“Crowd shots: the new lens flare?” & “The Channel Frederator crowd shot”
Once upon a time in computer graphics, it seemed like every production needed to have a lens flare in it somewhere. People caught on, and that trend has pretty much gone away, even though they are still used from time to time in certain situations.
Now it seems the lens flare has been replaced with the crowd shot. While I understand the need to show the relative size of a colony of ants, or a flock of penguins, do we really need to see characters that are less than three pixels high in the background? It seems like every CG production now contains at least one near seizure enducing crowd shot. There are so many characters, you can’t possibly take them all in.
So now I’m wondering how many people we have in this Channel Frederator crowd. If you’re reading this blog post, take two seconds and leave a comment. Anything at all. I’m curious as to how many eyeballs actually make it to the end of one of these posts. I’ll start. See you in the comments section!
![[large][black] FReDERATOR badge](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3502/3317571331_e33068a3c8_m.jpg)
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On November 15th, 2006 at 12:00 am
So lets see how many people (comments) we can cram into our ASCII crowd shot…
On November 15th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Good morning Floyd.
I must say, I’m a big fan of lens flare; if used correctly, and if the shot warrants it. Sometimes we need to have characters that are so small in the BG depending on the atmosphere you need to convey. Look at a lot of those older biblical, Roman and Egyptial pictures. Casts of thousands and a lot of cgaracters you could hardly see on the matte painting in the BG! WOW! What a mind blower.
But; today as you know; CG takes care of all of that.
Anyway Floyd; great blog postings as always and thanks for all your information!
Talk soon!
Your Cartoon Pal…. Jeff
On November 15th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Hey Jeff, I agree that lens flares and crowd shots do have their place. It seems though that now there tends to be a lot of crowd shots just for the sake of having them in there… almost like bragging rights for the CG teams making the movies. “How many ants were in that shot?” “Seventy three thousand.” “Ahh, that’s nothing! We’ve got eleventeen million octopi in this battle sequence!”
On November 15th, 2006 at 12:00 am
crowd shot?
On November 15th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Just adding one more faceless pixel to the crowd shot!
On November 15th, 2006 at 12:00 am
The wages of sin are death. Bt after taxes it’s just sort of a ired feeling.
On November 15th, 2006 at 12:00 am
post!
On November 15th, 2006 at 12:00 am
We’re still a few geese short of a gaggle.
On November 15th, 2006 at 12:00 am
I have a favorite shot - but this being a family-oriented blog, I’ll keep my mouth shut.
On November 16th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Howdy!
On November 17th, 2006 at 12:00 am
I’m over-used! Post!
On November 17th, 2006 at 12:00 am
OK - I guess I’m also a compulsive reader/follower too.