Prince Akhmed and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Being from the year 2005, I have to say that at first the silhouette animation didn't quite appeal to me. I wasn't much for the documentary either. But, when we got into watching Prince Akhmed, I started to get interested. Even though the animation was old and it was not in English, I think it added to the experience. It really made me use my imagination more to try to follow the story. Like we discussed in class, the silhouettes were human looking, but exaggerated to make a better impression. The Prince and the female that he meets have normal features, with plain looking faces. The bad guy (I should call him because I don't know his name), on the other hand, has very exaggerated facial features like a long crooked nose and mouth. He also changes into unpleasant things such as a bat, which distinguishes him to be the bad guy.
Outside of class in the animation world, something big just happened in Japan. Last night Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children was released on DVD. This movie is made by the remenants of the studio that produced Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within. As some know, The Spirits Within was almost a complete financial disaster for Squaresoft. The movie had nothing to do with any of the loosely related video game series Final Fantasy, and those who were avid players were mad. This sort of paved the way for two of the most popular Role Playing Game giants to merge. So Squaresoft and rival Enix merged to make Square-Enix.
This is where Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children will do better. This time the movie is based on the most popular game in the series, which is actually the most popular video game of all time (based of sales), and hits number 1 on most greatest games of all time lists as well. It uses the same great CGI animation style that The Spirits Within used but relies on more familiar faces and characters to pull it off. The animation is great and fluid, the best you can find in the industry. You can see individual hairs on the characters, and it flows just like it would in real life. Same goes for the clothes and facial expressions.
The movie is more for nostalgia though. It recreates some of the most memorable scenes in the games for viewers to enjoy as flashbacks. It just came out last night, and is already available on the internet. Even though it was in Japanese, I was able to follow the story. It was kind of like watching Prince Akhmed. I highly recommend it to anyone who is either a fan of animation or the game.
If you want to check out the trailers for the movie, go here.http://www.square-enix.co.jp/dvd/ff7ac/
If you look hard enough, you can find the entire movie as well. It's worth the hunt.
posted by Phil's blog @ 11:05 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
I too am a fan of Final Fantasy, and am anxiously awaiting the release of Advent Children stateside. I can't say I'm a big enough fan to buy it outright, but definitely worth a rental. Not only is Square responsible for this new CGI-animated film, as well as The Spirits Within, but think about what got them to the point where they could make movies: cut-scenes. The cut-scenes of Square games, particularly the Final Fantasy series, have been wowing fans since the release of Final Fantasy VII back in 1997. Since that point, they became the dominating visual force in an industry rife with competition. With the Sony Playstation 3 to arrive next spring, we can expect the next generation of Square's eye-popping cut-scenes to start appear around next winter 2006. I imagine they will re-raise the bar on their competitors again, in terms of production values and overall visual quality.
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