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Blu-Ray cover for the animated Fury from the Deep. Drawn images of the Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria menaced by tentacles.

The animation of Fury from the Deep is somewhat different in style from many of the other Doctor Who animations. I would argue that it is a less successful experiment, but I'm not really an expert so what do I know. I'm very grateful we have the animations - I find them more accessible than reconstructions - but in general I'm not sure anyone has successfully figured out how to render expressive actors' faces in a realistic style on a budget. I sometimes wonder whether taking a more minimalist and stylistic approach might work better.

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From:

a_cubed

I think generative AI might be a solution to this in the short term. Train it on previous filmed expressions, then map the results to a basic animation of the gross action plus lipsyncing.

From:

purplecat

Generative AI might well be part of the solution, though I would predict that what people will want to use it for is to link the tele snaps together in a photorealistic fashion.

From:

a_cubed

That would be a much bigger task. Possibly for later generations of generative AI.

From:

purplecat

Indeed - but absolutely a use case I think Dr Who fans would want.

From:

purplecat

Actually - see the YouTube video scifirenegade links to below. Totally going to be a thing.

From:

sallymn

My favourite Doctor :) though I am not so keen on this style too.

From:

purplecat

It was an interesting experiment and I assume they were planning to do more (I think it was a different funding route or animation house than many of the others) but nothing seemed to come of it and I'm not sure I'm sorry.

From:

scifirenegade

With the (let's face it) limited animation they usually have going on (due to budget), a more stylised approach would be ideal. Or give the animators more time and money, but the entertainment industry is not known for giving artists their deserved time and money.

My least favourite animation (possibly because I have a personal attachment with the story) is The Reign of Terror. The character designs are so... realistic they're ugly and the constant cuts don't make the animation dynamic, they make difficult to follow.

Yet I'm grateful we have these, you can see that the people working on the animations are doing their best under the circumstances.

Oh, and definitely not AI. It's already yikes when they "brought back the corpse" of Peter Cushing for Rogue One. I find this unethical. One of those "they thought they could, but not if they should" situations.

From:

purplecat

The Reign of Terror seems to be the least loved of all the animations. I have to admit, it didn't particularly stand out to me as bad the time I watched it, but then I've not been terribly impressed by any of them.

I don't object to generative AI per se for animation - even animation of dead actors - it's not so much different, ethically, from a hand animation. I think they're all a bit uncanny valley at the moment which is, I think, what drives the "walking corpse" reaction. Of course there is a much wider discussion to be had around the impact on jobs, how use of generative AI should be addressed in terms of actors contracts, terms and conditions, the role of consent, and the sustainability of the underlying technology.

From:

scifirenegade

Definitely agree with your last sentence, especially considering how willy nilly the entertainment industry seems to be using AI instead of, say, a stock picture of 1950s California (talking about the recent reveal of the Fallout show as an example).

The Reign of Terror has some really smooth animation (rotoscoped? I think?), but why are they cutting to a candle?

lurking-latinist mentioned Troughton's animated face and I agree. He's a real life cartoon character.

I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist, I think there are missing episodes out there, they're just being hoarded by collectors with a Gollum complex :D

(Note: I pressed enter when I shouldn't. Sorry for the double notification.)

Edited Date: 2023-08-27 08:53 am (UTC)

From:

scifirenegade

Oh, just one more thing, because I can't keep my mouth shut and thought these were neat when it came to episode recons / animations.

Josh Snares upscaled telesnaps using a variet of programms and got interesting results.

He also used a programm called Ebsynth to make telesnaps "talk". It was, both horrifying and hilarious. Poor Susan. The programm isn't really AI, and its purpose is to create moving paintings, but I've seen people colourise videos with it. Definitely saves time, you just need to colourise specific frames instead of every single one.

From:

purplecat

The remaining episode of The Web of Fear is almost certainly out there and I think there is a good chance, as you say, of a handful more in the hands of collectors - but I'm dubious that more than, say, 20% tops of the remaining missing episodes will ever appear.

From:

lurking_latinist

It's a shame that it's Troughton that has so many episodes missing, when his mobile face and visual mannerisms are so important to his portrayal of the character. (I say this as someone who's never been able to get into the animations at all.)

From:

purplecat

I wish we had more, in particular, of the Ben and Polly episodes. It depresses me a little that nothing has been found for a decade now. It feels like we may have recovered the vast majority of what we will ever recover.

From:

a_cubed

Short short SF story.

A bunch of obsessed Dr Who nerds invent FTL just so they can send a massive aerial to capture the missing DW stories by outrunning the signal.

From:

purplecat

This seems entirely plausible to me.

From:

daniel-saunders.livejournal.com

I haven't seen the telesnap reconstructions, but I do find the animations easier to follow these days than the audios. (That said, E and I are currently listening to Marco Polo and enjoying it.) It does annoy me they cut that scene from The Macra Terror. I'm not sure if they cut anything else. It does weirdly stop me being 100% for them.

I can't really judge the standard of the animations. They're obviously not Pixar standard, for equally obvious reasons, but they do require an effort to watch and allowances to be made.

From:

purplecat

The cut in The Macra Terror was very odd - Obviously I don't really understand the finances of these things but it seems strange that a single scene could have made such a dramatic difference to the cost of making the animation that it was worth omitting it - given it the omission was bound to upset fans.

From:

daniel-saunders.livejournal.com

Yes, it does seem strange. I think the argument was that they would have had to create a set and several characters for a two minute scene. But it did feel like they could cut costs elsewhere e.g. the mini-episode version of The Wheel in Space episode one on the same disc. I don't think they've cut anything so obviously since then, or maybe they stopped admitting to it and hoped no one notices.

From:

daniel-saunders.livejournal.com

FWIW, I've come to see these reconstructions as an interpretation of the originals rather than a straightforward recreation e.g. the various in jokey background elements in some animations nodding towards much later stories.

From:

purplecat

I think the decision to go for a more interpretive choice was a good one. They obviously simply can not recreate the original viewing experience and arguably it's foolish to try, so leaning into it a bit and treating them as a thing in their own right is a good one.

Though, obviously, not the extent of cutting audio (see previous point).

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