on E ! on a red carpet and you can see a yelling animator on the bg, : ” please let me in ! please ! I animated this film, damn it ! 
)
Rob
Avatar’s dirty secret: Animators had to clean up everything on this movie, including the precious facial performances. I work with a guy who was an animator on Avatar, and he worked on everything from creature performances to animating faces on the avatars.
Rick O
I have a friend that worked on Avatar and I have to wonder if the animators really did nothing on this film then why were they working such crazy hours to finish it. I heard they were doing 14hr days, 7 days a week to finish it. I guess they were just having massive ping pong tournaments during all those late hours.
Its all a pageantry for them to say that the technology is so good now that we don’t need animators. And that way Cameron can be hailed as a technological pioneer as well as great film maker. And I must say that he did an AMAZING job and the film, and my buddy at WETA said he was right there with them every step of the way, it would be nice for him to through some credit towards the animators.
I’m an animator on Mortal Kombat, and we use motioncapture for a lot of our stuff, but depending on the animation, the ratio of hand key to mocap can be 10% hk to 90% mocap down to 90% hk to 10% mocap to just straight hand key for all the stuff that’s not physically possible. Unless the mocap actor is EXACTLY the same proportions as the CG character, the motion will not match up 100%, so every animation must be touched up in some way.
Here’s my best comparison for working with motioncapture. Imagine your job was always to clean up some other animators really bad blocking everyday. That’s what its like working with motioncapture.
Boman
Thanks for that insight Rick O.
Sucks that they dnt give animators the credit they deserve. I have a friend who use to work at WETA and he said that they didn’t even end up using much/if any of the motion capture for King Kong, even though in the making of dvd etc they say they used it for this and that. They were told that it was publicity etc and the animators got an apology for not being recognized, that was that.
alonso
It’s ridiculous but not surprising that the animator’s get no respect. There will come a time when motion capture will be as good as they pretend it is. But animator’s will always be needed because even the best actor can’t ignore physics. You can not physically lift a 20 pound weight and pretend it’s a 60 pound weight, because biomechanically you need to move differently to compensate for the different amount of weight. The further from human anatomy the character is, the more an animator is going to need to go in and clean things up.
Barry
Ok, I can understand the na’vi performance at least being referenced or built off of the capture data to some extent, but the bit about the creatures with using the little toy to get the flight path and using mocap actors to figure some of the creature’s movements is quite a stretch.
Just sad to see all the great creature animation reduced to that.
Keith
Not that I’m one for ignoring the work of animators, but I happen to enjoy not having to worry about the paparazzi knocking down my door when i go out to get groceries. I’m an animator because I love the work and because I get to make art for a living. I don’t think that it’s too much of a stretch to say that most people don’t get into animation for the fame of it. But that said, it is still sad that I haven’t really seen Cameron give a nod to the animators of the film who really did some fantastic work. Then again, you don’t see him giving shout-out’s to the lighting or modeling or concept art teams either. I guess at the end of the day, all you can really expect is a paycheck and your name in the credits, and to be honest, that’s really enough for me. I’m sure he’s not oblivious to the work they did and I’m sure he knows good and well that he couldn’t have made this film without them, but if he wants to focus on the performance capture aspect to help sell the film, I say let him.
Ben
I commend James Cameron on making an amazing and beautiful film. He really did spend a lot of time on it. The problem I have is that in the interviews he blatantly steers the audience away from any idea of animation being done by anyone else than the actors. They did a good job. He could have easily said that the film was a group effort by all parties. I wouldn’t even have minded if he had only punted the motion capture, but to me he seemed to intentionally put down the animators and claim the software does everything. I’m not asking for a fireworks show but I feel the public doesn’t have enough knowledge of the industry. I’m just starting as an animator in South Africa and I don’t know about you guys but I constantly meet people who think animators have it easy. We work damn hard and while I don’t think we should have fanfare I think that people need to be made aware of what everyone on a production does. Not just computers or actors but everyone from concept,props,camera crew to animators,editors,composers and everyone in-between. They’re fooling the public with this. So great film, bad behind the scenes.
Andrew Leeke
i read in 3D World a few months back that the ratio is about 80% mocap, 20% animation for the Na’vi characters. As for everything else, 100% animation! VFX animation never gets attention, before Avatar the only time anyone even mentioned actual performance of cg characters in the general media is when Andy Serkis is doing the mocap.
