A couple of years ago I saw a show that featured a company that had secured the rights to the likenesses of a number of stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood (Bogart etc.). Their idea was to take advantage of computer imaging to reuse these stars in new movies. A little while later I heard that the company gone out of business, as the technology to accurately “animate” human characters was not yet ready. It seemed like a good idea… just slightly too far ahead of it’s time. Has anyone else heard of this company? Do they still exist? Has someone else bought them out? Any info would be helpful
Is that legal? - Is it possible to buy someone’s likeness?
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was a pretty impressive feat in animating completely CG humans. I don’t see why one couldn’t create a wire-frame of, say, Humphrey Bogart from several different photos and use them for texture mapping as well.
Seems very plausible. I smell Orwellian news in the future 
Did the characters in Final Fantasy have realistic hair? I’ve always understood that to be the most difficult part to animate.
Not exactly CG but what about those beer ads on tv with John Wayne, and Fred Astaire dancing with the vacuum cleaner. Do you think thes ad agencies own those stars images or just the rights to the original piece of film they modify?
How much modification is allowed before it becomes a whole new work?
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For Fred Astaire, they bought the rights to the image from the family. California has a law that required the family agree to any used of the star’s image.
I think it’s 30% change before it’s your own work rather than the original artist (or whatever)
No, that’s a myth. How do you measure 30% of a changed image?
You must get preoper legal permission to use another person’s image, it’s that simple. If you don’t, you’re stealing.
I just bought and watched Final Fantasy and had seen it when it first came out. While impressive, it isn’t very close to live action. Movement seem natural, but everything seems to move very slowly.
I also got a ‘Making of’ video with it. They did use motion capture which is sort of cheating, IMHO.
Hair was pretty good, but needs considerable work.
Well, urban1, it is perhaps cheating in a purely theoretical sense but it isn’t like we can deduce from the structure of man’s body alone how one would walk, run, or jump. Motion capture is used to overcome that technical little detail. 
Besides which, we’re talking about doing Fred Astaire-style vacuum cleaner commercials, revamping old actors with CG. The whole affair requires actual film of people to work with. (ps: I think the old man was the most impressive looking character, wasn’t he?)
But yeah, the hair was actually very impressive, Chronos. While it was never “messed up” like normal hair would be (of course, the main character could just be a conditioner freak! :p) it did sway with motion and gravity well enough, I think. As the movie played on for just a few minutes I became very adjusted to the CG rendering. Some stuff, hell, I couldn’t even believe it wasn’t real.
Shame it didn’t do better in the theaters, because I would like to see more movies like that.
There will be more movies like that. People tended to slam the movie for all the wrong reasons - usually because the story was cliche, or the acting and dialogue was a bit cheesy.
But hey people! It was an unprecedented achievement! It was an experiment of unbelievable proportions that they pulled off! it wasn’t trying to go for an Academy Award in virtual acting, this was a test to see what was possible - and we now see anything is possible!
I can’t wait for the DVD.
I’m waiting for the day when CGI is advanced enough to make new episodes of the original Star Trek.
Well, this isn’t exactly a ‘new’ episode of Star Trek, but there is a company that is taking the old episodes and re-doing the effects with CGI. Their first episode was the one with the big planet-killing cigar thing.
You can read about it here, along with links to some MPG’s of the episode: http://www.securepurchase.com/themoviezone/Review-DigitalStreamSFX.html
The real test, of course, is a bit more difficult. With Final Fantasy, say, you look at it and go “Wow, that’s some awfully good CGI!”. With really good CGI, you wouldn’t even know it was computerized in the first place.
Well, the only things I knew for sure were CG were the particle effects and the people. anything that didn’t immediately fall into those two categories was really a toss in the pot for me; had I not known in advance that the entire film is CG I’d be wondering about a lot.
That said, with a physical likeness to work with in the case of the OP things could be much easier. As well, with computers dedicated to rendering only a person we could expect a much better quality of motion.
I mean, put a hat and a trenchcoat on the guy and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference except maybe on a close up. Hell, even then. The old man in FF (just watched it again today) is truly an impressive feat.
I think it is very, very plausible, aside from the small problem that CG inserted into regular filming shoots is much more obvious to discern than pure CG.
Apart from some of the stiff expressions on some of the faces, the thing that bothered me the most on Final Fantasy was how the arms looked like they weren’t attached to the shoulders properly.
Though that’s the same look the FF characters seem to have in the video games of the same name, so maybe that’s why.
I think the best test of cgi will be the spider man movie coming out next year. For effects shots they’re planning on having characters go fully cgi and back again, often, and in full view of the camera. So it’ll be interesting to see how noticible it is when someone’s cgi or not.