Before you mention a ton of CGI movies, read my definition.
A CGI actor exists beyond a specific movies/series.
For instance, the CGI guy playing Fiona’s dad in Shrek later plays a mobster in a completely non-Shrek film, and then a grim colonel in Avatar 3. It’s the same “person”, but a different character.
Can that happen?
Can. Probably will. It’s too good a schtick. It wouldn’t be a regular thing, but… Well, what’s to keep Buzz Lightyear from popping up in some other movie, entirely separate from the Toy Story flicks? A matter of licensing, nothing more.
(Not quite the same thing, but the appearance of the Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator – entirely animated – in Terminator Salvation is kind of an example of this. If permission could be obtained, an entirely new “John Wayne” western could be done, and might be a lot of fun!)
This has been tried, albeit crudely. Lawrence Olivier was ‘inserted’ into Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow as a super-villain (although I don’t know if it was digitally generated or just old footage). Of course his estate sued.
Quite a while ago, nearly 20 years I think, Bob Zemeckis made a short film for HBO in which they used a CGI Humphrey Bogart. The technology was so bleeding edge that he didn’t move and only said the same line a couple times. It was roundly criticized as being a silly, Forrest Gump-style gimmick that it was (not to mention a disrespectful & unauthorized use of Bogart’s image).
It’s getting closer. The Blue Umbrella, PIXAR short that accompanied Monsters University featured a truly astonishing level of photorealism and naturalistic human motion. If they wanted to, I’m confident PIXAR could produce a completely realistic human.
As for the OP, they re-use animated assets constantly, but since each is rendered every time, it would make no sense to not change the character’s face. It’s not as if they are limited by what make-up artists can accomplish with foam latex appliances.
If it happens, it will happen in Japan first, probably putting some “virtual idol” like Hatsune Miku into a non-related movie.
Good lord, of course it will happen - why wouldn’t it?
Real question - other than copyright laws, what would limit this? Fictional characters are repurposed all the time - e.g., fanfic; comic-book crossovers; Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, etc…
They did something like this back in the mid-90’s for some FMV games. D, Enemy Zero, and D2 (despite the name unrelated to the plot of the first) all starring the same “actor” Laura. I think some of the other characters in the series had the same schtick.
What the OP is specifically asking is, in the same way a real human actor gets to play multiple roles, will a CGI creation get to lay multiple roles; They’d have the same physical appearance, and be voiced by the same live actor, but appear in different kinds of movies.
I’m not sure if it’s even a logical idea. As gaffa says, it’s so easy to alter a CGI model, there’s no real need for it.
I still come to the conclusion “of course it will happen.” Some actors are thought of as “always playing themselves” - e.g., Bogie, Cary Grant, Jeff Goldblum. When that approach works, it is because we know that guy and what he brings to the role, and it fits enough to broaden the character in a shorthand way.
If a given CGI character is similarly “branded,” there will be attempts to reuse them for the same reasons. IMHO, I guess.
That’s a character, not an actor.
Maybe I read too much into the OP, but I imagined it was asking if there would ever be computer-generated actors, that is, with no human voicing the role at all, no direct human decisions in facial rendering for specific scenes, that kind of thing.
How do you define a “CGI actor” anyway? Just reusing the graphical model isn’t anything special, and neither is using the same voice actor somewhere else.
I suppose that term makes sense if both the graphical model and voice actor were used to portray a different character in a different movie, but why would you do that? Modifying the graphical model and voice would be relatively trivial.
Software. Producers contract with software writers to license use of the ‘actor’ for a given project. The program takes inputs (from a director, I suppose) for its graphical skin, its lines and actions, its demeanor in each scene–but the details of the output are the product of proprietary algorithms.
That’s what replacing an actor with a computer would require.
13 years ago, Square Pictures wanted to do this with their character(s) from the Final Fantasy movie.
If the movie had done better and not almost wiped out Square in its entirety, we probably would have already had the character model “Aki Ross” show up in other video games or films. So yeah, it’s going to happen. I’m a little surprised its not more widespread yet.
