Join us for an exciting episode of CGCast where we dive into a mix of movie magic and gaming nostalgia! Tyson, Mark, Aden, and I delve into our thoughts on the latest Harry Potter film, marveling at its groundbreaking CGI, especially the dragon sequence,
while also sharing insights on classic gaming experiences like the Xbox 360 and nostalgic titles like Halo and Metroid. We discuss the pros and cons of console versus PC gaming, touch on upcoming projects like Blizzard's potential World of Warcraft
movie, and even ponder the future of game adaptations. Plus, we tackle viewer mail, addressing requests for transcripts and school recommendations for aspiring creatives. This episode promises a blend of insightful critiques and fun, casual conversation—perfect
for fans of all things visual effects and gaming!
Welcome everybody to the 9th episode of CGCast. Today is
the 19th of November and this show is
going to be a bit more laid back. I have Tyson, Bell with
me, Mark Pintar with me,
and Aden Priest with me. Today we're just going to be
talking about different stuff like
the Harry Potter movie, the Xbox 360, and I'll probably
read some viewer mail on the show.
taking a break from the normal trying something different
since you guys said that the show was
a bit too calculated and scripted so Tyson you saw the
higher quarter movie i did yeah i saw it
uh opening night what do you think about it well um i'm not
really a like a fan of the books or
anything so i meant i went purely for uh the cg elements i
don't think i would have gone if it
was completely practical effects movie but i mean the cg
elements you know you can't complain about
them they were they were pretty flawless i was very
impressed they were good in the old movies
too um yeah but this one i mean it seems with each movie
they've kind of like really tried to push
the boundaries and like you know improve on the last movie
and this one yeah definitely uh the
effects were much more impressive than in the last one are
there any moments to look for like
anything special um well the dragon sequence which is uh
there's you can see part of it in the trailer
that's pretty that's nuts uh that's a great uh example of
realistic looking cg just looks it
just looks great so uh yeah that's a good one to look out
for yeah cool so um how was the story
story was uh was good i mean it's just like there's nothing
they introduced a couple new
characters but they didn't really pull any punches that you
know you couldn't see coming a mile away
so uh this it was kind of cool seeing harry go through all
of his little challenges that he has
to do he's in this big tournament with a couple other wiz
ards so um you know it was okay nothing
nothing crazy in the story department all right do you
think it was worth the seven dollars to go
oh yeah it was it was worth it i'm glad i i'm glad i saw it
just purely for the effects
yeah okay i'm gonna try and catch it if they show it in
english here and one thing i'd like to
comment on you know you said about the dragon then if you
've ever watched reign of fire if you look
the dragon in rain of fire the dragon in the new harry pot
ter they look really similar yeah i
actually uh watched rain of fire a couple weeks ago i
decided to finally rent it and i was actually
got some uh some pretty darn good effects in it too like it
's it's a little uh it's kind of like
a sleeper movie that not a lot of people paid attention to
yeah is it better than dragon heart
i've never seen dragon heart that was a good movie it's
really old they had it looks really good
it what the dragon you have to check it out it's pretty
cool I did ILM did
dragonheart I believe they scanned the model okay because I
remember just
seeing like a poster board or something in the model and
that looks really good
consider there's me like well like maybe even me I'm not
sure how old it is
probably on the time of Jurassic Park trust me I would
press it for that time
oh yeah and I was also done by ILM Jurassic Park still
holds up yeah
Yeah, it definitely does.
Dragon Heart is newer.
I love watching that.
Oh, okay.
I'm not all up on that.
You have to see Dragon Heart.
Very cool.
So anything else you'd like to add about Harry Potter?
Well, I mean, not really.
Not really?
Definitely if you're into effects and CG and whatever,
check it out for sure.
Which, I mean, you wouldn't really be listening to this
cast
if you weren't.
So everyone listening to this,
definitely go watch it in theaters.
Try to get a good seat, though.
I had a pretty bad seat and I had to kind of turn my neck
the whole time.
Anyways, I was feeling pretty achy by the end, but whatever
.
It sucks.
Speaking of movies, I saw some cool short movies yesterday
made by the Swiss.
