Werewolf MUSTS

This is the place for discussion and voting on various aspects of werewolf life, social ideas, physical appearance, etc. Also a place to vote on how a werewolf should look.
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Post by Scott Gardener »

The Francis Ford Coppala version of Dracula that came out in the early nineties ("Dra-cool-a") used nearly all old-school effects, and it made for a very dreamlike and well-done movie. Then again, CGI effects were hit-and-miss. Terminator 2 was frighteningly realistic, while Lost in Space looked pretty fake, especially around the end.

Now that it's a decade later, however, CGI has gotten better, as shown by the new Star Wars movies. Yes, Yoda in II rocked. Still, I think at the moment, if I won the lottery and had the budget to make my own movie, I'd do CGI polish over puppeteering and old-school methods. If I had a really big lottery win, I'd get ILM to do the digital, and Rick Baker to lead the Underworld people through Goldenwolf Boot Camp. They'd all by the end of the first week cry out forgiveness for ever calling me "meatloaf."

And, you can delete duplicate posts. I had the same thing happen a week ago. When I removed my excess posts, it did temporarily bump my number from Pack member to "dealing with the change," but I got up again when I posted three more times.
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Post by Marcwolf »

LoupGarou wrote:Good point about lighting the werewolf,in most movies it is very hard to see the werewolf's full feature,they managed in underworld to show the whole body but the lighting wasn;t enough to to really look at the details,so all the blood and sweat they put in the details are basically impossible for us to see.
So it woud be kind of refreshing to look a the whole structure for once.

Also with Underworld - they deliberately ran the movie throught a digital filter to alter the color spectrum to give the 'blue night' look
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Post by Marcwolf »

With Goldenwolven and Kyotes work - you can see on their pages where they have taken thir knowledge down to the skelital stage and then worked back up to the flesh.

That level of dedication can highlight little things like how the legs will work, and the placemetn of the head on the neck. The join point between a wolves skull and a human skull are very much different with looking at stance (4 legged V 2 legged)

I'm not sure if many of teh artists who worked on Van Helsing went to that level. Certainly in the 'Making Of' you could see hundreds of Werewolf picutes on their walls but no.. Grey Anatome of Lupine Form :lol:

So I agree with you there Scott.. GolvenWolven Boot (?? Paw?) Camp
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Post by Bladewing »

All of the above!

A pretty good example of well done werewolves is in the movie Van Helsing. A lot of people don't like the movie, but they did a good job with the werewolves. My only thing I would suggest to the people who made Van Helsing (even though it's a bit late for that now. ^^; ) was to add tails. Which is already a definite. :D
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Post by Figarou »

Bladewing wrote:All of the above!

A pretty good example of well done werewolves is in the movie Van Helsing. A lot of people don't like the movie, but they did a good job with the werewolves. My only thing I would suggest to the people who made Van Helsing (even though it's a bit late for that now. ^^; ) was to add tails. Which is already a definite. :D

They did a good job with 2 of the 3 werewolves. Velken looked ugly. Those ears was to pointy. yuck. And the wall climbing, man that gets on my nerves!!
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Post by Set »

I agree with the complaint about the pointy ear thing in the VH werewolves. My cousin, who's er, how old is he, 6?... said something funny when he saw the VH weres. "That's a cat wolf!" :lol:
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Post by Vuldari »

Reilune wrote:I agree with the complaint about the pointy ear thing in the VH werewolves. My cousin, who's er, how old is he, 6?... said something funny when he saw the VH weres. "That's a cat wolf!" :lol:
I always thought the ears make them look like Jackals, like the Anubis army in "The Mummy".
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Post by Silverclaw »

The VH werewolves looked pretty good; but I agree that they needed tails. Those ears were weird looking; reminded me personly of bunny rabbits :lol: I hated that wall climbing crap, even when in human form they went all Spiderman. Glad Devoured will not make those same mistakes :D
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hmm

Post by What Mafia »

Anonymous wrote:True.. an American Werewolf In London was excellent for it's time. I think at least some CGI would be nice but it isn't necissary to have a lot of it if the make up jobs and what not are really good
I thought the werewolves looked like naked rats or babboons in that movie. =/
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Post by What Mafia »

Vuldari wrote:
Reilune wrote:I agree with the complaint about the pointy ear thing in the VH werewolves. My cousin, who's er, how old is he, 6?... said something funny when he saw the VH weres. "That's a cat wolf!" :lol:
I always thought the ears make them look like Jackals, like the Anubis army in "The Mummy".
I thought the exact same thing!
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Re: hmm

Post by Apokryltaros »

What Mafia wrote:
Anonymous wrote:True.. an American Werewolf In London was excellent for it's time. I think at least some CGI would be nice but it isn't necissary to have a lot of it if the make up jobs and what not are really good
I thought the werewolves looked like naked rats or babboons in that movie. =/
No, David looked like an obese wolverine, the "werewolves" in An American Werewolf in Paris looked more like ugly monkey-lion hybrids with clay-like fur.
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Post by What Mafia »

Well, my ideal werewolf would be something like the below link, but better in anatomy, obviously. X3
http://vcl.ctrl-c.liu.se/vcl/Artists/Th ... erwolf.jpg
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I'm not a fan of CGI, because it's really hard to make things truely realistic and there's a good chance it'll look cheesey... I.E. Harry Potter. Erm..
Last edited by What Mafia on Fri Jan 14, 2005 1:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: hmm

Post by What Mafia »

Apokryltaros wrote:
What Mafia wrote:
Anonymous wrote:True.. an American Werewolf In London was excellent for it's time. I think at least some CGI would be nice but it isn't necissary to have a lot of it if the make up jobs and what not are really good
I thought the werewolves looked like naked rats or babboons in that movie. =/
No, David looked like an obese wolverine, the "werewolves" in An American Werewolf in Paris looked more like ugly monkey-lion hybrids with clay-like fur.
ahahaa, oh my! You're really really right!
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Post by vrikasatma »

First and foremost — get good, athletic actors that can move their body like a wolf. The Hunter in Company of Wolves was also a mime and dancer and did yoga, fencing, kendo and horseback riding. He was a real athlete and that to me sold the TF scene.

