It's rare for me to post about specific games or films... especially commercial ones, and especially when those are made by the big corporations. I mostly went with the MLP-FiM hype when I became a brony in 2011, Minecraft when it brought us the voxel revolution, or poking my nose into recent intrigues like FNAF or Undertale. Since I enjoy watching an animated furry film every few months, Zootopia was definitely something I've set myself to look at! I managed to find my way to a HD version a while back... which I've finally watched yesterday, and might watch again tomorrow since I want to take a better look at it.
Now I knew from everything I've read that it's going to be good, and definitely didn't worry that I might be disappointed. I didn't however imagine it would be quite as amazing as I found it, nor could have easily guessed that until seeing it for myself to know why! My ultimate label for it was "revolutionary"... for not one but two separate reasons: Graphics as well as the story.
As those who watch me probably know, my main preoccupation nowadays is 3D rendering with Blender. One dilemma I've always had in CGI has been: How convincing and photorealistic can cartoon anatomy get, and can you have chibi (ish) characters that don't look uncanny or ignore obvious biological rules in a top quality setup? And how close to a pure feeling of lifelike can a CGI get to begin with? Zootopia definitely answered that last night... and the answer was, hell yes! As an animator, this is definitely something I will idolize for a long time and wish to learn from.
First of all, if you've watched Zootopia at anything less than 1080p @ 60 FPS on a HD screen, I suggest correcting that immediately! And yes, the FPS part matters... many underestimate what a huge difference frame rate can make, and go by the classic conception that 30 is good enough while more might make you dizzy or something. With that said, be on a lookout for details on everything in the world... especially materials that are capricious to do, such as cotton or candy not to mention fur: I for one found it remarkable to see so much attention given to almost every little detail! The general feel of the scene further tops that, with beautiful sunlit environments and lots of decorations.
Just to be clear now: I am not saying this is CGI of a quality the world has never seen! I don't watch a lot of animated films since few movies interest me, but I have no doubt there are a lot of them that have great visuals (like Iron Man or others in that genre). I'm mostly talking of achieving such realism in an environment set around anthro characters in a partially cartoony anatomy! It's one thing to achieve realism while trying to imitate things we see in everyday life (including scifi) and another to get this far with something unique. Of course realistic cartoons were also done pretty well by other series (like some stuff Pixar makes), just not by far to the same extent in my opinion.
As for the story: I can't say it's quite as rare in and of itself... especially coming from Disney which is good at this sort of thing, and known for addressing harsh or sensitive real-life subjects in their specific way. What mostly took me by surprise is how well they redid what they do best, this time in a modern setup of our days! Their most notable films were made in the 70's to 90's, which apart from having impressive stories did very well at mixing them with the cultures of those days. Honestly I didn't think they could do so again, and thought to myself "bah... they couldn't make something quite as legendary as Fox and the Hound for instance, in a modern world with today's culture or computers and smartphones". Nope... they've yet again adapted that epic something from those films!
Conclusion: Up to this point, Zootopia is the first film I noted with a 6/5 rating, from the niche category of stuff I've watched. While I'll never like Disney as a corporation, my love goes to the team who made this lovely film! It will be interesting to see if and when something in a similar fashion will pop up again... be it a Zootopia 2, or someone else realizing this hit a goldmine and trying to find their own with original ideas.
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7 years, 9 months ago
30 Jun 2016 01:17 CEST
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