A visual effects artist has revealed the reason why special effects in movies are so much “worse” now.

Fans have long lamented the declining quality of computer-generated imagery (CGI) as a seemingly increasing number of blunders are picked up by eagle-eyed viewers upon almost every big release.

From movies such as Cats, Hulk and Aladdin to Avengers: Infinity War and the latest Mad Max instalment, Furiosa, on-screen glitches and some low-quality visuals have been jarring for moviegoers. The phenomenon is now so ubiquitous that flaws are apparent even in trailers for unreleased movies, such as the forthcoming remake of The Crow.

“VFX artist here, heres what happened,” he began. “Clients continually change the brief. Shot design and planning are no longer a priority, and we have a lot more work to get through in a shorter amount of time.

“We have and can create work better than back in the day, it just needs the right leadership team, planning, and time to make sure it happens.”

Edji explained that the average film now changes a lot more during postproduction than it used to, adding, “This means new work gets added to our plate and work we’ve already started (and sometimes even finished) gets scrapped. The ‘fix it in post’ mentality also doesn’t help.”

He implored people to not blame VFX artists, saying: “It’s almost always the studio/leadership team who is responsible for when things don’t get done up to scratch and never the actual artists’ fault.”

  • Echo Dot
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    -724 days ago

    Oh God I’m sick of this argument. The problem isn’t CGI the problem is bad CGI.

    It’s like saying all model shots look bad. Yeah some do but a lot don’t. You have to pay attention to it and you have to put in the effort.

    Oh and by the way The Barbie movie had a lot of CGI in it despite what the creators claimed, and no one noticed.

    • ASeriesOfPoorChoices
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      1424 days ago

      yes, but the question is “why is it bad/worse?” and the answer is “management needs to pull their finger out”

    • @CylustheVirus@beehaw.org
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      824 days ago

      What argument? The article appears to claim that the reason there’s more bad CGI now is studio leadership changing stuff in post and failing to plan.