You can spend thousands on a "wolf suit" but it's the actor that makes it come to life.

I think CG should be used only as an enhancement.
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Post by Apokryltaros »

Vrikasatma wrote:First and foremost — get good, athletic actors that can move their body like a wolf. The Hunter in Company of Wolves was also a mime and dancer and did yoga, fencing, kendo and horseback riding. He was a real athlete and that to me sold the TF scene.

You can spend thousands on a "wolf suit" but it's the actor that makes it come to life.

I think CG should be used only as an enhancement.
We're in luck, then, as Mr Brownrigg is not only the director, but a mime, too.
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Post by Figarou »

Vrikasatma wrote:First and foremost — get good, athletic actors that can move their body like a wolf. The Hunter in Company of Wolves was also a mime and dancer and did yoga, fencing, kendo and horseback riding. He was a real athlete and that to me sold the TF scene.

You can spend thousands on a "wolf suit" but it's the actor that makes it come to life.

I think CG should be used only as an enhancement.
Even if you have athletic actors, werewolf suits can prohibit his/her movements. Besides, the actor doesn't need to be in the suit. It'll be his/her stunt double.
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Post by Renorei »

I think CGI can be amazing sometimes. Look at Dragonheart. And that was several years ago, CGI has progressed by leaps and bounds since then.


But costumed actors are cool too. I like in the new Planet of the Apes towards the end there's a line of apes charging on all fours. So cool. I think they had some people from Cirque De Soleil help them get the movements right, and they had to have arm extensions, but the final result was awesome.
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Re: CGI: Miami

Post by Meeper »

If the forum can forgive me necroposting, Just wanted to toss in some coinage while it's in my mind. So much discussion was given to methods of imaging the beast, but actual shot selection seems to get passed over a bit. I watched Minotaur recently, which used both mechanical and CG versions of the bull, some of the CG stuff was simply stunning, motion captured no doubt, the fast paced scenes in particular, with the bull charging head on or from the rear, the animation was fluid and life like, it didn't look over cooked even when it was bouncing sideways off the walls while going round corners.

But some slow shots of the bull's flanks revealed flawed skeletal animation, tugging on a texture skin in a way that makes it look less like rippling muscle and more like a couple of kids fighting under a blanket (a crying shame, considering a couple of other anatomical details were animated so convincingly, I'll leave it to your imagination which parts those were, but I digress), I think it's time the high resolution 3D models got rewarded with more mature and detailed skeletal animation rigs, motion capture is great, just remember to check the skins now and then :P . Lighting detail is an eternal issue that will continue to improve, I feel that arguing over that is a bit redundant, just keep spotting the floors and fixing them as we've always done.

Continuing my critique of "Minotaur", on the mechanical bull, the model looked great in certain scenes, but what they did with it in some scenes made it look stiff and lifeless, most notably the interactions of the bull impaling people on its horns, zooming and panning while the bull moves relatively slowly along fairly fixed planes, as if on a stage or somehow limited, it took away the vitality and ferocious power of the bull that the CG had put in place, even though it was supposedly holding up a 200lbs guy on one horn, a 1000lbs bull would be tossing the guy around like a rag doll.

In the end if you're using both, they need to be properly balanced, case in point the CG werewolves in Underworld Evolution came close and were used well in most of the scenes I looked at, but to me the CG stuff still over powered the mechanical werewolves a little bit, bordering on comical. In Minotaur they got the CG bull spot on, and it was the mechanical bull that was the let down quite badly, I wouldn't have minded if they left the impaling scenes out completely in preference for post carnage shots, or at least cherry picked the zooming/panning close up shots of it and mixed in some more distant CG shots showing the bull ragging the victim around.

On a side note.
Scott Gardener wrote: Obviously, Underworld suffered from the Hollywood syndrome of looking nothing like what a werewolf should look like
Just picking this out at random, I sat down to watch Underworld on DVD a while back, after the film I watched some of the "behind the scenes" stuff in the bonus section, where the film crew were gloating about how they were making the Underworld werewolf look "cat like". Nuff said.

Just my thoughts for the offering, for what they're worth, sorry if this got off topic somewhat :blush: .
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Re: Werewolf MUSTS

Post by IndianaJones »

Bringing up a 4 year old thread isn't really fun. You do have some points about CGI and Animatronic Werewolves.
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Re: Werewolf MUSTS

Post by RedEye »

Actually, Meeper isn't Necroposting. We prefer that old threads are brought up and "updated" as opposed to fifty-seven threads on getting Werewolf fur out of your furniture. :P

It's actually easier for us Mods and Admins to deal with. :D

Anyway, that's part of the instructions for use. Yay Meeper for looking up and doing as we asked instead of making yet another thread. :o
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