There was one that had the most amazing CG crew I've ever
seen.
It looked very real, but it had a lot of personality.
What was the name of that?
You mentioned that before.
Shane, but it's weird because it's a Swiss-German movie.
c-h-e-n-n-y-e i think and it was very cool the crow just
left me amazed and they had another
one with vampires the cg bats but the the vampires turned
into bats but the bats were very cartoony
so it didn't feel it felt like out of context it can't be
it went yeah well uh not congruent
yeah it's hard to find good cg like birds or bats where i
was really impressed by the
the crow in the um the warcraft 3 uh animatics or cin
ematics i don't know if any of you have
seen those but yeah i thought that that crow looked really
good was that like the trailer
well no it was the in warcraft 3 it was the uh the crow
that turns into that guy it's kind of
part of the storyline in the movies oh i don't know if you
remember that but uh i was very impressed
by that blizzard always does good cinematics yeah have you
seen him world of warcraft intro
Yes.
I saw part of it.
Aden, talk louder.
Sorry?
Talk louder.
Is this better?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Apparently, Blizzard is planning on making a World of War
craft kind of Diablo 2 or something along those lines movie.
Really, Aaron?
Sweet.
What is that?
Are they going to release it to the theaters or is it going
to be a movie?
I'm not exactly sure.
It's probably going to be a theater, kind of like how they
did with Doom.
Oh, okay.
Cool.
Anybody seen it?
We've got a new expansion coming out.
Sorry?
Has anybody seen Doom?
No, I was trying to catch that, but I never did.
Yeah, same here.
I'll go check it out.
Apparently it was okay.
I mean, I heard a lot of, like, you know, it was a fun
movie type reviews.
Not necessarily, like, you know, your Oscar material, but a
lot of people were saying it was good.
It was not made by Uwe Boll.
This is true, yeah.
Isn't that guy over where you are, Archer?
Somewhere in Germany or something?
Yeah.
Actually, he's in the States, but he has German investors.
oh okay but he's got he's got a lot of game movies planned
up dungeon siege that's the next one that's
coming out from him oh shoot and i heard on the pc gamer
podcast like uh forgot the name of the guy
that designs the dungeon siege games he's like saying um u-
balls movies were a failure before
because he didn't have a big enough budget and he has a big
budget for dungeon siege so it should
be much better no because i mean they it's not just like
the the effects are cheap or something
that a bigger budget would get.
They're just plain all-around campy.
You know, there's really no...
But he changes the stories a lot.
That's why, like,
the House of Dead was set on an island
or something like that.
I didn't see them.
I don't want to see them.
Well, that's because he changed the story.
He doesn't make it, dude.
No, but they changed the story drastically.
That's like,
they almost did that with Doom.
They wanted to change the demons into zombies
and not be able to...
Oh, yeah, I heard about that.
And then everybody complained,
And I guess they changed it back to being demons and un
blockable cars.
So anybody played the Xbox 360?
I have.
I was at Guelph visiting my friend.
So we went to the mall and we decided to go to EB Games.
And the first thing that we saw, there's this huge TV with
the Xbox 360 playing.
So right away, we went over there and we watched some guy
playing it.
And it was quite amazing, the graphics they have on that.
Like, with the game, you can actually, like, see the poly
edges, kind of, the sharpness.
But with the Xbox 360, you can barely see that.
That's huge.
Actually, I wasn't, as I played Call of Duty 2 on Xbox, I
wasn't very impressed with the graphics.
They're good, but it's like a PC, a high-end PC could do
the same thing.
Yeah.
I hear.
Screens are perfect.
And I don't think that's quite so impressive as it made out
.
It doesn't look...
Aden, we can barely hear you, man.
Sorry, is that better?
Yeah.
Perfect dark.
I've been looking at the screens of perfect dark,
and it doesn't look that impressive as it may doubt it to
be.
Well, the only one that looks really good is Project Gotham
Racing.
And another thing about the Xbox 360,
like most of the games would be better on the PC,
like Call of Duty, there's a PC version.
