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CGI effects are inevitably samey because any generation of them all get built on the same few tools from the same few vendors, largely by artists and animators

CGI effects are inevitably samey because any generation of them all get built on the same few tools from the same few vendors, largely by artists and animators trained to approach those tools in the same way, often chasing the mark established in the last big breakthrough hit and whatever new technological innovations it was built on. Meanwhile, practical and hybrid effects have a much wider palette of material and techniques leverage hundreds of years of diversity and maturity in craft technique, and leave plenty of room for lead artists to apply their own personal creative signature. We can assume CGI will eventually merge into that latter pool, but that won't happen until technological innovation plateaus and artists turn focus to clever innovations in technique and style instead.

Freak_NL 2y ago
It all comes down to lots of greebles and people who see a CD-rack and think 'that would actually make a really cool skyscraper for this dystopian cityscape I'm making'¹. 1: I think that happened with Bladerunner (1982).
sleepybrett 2y ago
I mean you see a combination of cgi and practical (puppet/rubber applicae and masks) in some of the newer disney+ star wars stuff (and some stuff that is both, grogu is primarily a puppet but they do some cgi work on top to 'sweeten' him). I think generally a toss-up as to what looks worse from a reality comparison perspective, however I think the practical work in starwars taps into a lot of the nostalgia and legacy from the first three movies and ends up being more 'accepted' by that audience. Other blockbusters have followed suit on this re-adoption of practical effects as well, the new Dungeons and Dragons movie used quite a bit of practical effects in their creature work as well.
CyberDildonics 2y ago
This could not be further from the truth. Reality is almost the exact opposite from what you are saying. Practical effects are severely limited and if you look at movies in the 80s and 90s you can see the exact same model + foam + air brush + balsa wood breaking + cocoa for dirt + mist canon in one shot after the next. Meanwhile in modern times you are watching movies where virtually every shot is somewhere between subtly modified to mostly CG and you don't notice. Then people see one awkward shot out of 400 and declare that "practical effects are better". Watch batman returns to see a high budget comic book movie before modern film making and compare that to the summer block busters from today.
majormajor 2y ago
I don't think "all CGI looks the same" has been any more true for games/movies/tv than "all [things] look the same" style-wise was before (consider sci-fi aesthetics by decade, say - how many Star Trek copycats, how many Alien copycats, etc). And obviously the limitations of practical effects are HUGE - Star Wars broke a lot of ground here, and yet looking at a movie from 5 years later, Wrath of Khan, we see very limited model movement and "action". Or compare TNG space action with even the primitive CGI of Babylon 5. Wind Waker was one of the first obvious examples in the 3d-rendered-game world; the Spiderverse movies are probably the most widely-seen cultural example of breaking with existing styles. The "feathering" effect of some of the surfaces/fur and such in the commercials for The Wild Robot is another that I remember seen recently. There's a lot of copy-catting, but not really in a "limits of the process of making CGI" way anymore.
- dhosek 2y ago
  Back in the 90s in the post-Jurassic Park TV/film landscape, it wasn’t common for similar CGI models to appear in waves, e.g., multiple shows with the same variations of janky CGI dinosaurs. My guess was that a VFX shop, having created a model did the hard sell to multiple sci-fi producers to try to get as much profit out of the initial work as possible.
  - CyberDildonics 2y ago
    My guess was that a VFX shop, having created a model did the hard sell to multiple sci-fi producers to try to get as much profit out of the initial work as possible. This or anything like it never happened and never came close to being considered for multiple reasons, including that the vfx studio wouldn't technically own that asset and that the model itself wouldn't be the most difficult part of the process. What actually happened was that after a huge success like jurassic park, dinosaurs were hot and more dinosaur projects were made.
    - simonh 2y ago
      Reuse of starship models certainly happened in SF shows and movies. There’s a big fleet battle in Serenity with IIRC some Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek models in the background, and I think the Serenity and one or two Star Trek ships found their way into fleet shots in Battlestar Galactica.

Freak_NL 2y ago

It all comes down to lots of greebles and people who see a CD-rack and think 'that would actually make a really cool skyscraper for this dystopian cityscape I'm making'¹. 1: I think that happened with Bladerunner (1982).

sleepybrett 2y ago

I mean you see a combination of cgi and practical (puppet/rubber applicae and masks) in some of the newer disney+ star wars stuff (and some stuff that is both, grogu is primarily a puppet but they do some cgi work on top to 'sweeten' him). I think generally a toss-up as to what looks worse from a reality comparison perspective, however I think the practical work in starwars taps into a lot of the nostalgia and legacy from the first three movies and ends up being more 'accepted' by that audience. Other blockbusters have followed suit on this re-adoption of practical effects as well, the new Dungeons and Dragons movie used quite a bit of practical effects in their creature work as well.

CyberDildonics 2y ago

This could not be further from the truth. Reality is almost the exact opposite from what you are saying. Practical effects are severely limited and if you look at movies in the 80s and 90s you can see the exact same model + foam + air brush + balsa wood breaking + cocoa for dirt + mist canon in one shot after the next. Meanwhile in modern times you are watching movies where virtually every shot is somewhere between subtly modified to mostly CG and you don't notice. Then people see one awkward shot out of 400 and declare that "practical effects are better". Watch batman returns to see a high budget comic book movie before modern film making and compare that to the summer block busters from today.

majormajor 2y ago

I don't think "all CGI looks the same" has been any more true for games/movies/tv than "all [things] look the same" style-wise was before (consider sci-fi aesthetics by decade, say - how many Star Trek copycats, how many Alien copycats, etc). And obviously the limitations of practical effects are HUGE - Star Wars broke a lot of ground here, and yet looking at a movie from 5 years later, Wrath of Khan, we see very limited model movement and "action". Or compare TNG space action with even the primitive CGI of Babylon 5. Wind Waker was one of the first obvious examples in the 3d-rendered-game world; the Spiderverse movies are probably the most widely-seen cultural example of breaking with existing styles. The "feathering" effect of some of the surfaces/fur and such in the commercials for The Wild Robot is another that I remember seen recently. There's a lot of copy-catting, but not really in a "limits of the process of making CGI" way anymore.

dhosek 2y ago
Back in the 90s in the post-Jurassic Park TV/film landscape, it wasn’t common for similar CGI models to appear in waves, e.g., multiple shows with the same variations of janky CGI dinosaurs. My guess was that a VFX shop, having created a model did the hard sell to multiple sci-fi producers to try to get as much profit out of the initial work as possible.
- CyberDildonics 2y ago
  My guess was that a VFX shop, having created a model did the hard sell to multiple sci-fi producers to try to get as much profit out of the initial work as possible. This or anything like it never happened and never came close to being considered for multiple reasons, including that the vfx studio wouldn't technically own that asset and that the model itself wouldn't be the most difficult part of the process. What actually happened was that after a huge success like jurassic park, dinosaurs were hot and more dinosaur projects were made.
  - simonh 2y ago
    Reuse of starship models certainly happened in SF shows and movies. There’s a big fleet battle in Serenity with IIRC some Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek models in the background, and I think the Serenity and one or two Star Trek ships found their way into fleet shots in Battlestar Galactica.