Are the Na`vi in James Cameron`s AVATAR Just Computer Animation or is There More to Them?
Ask the animators at the visual effects company WETA, and they`ll tell you that the avatars and Na`vi in 20th Century Fox` AVATAR film are animated.
Ask director Jim Cameron, and he`ll say the characters were performed by the actors.
The truth is that both are right.
It took great animation skill to ensure that the characters performed exactly as the actors did. But at the same time, no liberties were taken with those performances. They were not embellished or exaggerated. The animators sought to be utterly truthful to the actors` work, doing no more and certainly no less than what Sam Worthington, Zoë Saldana or Sigourney Weaver had done in the Volume. Of course the animators added a little bit, with the movement of the tails and ears, which the actors could not do themselves. But even here, the goal was to stay consistent with the emotions created by the actors during the original capture. So when Neytiri`s tail lashes and her ears lower in fury, they are merely further expressing the anger created by Zoë Saldana in the moment of acting the scene.
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