And if I had the choice, I would just take the PC version
because aiming with those two joysticks is really, really
annoying.
and bad something that would take me five seconds to aim
with on the pc would take me like two
minutes on the xbox and it's yeah that's very true that
really annoying that is and like moral
wind oblivion which is coming on the xbox and pc might as
well get the pc version it's like this
is the same thing with better graphics i'm waiting for the
revolution see which one is better since
they're trying something new i've noticed them most first-
person shooters have been a success
and the console
either come out
on the PC
or it's like
vice versa
it'll come out
on the PC
and be a success
and then it'll
come out on consoles
yeah like Doom
and Quake
but Halo's
the only exception
Halo's the only
really good
first person
the only first person
shooter that did
good on the consoles
I hated Halo 1
so boring
I hated Halo 2
it was exactly
the same as Halo 1
personally
I think they should
have just done
an expansion pack
cause that's how
like that's what
they didn't do
they didn't do
anything really
they added like
one new vehicle and like two weapons i know i'm exagger
ating but they didn't change a whole lot
i disagree though i thought halo 2 was pretty cool i would
hate on get it and you know like
all the new uh you know dual wielding and uh playing as the
aliens was kind of a cool touch
yeah i thought the instant you know we could you it's a
human you could pick up an alien weapon
i thought it was really cool yeah exactly especially those
uh those sword things they
were awesome.
Yeah, that's
probably the best
thing about it.
I haven't played
Halo 2, but since
I was like, that
was such a bad
taste in my mouth
from Halo 1, I
just didn't want to
deal with anything
Halo anymore.
Yeah, I found
Halo 5 minute
experience when you
start with 8
multiplayer.
I couldn't play it
by myself.
Yeah, the single
player was definitely
lacking in Halo 2.
I'd probably be in
it by, I think,
seven hours, which
for a blockbuster
game like that
should have at least
had a better
storyline and single player
than that. And that's why I think
it should have just been an expansion, not actually
an entire sequel.
I think it was considerably
shorter than the first one, but
I don't know. Expansion? There was
too much new stuff. Just the whole
dual story, I think that would have been
a massive...
As an expansion, I don't think the company would have made
as much money as having just a second release,
like a sequel.
I don't understand why they released it as Halo 2
as opposed to Halo 1.5.
You can't really make expansions for consoles, can you?
No, not really.
Yeah, that too.
But it wasn't really worth a sequel.
Alright, so.
A lot of people are complaining about Halo.
And they're making a Halo movie.
Oh yeah, I heard about that.
Yeah, J.R. Jackson is producing that.
Yeah, that actually might be good.
Yeah, I'm kind of looking forward to that.
I like the Halo style, but the games suck.
That's my opinion.
Did you guys ever read the books for Halo?
No.
I hear they're really good.
So hopefully if they go with that storyline,
compare the ones that they have in the games,
Halo, the movie, probably has really great potential.
Hey, did you guys hear?
Nintendo's planning to make some movies.
They're going to make a Metroid movie and a Zelda movie.
Metroid is really cool.
I'd go see the...
Actually, Metroid could be really cool
because they got those really...
I was always a huge fan of the monsters and the aliens.
I remember back Metroid...
What was the name of it?
Anyway, so one for Super Nintendo,
she was getting the old, what was that magazine called?
Nintendo Power or whatever.
And they had like three pages of,
there was like a feature on that game
and then someone went and illustrated all the monsters
in detail and whatever.
And I just, that always just was so cool to me.
So I would definitely go see the movie.
But we're not, they're not sure
if they're going to make it live action or CG, but.
I'd like to see live action.
I think it'd be a nice touch.
CG would just be a little bit too...
Yeah, boring.
Have you seen the...
When Metroid Prime came out for the GameCube,
they had a CG commercial
that was very wow.
If they do it like that commercial,
it would be pretty cool.
I haven't seen that one.
It was like wow.
So I thought it was like...
Where is Nokia?
What?
I find it quite fun to explore in that game.
Yeah, it's...
Newer Demi?
That'd be a cool CMV.
On Zelda, that's going to be a bit hard.
Zelda was an amazing thing for its time.
Yeah, it's to this.
Yeah.
I used to love playing that.
I grew up as a child playing that game.
It was so fun.
Yeah, same.
