I Told You Animated Movies Didn’t Need $180 Million Budgets

Published by Zacqary Adam Green at 3:29 PM on June 13, 2012 in Commentary. 2 Comments Tags: animation, cheaply-generated imagery, i told you so. Short URL: http://plankhead.com/R8

Over the past three years, I’ve gotten a steady trickle of hate in response to my post titled “Why Do Animated Movies Have $180 Million Budgets?“. The gist of it was, animators could just use video game engines and post-process them just past the point of being able to run in real time, as opposed to dicking around with million-core render farms.

The gist of the hate mail was “lol u r stupid and vfx costs money”.

Now, 9 director Shane Acker is literally doing exactly what I was talking about.

Using the Source engine and everything. Which, okay, since 2009 probably isn’t the best choice, but seriously: an actual Hollywood-experienced filmmaker is doing exactly what half of the Internet has been perpetually calling me an idiot for even considering.

Is this technique Pixar-quality? No. No it’s not. Will it be in five years if everyone else starts doing this? Duh.

UPDATE JUNE 27 2012: Here’s a better example:

http://soundcloud.com/wodgod/sets Gogmagog

Hey, I found your 2009 article (and eventually this one) and have been wondering the exact same thing myself for awhile. Most DIY animation seems focused on 3-minute shorts or what-have-you, and I’ve often wondered why more feature-length animation can’t be done (or at least attempted) by the DIY crowd with limited resources. Unlike yourself, I know very little about producing animation of any kind, though I love the medium.

Anyway, you mentioned that the Source engine might not be the best option anymore, so I was wondering what you might consider to be a better option nowadays. I’m very interested in potentially trying this myself…
http://www.new1000ad.com/ Jack Jones

They certainly don’t need 180 million dollars budgets but it sure as heck helps . :)

I Told You Animated Movies Didn’t Need $180 Million Budgets

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