Yeah, people definitely underestimate the amount of labour needed for CGI. You still need a lot of artists for CGI. Someone needs to sculpt and paint all those

Yeah, people definitely underestimate the amount of labour needed for CGI. You still need a lot of artists for CGI. Someone needs to sculpt and paint all those 3D models, and rig them, animate them, etc. The difference is that they use ZBrush to sculpt digital models instead of actual brushes, but the work still needs to be done. You also need engineers. ILM employs a lot of people who work on physical simulations to get the effects they need. You can do things digitally that aren't possible with real world models, but I don't think it's cheaper or less labour intensive.