Original Nintendo, Zelda, and then what was there?
Zelda Link to the Past, whatever.
Those were great games.
Zelda, Zelda 2.
Yeah, those were fun.
That was like my whole childhood right there.
Wasted on Zelda.
And have you guys ever played Harvest Moon?
That's awesome.
Harvest Negative.
Both playing that.
I played it like Game Boy or whatever.
No, you haven't played the Super Nintendo 64 version.
Yeah, the Super Nintendo, I played that one.
Yeah, you get to make your own farm.
What's cooler than that?
Farm simulation.
Yeah, when they released it for the GameCube,
it kind of sucked.
I reckon it was kind of the day system,
and it just...
Yeah, it was so long.
No, the GameCube version sucked
because they just downplayed everything.
It was like being downgraded.
You could do so much more stuff on the 64
and PlayStation version.
They dumbed it down.
it's pretty stupid
yeah
it's a huge disappointment
though because I waited
so long for that game
yeah but I think
they're making another one
I hope so
I hope they don't go
with those
the same graphics again
yeah well
I hope they stay
to that
I don't know
I disagree on that
it's that same style
but
gameplay didn't
get better
yeah but
it
you're breaking up Aden
sorry
it's probably
more mics
like Sam or Chester
I don't know
so is there anything
you guys
you'd like to add?
Nothing I can think of.
I'm not a really big game player, so
my opinion's limited on the subject.
The only game I play right now is
Counter-Strike Source. Nothing
that everybody else doesn't know about that.
Yep. What do you play,
Dante? It used to be really
fun with your mates, but then I just got bored
of it. It's kind of like you go
in it and then get bored of it.
It's my stress relief.
I haven't played in a while.
So I want to read some viewer mail that I've gotten on the
air.
If you guys,
you guys can send me mail.
It's like Archer at CG cast.com or info at CG cast.com.
You can send it.
I'll read it on the air.
We'll answer your questions.
Um,
uh,
Lisa asked,
um,
uh,
I'm,
I'm known as Zena Trek on CG talk web form.
And I was wondering if there will be transcripts available
for the CG cast,
especially those with hearing impairment,
which is my disability.
I started listening to the CGCast show
and have had a hard time understanding
what is said and what not.
Thanks, Zenitrek, a.k.a. Lisa T. Ellis.
Anybody know an easy way to make transcripts
without actually going and listening through?
I don't know how else you do it.
I think you pretty much have to go through
and listen and just type it out.
There might be a program,
because I know there are programs
where you can talk into and it types in,
but I don't know if it will work with
an audio on p3 well if anybody out there has any ideas
would love to know and so would lisa
and i can if i have free time i can start doing some of it
all right that's cool it might be cool
in like future episodes to have uh like if you don't have a
full like i know skype can only hold
five people at a time so like this time we're full but um
to have like a someone off to the side
who's just kind of typing it out as as the talking is going
on like listening and typing
that'd be cool as opposed to having to go do it afterwards
you should have franklin do that yeah
franklin i'm sure would be up for that maybe yeah um
another email uh from or me dominique
um your show is good i like to listen to it while i'm at
work i found myself wanting to interject
during your discussion just wondering how can i go wrong to
be your guest i'm either i'm an
advertising designer in san francisco i'm a huge cg fan i
love to work in i'm very knowledgeable
in game design and high-risk real-time work.
Would love to sit in on a session for sure.
Thanks for all your hard work.
Or me, Dominique.
Well, you can join.
Just add me on Skype.
I think I'm ArcherX on Skype.
ArcherX15 on Skype.
Add me and if you're on for the next time we're on,
you can join into the conversation
as long as there's space available.
Anybody can join.
I'm open.
We're open to discussion as long as you're not rude, no bad
words, you know the drill.
And at least a bit charismatic.
Yes.
Which I'm not.
Okay, here's another email from Nick Van Zupfen.
Zupfen?
I hope I'm not saying your name wrong.
Dear Olivier, about two weeks ago, I listened to your first
show and I liked it.
And I decided to listen to them all.
It's a great thing that you run this show in person.
I do like it a lot.
I have a little request for your show.
