CG Moments of the year

[Nick]

http://www.cgnetworks.com/story_custom.php?story_id=2671&page=1

In case anyone was interested.

Dawn of War at #13, I would have seen it higher, I love that intro But then again 13 is better than nothing at all.

[Spaff]

thats bullshit, the wow intro diidnt make it into the top 20.. ¬ ¬

[Roderick]

Maybe that's because the WoW-intro had extremely little narrative content going. Stunning visuals isn't enough in my book; and I was a bit disappointed that it was more of a collage of brief moments than a real narrative masterpiece that I am used to from Blizzard. It suits the game, no doubt, but I would like to see lists such as these rely more on narrative impact than on superficial visuals.

[Chris]

thats bullshit, the wow intro diidnt make it into the top 20.. ¬ ¬

I was going to say the same ¬

[Chris]

Maybe that's because the WoW-intro had extremely little narrative content going. Stunning visuals isn't enough in my book; and I was a bit disappointed that it was more of a collage of brief moments than a real narrative masterpiece that I am used to from Blizzard. It suits the game, no doubt, but I would like to see lists such as these rely more on narrative impact than on superficial visuals.

Well, like you say, clearly "your book" wasn't the one they were using, then, because many of the winners had nothing to do with narrative.

I think there comes a certain point when just denouncing visuals as "superficial" gets kind of silly. That's a bit unfair to, for example, painters, isn't it? A painting can infer a story (as do the small scenes in the WoW intro) but it need not be narrative. Same with a CG piece, even one that accompanies a game. I mean, just because something is a moving picture doesn't mean it needs to be a movie. The Blizzard cinematics team is made up of a bunch of clearly staggeringly talented visual artists, and in the WoW intro they produced one of the most gorgeous and nuanced pieces of CG I've ever seen. It practically looks like hand-painted art, but animated. World of Warcraft's narrative is different for every race that plays the game. They laid out what you need to know in the opening narration: it's been four years since the events of Warcraft 3, and not surprisingly there was no lasting peace. The races are in conflict again. What do you expect? They intro showcases some of the races and locations that populate the world. In that respect it's even successful as something of a storytelling because of how well it illustrates the vast difference between the different factions, the different lands, and so forth; when you see each of the scenes you easily consider possibly backstory, quite easily in fact because of how much life has been breathed into the characters. If you take the intro at face value and don't try to ascribe unfair extraneous criteria to it, it's an absolutely beautiful piece.

[Roderick]

Okay I cave Though it was really more that I was disappointed because I was expecting Blizzard to have another one of their familiar movies, which do all feature pronounced narrative (a bar which they themselves raised). I guess when you make a game like WoW this is by far the most logical option.

And I didn't like the Night elf, who looked wooden and more like Jack Skellington traversing the outskirts of Halloweentown.

[Chris]

Yeah, I admit the Night Elf's animation was slightly suspicious. I couldn't bring myself to hold it against them, though; everything else was so perfect...

[Roderick]

My jaw fell to the floor with that Infernal climbing a towery ruin and crossing swords bad breath with a human mage. Amazing! Which makes it all the more excruciating that the moment only lasted a few seconds. I want a minute-long animation with those two duking it out!