Topic: Is CGI overrated?

I was watching and Poking around Animated Movies and i noticed that CGI is recently making more money and it's to a point that Almost everyone in The movie industry is using CGI, i thought it was a Fad from Pixar, but after a year later, i watched Nick and Cartoon network and i saw some cartoons and Even then, CGI is used there too and some of the CG free cartoons are used by flash and leaving only Shows like Spongebob, Adventure time, Regular show, and FGP, but SB and FGP fell into seasonal decay, and i got to ask...is CGI overrated? No, i don't hate CG in general, but i expect CGI to make beautifully style effects and Animation, but some like Hotel transelvania, Fanboy and Chumchum, Robot and Monster and etc seem to do it only to jump on the Bandwagon, but does anyone think it's kinda overrated? I think so. Paperman and Wreck it ralph and pixar do it amazingly, but does it deserve to ''Replace'' most of Wester Animation and others or is it Overused. 3,2,1, GO!

CGI can be a great tool, and fantastic means of telling a story. But lately I think it has been overused. Lower-budget CGI kids movies are looking cheaper because everyone is racing to get CGI, no matter the quality of the final product. (cough Alpha and Omega cough )

Too many studios seem to just use it as a cheap alternative or out of laziness. Western animation is still a work of art, and shouldn't be put to rest just because everybody else is mainly using CGI. Both can and should be able to co-exist.

Well, not in Transformers Prime it isn't!

But that's all I'll vouch for it.

I wouldn't say it's overrated, I'd say it's overused.

It's Pixar's bread & butter, so I don't expect or want them to stop using it (that, and they do it best), but I see no reason for Disney's internal studio to follow suit. Sure, they've had their hits as of late, with Tangled & Wreck it Ralph, but more often than not their films are upstaged by what Pixar already released earlier in the year (both graphically & in popularity). For example: Pixar's Finding Nemo, Cars, & Toy Story are still household names, while Disney's own Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, & Bolt? Not so much.

I feel like if Disney's internal studios went back to hand drawn 2D animation (what I feel they're best at, and what they're most known for), it'd set them apart from Pixar (& their competitors Dreamworks & Sony Animated Studios) enough to give them a better chance of standing out & getting noticed.

The CGI in Prime is terrible, former work very well at all. A definite step back in animation.

No, it's actually underrated ... really. Let's look at an example to explain why, a movie I didn't even like, Avatar. Do you know how bad it would have looked, and expensive it would have been to produce, if they didn't use CGI for that movie? It would not have been produced at all without it. Because of CGI we can get more, and a larger variety, of movies, television shows, and videos online because it's cheaper and more efficient to use CGI. Yes, there will be some people who are so bad at it that you want to gag, but when it's good, it's glorious. You get that with traditional special effects .... and animations. Have you seen the older animations? Even the older anime? Most look like .... crap. Cells are expensive, so they often reused scenes so much it got annoyingly repetitive, or the mouths just had two states. They also had a very grainy look to them, due to particulates in the air while snapping the cells onto film. Then there were the errors, so many errors .... mistakes that were drawn and not noticed until production, when it was too late to correct them. I just described the high class animations, the lower class rarely showed up more often than holiday specials. shudders

Overrated? That's certainly debateable.
Overused? Most definitely...

Really, I'm not a fan of the general look of CGI, but I still wouldn't have so much of a problem with it if it wasn't used so often these days. There aren't enough standard animated cartoons and films these days, all the money's going into CGI, even for stuff that doesn't really work with that style. It's at it's worst when it's used for Television series, because it never has the time, talent, and budget needed to make it look good.

Overrated? If anything people are too harsh on it.

CGI is not overrated, its just overused. Any form of animation can be done well when its put in the right hands.

I'm sorry, I can't get your full meaning. I am also confused as to why the animation is bad.

Blasted late at night phone typos. I think that a lot of the characters look terrible in Prime, I think they ruined Megatron's face with it, along with other character faces, the humans don't look as good as before(as in Cybertron and before.) It all doesn't work as well as the previous art styles with everything (again Cybertron and before), a step down for sure. Prime as a whole is a horrifying disgrace to Transformers, I wish it wasn't, but it is.

I really dont like CGI animation anymore. every animated film does it nowadays, everything looks stale. i want to see more traditionally animated films again! Princess and the Frog was great, so was Winnie the Pooh!

So, you're saying "It's different, I don't like it, so it's bad."

I disagree. And I'll leave it at that.

Hate to break it to you, but Princess and the Frog were CGI, just not raytraced CGI. Drawn cell animation cannot look that smooth and clean, it's impossible. By "clean," I mean the coloring is too even.

You're arguing things way too technically.

This whole discussion is about whether or not "CGI" cartoons, in the style Pixar & the like, are overrated, not the use of computers in general.

Yes, modern 2D animation uses CGI technology, but that's not what people here are discussing at all.

I agree with @DestinyMan.It is overused.If I had a dollar for every poorly done CGI film or animation that has been made,I'd be a millionaire.Seriously,I can't go on Netflix without seeing a corny direct-to-video film that is either poorly animated or just a blatant rip-off of another film.I remember seeing a rip-off of Kung Fu Panda that literally said it wasn't related to the film,even though we all knew it was a horrible rip-off.DreamWorks is OK,though.But Monsters vs. Aliens is a horrible show.

I think it can work well with a large enough budget and on a large enough scale. Unfortunately a lot of television shows are using CGI nowadays and I really don't think it looks that good. There are a few exceptions where it's passable, but for the most part I don't really like it.

It's definitely overused, but I wouldn't say it's always 'overrated'. It's just a lot of studios use it poorly and end up making the characters look like they're from the uncanny valley.

if CGI is done wrong, it goes WAY WAY WAY WAY DOWN into the uncanny valley, imo.

if done right CGI can be awesome! the problem is that it's rarely done right.....