You probably know the Vancouver Film Festival.
All these guys on stage talk with the phenomenal showreels.
Personally, I would like it very much if you could get a
guy on the show that finished the VFS to tell us about it.
Why you should go to that school or not.
You know the whole thing.
It's my goal at this moment to go to the VFS in about two
years.
Thanks.
Nick Van Superthin.
Actually, that being said, I know it's kind of beating a
dead horse to do the whole which school is better than this
school or whatever.
But what might be really cool is to have featured different
people who've gone to those schools on different weeks to
talk about their experiences there.
So as opposed to trying to convince someone to go to a
certain school, it's just kind of like putting all the
experiences into a big pot and letting people decide for
themselves.
That might be really cool to feature students, past
students.
Yeah, even current students.
I sent two emails to the guys and they were like saying
they were too busy but that's when the show
started off so maybe they're a bit less busy now so if any
guys are listening from the VFS
and would like to comment and would like to come on the
show and talk about it uh you're welcome
um so yeah um I'll send the emails again to the other guys
see if I can get them on the show
uh did you do any school Tyson no you don't know I did uh
Mark are you planning to go any school
architecture or like information technology or something
along those lines maybe graphic design
but yeah school important right now I'm doing art school in
Lausanne and it's pretty cool
first year they make us like test around with everything
photography
graphism drawing cinema etc to make sure we're doing what
we really want to do we have like
time to change in case we don't like what we're doing so
that's pretty cool and i'm liking it a
lot especially the photography and cinema i'm not too keen
on the color classes and when the drawing
and horrible that's definitely a needed thing in like 3d
you at least know how to have some
artistic ability or you won't ever be able to create
anything outstanding yeah the drawing
is important but my drawing i can't draw realistically the
teacher says i don't know
everybody keeps saying that my art is stylized i'm very i
have a very stylized work and everything
even tyson told me that he was the first person to tell me
that and then after he said that i
noticed that people kept telling me that i'm not really
sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing
well i think all they mean is that you have recognizable
work and that could be a good thing
but if it's if it's good and recognizable and you look at
that and you're like whoa you know like
you look at an unknown piece of work and you're like oh i
wonder if you know so-and-so made that
that's a good thing but if it's recognizable in the sense
that you have the same flaws in each
piece or something then it can be a bad thing so it goes
either way yeah i'm gonna try to prove
once i get some time school has been taking up most of my
time so that's 3d and it's hard to do
the shows now yeah school was take alongside a lot so yeah
oh well um i think that's about it
for tonight it's a short show um wasn't really planned as
you guys can see but we wanted to try
something different like uh more discussion there wasn't
much going in the cg industry to talk about
so this was like more light-hearted and just for fun giving
like a break from the normal interviews
um also on the side we added some google ads adsense could
you guys like please click that
to support us
because I had some
bandwidth issues
bandwidth issues
last month
and almost couldn't
do this show
because I'm out of
bandwidth but luckily
my host kind of
upgraded
but still the support
would be nice
like the ads
yes I know I'm
pouring my stuff out
but yeah
anybody have final
comments
no
you know it was good
to talk with you guys
again but
thanks for having me
on the show
thanks for having me
thank you
see you
Aden wants his
site to be plugged plug away Aden um well i've got a
little site we're based on photography work
i was wondering if anyone's interested in any prints for
the studio or house or anything like
that i post my artwork on there deviantart to sell stuff
and it's aden-photo.deviantart.com
slash star and that's all my prints and stuff if you're
interested i don't like deviantart
hey speaking of prints uh cg talk's gonna start selling
prints maybe you should check it out there
when it's available to the public cg and stuff yeah but i'm
sure it's their cg prints but you
can count it as photo manipulation yeah well a lot of it is
photo manipulation i mean some of
them are spent like five hours on one print exactly maybe
once cg prints open to the public
to sell you could sell it there yeah higher quality and i'm
gonna look into it for death
on that.
All right.
I'll need to
do this much
more in a
second to
fund my
studies.
Beto,
remember guys,
click the
ads.
All right,
that's about
it.
Everybody say
goodbye.
Bye-bye.
Later.
Goodbye.