Camerons little quote “this is not an animated film” is such a shame. as if animated films are dirty. But unless Camerons been breeding 6 legged panthers, then its animated, and he should be proud of that.
the simple truth is, the general public don’t really care. they like to think the big famous people did all the work. that’s why you guys at pixar are so unique! your dvds are never full of interviews with voice actors and nothing else.
rob
Keith- “I don’t think that it’s too much of a stretch to say that most people don’t get into animation for the fame of it.”
This has nothing to do with fame and everything to do with at least showing some respect. Respect for the efforts of people who are working 80 + hrs/wk, and never seeing their families, so that Cameron and the film execs can roll in their piles of money.
-”Then again, you don’t see him giving shout-out’s to the lighting or modeling or concept art teams either.”
He and his producers also don’t go out of their way to specifically diminish their efforts on this film, like he does to the animators.
Snyderman
I was fortunate enough to catch a 3D screening of Avatar followed by a Q&A by Cameron. He spoke at length on a variety of topics raised by audience members and when asked about the animators’ work he was quick to praise their talents and effort, saying he believed he had hired the best in the business. He explained that when it came to the Navi characters he gave the animators specific instructions to retain and/or match his actors’ performances precisely, based on the mocap data and the HD reference footage of their faces. Basically, he admitted he kept the animators on a short leash when it came to his actors’ performances while making the point that the film would not have looked as good as it did without the animators’ skills. He also added that he let them go hog-wild on the creatures and machines and loved the results.
Dan Jones
I think they are trying to diminish (or completely conceal) the role of the animators for a number of reasons:
1. They are trying to push the Best Actress nom for Zoe Saldana. I’ve seen “for your consideration” ads for her floating around, showing that frame where she is crying next to a frame from the final movie. We all know that Gollum’s performance was a big departure from Andy Serkis’ motion capture, therefore no Best Actor nomination.
2. I don’t know if this is true, but I heard that investors put so much money into the movie because, even if it were a box office flop, they would still be able to market their developments in 3d and mo(performance)cap to other filmmakers.
3. No matter how great animated movies are, there is still a stigma among audiences. For example, when I talk to my friends about Pixar movies, I always hear thing like “I loved it, even though it was an animated movie” or “It’s crazy how I’m getting emotional over a computer’s performance.”
Elliot
I believe somebody already posted this a couple weeks ago, but here is a video of Producer Jon Landau directly acknowledging the role and contributions of animators to the facial performances. He frames it as a collaboration between animators and the actors, which seems appropriate and respectful to all involved.
http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/12/17/interview-with-avatar-producer-jon-landau/
Mooj
I think something that I have found quite interesting about this topic, is that you always see Cameron talk about “performance” capture… NOT “motion” capture. This by definition suggests that it is not the exact motion that is captured on stage that is seen in the film, but the actors performances, and their acting choice that we see transferred. Whether that be through meticulous rotoscoping, tracking and keyframing, or through pure marker data, the end result is the “performance” capture. People in the industry understand how much additional work goes into these animations, but the difference here is that it is no lie to say the performance is completely actor driven, as all the emotional decisions have been taken out of the hands of the animators and given exclusively to Zoe Saldana et al. In the interest of not overloading “jo public’s” brains with the complexities of an entire production pipeline in all its detail, I think it is completely reasonable to just say “the actors drove the performances”. Again, as animators we know what lay beneath that, we give ultimate respect to those who worked on it, and maybe we should be happy that it’s our little secret?
Oscars, Syrus Sister and Animation’s new war. « Cartoon Electro
[...] technique. Within the industry, most already recognize the film as heavily animated, from top feature film animators who wonder why Avatar’s animators are receiving so little credit for their work on the film to [...]
Jeffrey Baker
I think a lot of you are missing the point, It’s not motion editors vs animators or animators not getting enough love. Avatar was a TEAM effort at WETA, during the project we went from 500 people to 800 over a three year period. On Avatar there were roughly 50+ animators and for mo-cap 50+ people. (I was part of the motion edit team which are duties were to edit the body/facial/hands) also mixed in these numbers are support staff, coordinators, and producers. We have a dedicated department that deals with just face, yes in certain shots the animators did work on the face bust the vast majority of the clean-up was done by the mo-cap department. With Andy Jones (Animation Director) reviewing the work in dailies.
The animators had plenty of work to do on the creatures and also on animating the Navi. Also don’t forget all the wonderful people in the shots, composting, lighting, and creature department that makes our work look so good! WETA was able to build upon the technology used for Gollum, King Kong, and use that expertise on Avatar and now Tin Tin (Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson) The need for great animators will still be around for a long, long time. Mo-cap is just another tool to help sell the world that future directors come up with.
my 2 cents,
Jeffrey