It sounds to me like this isn’t much different from the old conceit that cartoon characters (such as Mickey Mouse) or puppets (such as Kermit the Frog) are actors who can appear as characters in other movies (both “actors” have “played” Bob Cratchit in versions of “A Christmas Carol”).
So a CGI person that exists independently of their movie role?
So Shrek isn’t Shrek but computer actor Bob Smith who just looks like Shrek and has his own personality and now will play Rooster Cogburn in the Coen Brothers remake of True Grit with absolutely no reference to his Shrekness? And now, I’ll use my celebrity as Bob Smith to endorse Tag Hauer watches in this magazine ad.
I’d be in the camp of not seeing why that would happen (though it certainly could).
I’m sure it happens now that the underlying models for CGI characters are reused and reskinned. Is that the same “actor”? Heck, that was true even with traditional animation where the exact same sequence of animation was done and they just drew a different character on it. Maybe we will have a future where “…starring CGI Human Model 2317x (aka Simone)…” will be of marketing value, but it seems unlikely to me.
Actually, I take that back, I could see it happening for computer generated porn.
Besides, by my definition we won’t have CGI actors until computers are doing the voices as well.
Sure, why not? I’d love to see Roger Rabbit in other stuff.
I doubt it.
While it may seem like a natural progression the truth is that CGI “Actors”, as with animated “Actors” have that wonderful ability to be distinctive and have the look the creator wants for the specific character.
Shrek is Shrek, not Bob playing Shrek the same way Bugs Bunny is Bugs Bunny. Sure he may be a pilot or or in the navy in the short but he is still Bugs Bunny and the audience expects him to act like Bugs Bunny.
The artists creating the characters spend a good deal of time designing their look based on the character type. The reason is that we as an audience create our initial judgments of characters based first on their appearance. The guys at Pixar or Dreamworks spend a great deal of time just designing a character for that very reason.
Even the non cartoony creations have specific designs based on character. Why would they just use Generic male pattern A when they can create the character from the ground up to make them fit the personality exactly.
Plus what incentive is there to rehash a previous design aside from not wanting to pay artists? It works against your project because the audience will see the character previously used on say a romantic comedy and expect them to be the same for your horror film.
Simply put they would be typecast. It happens with real life actors now, so why do the same when you don’t need to. Sure you could do reusable back ground characters or a gimmick Munch like CGI character that shows up in various projects but for leads… I can’t see why anyone would do it
The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that a real “CGI actor” would require enough AI for the “actor” to actually interpret instructions in its own unique way, instead of just being an automaton.
For example, if you took a model, reskinned it, and used a different voice actor to portray a different character in a different movie, you still don’t have an “actor”. You have a 3D model, a skin, and some voice acting. I’m sure effects guys and set designers already repurpose physical set components and other stuff already and this is no different except being digital instead of physical.
Furthermore, having the same CGI character in a series of movies doesn’t mean anything either; for a real world example, how many people have played James Bond over the years?
We’ll really need something along the lines of a virtual Calculon before we have “CGI actors”- almost anything else is a character, or repurposing of relatively generic components.
How about John Wayne in that beer commerical?
Reminds me of Osamu Tezuka and his Star System. His comic characters were treated like a bunch of actors, so from story to story he’d draw the same “people” playing different character roles. The first time you notice it, it throws you for a loop because you think “Isn’t this reporter the old cop from that other story?!” but once you’re introduced to the idea that they’re a bunch of actors playing out the story roles it becomes easier.
Same thing mentioned upthread about Mickey Mouse being himself playing a role in A Christmas Carol, for instance.
However I’m not sure it’ll take traction with most CGI characters. I think it’s seen kind of as a shortcut. Everyone wants their character design to be distinctive so you don’t think of some other movie or tv show when you remember that character, and making a distinct character with a distinct silhouette is seen as a great success. Since it’s a drawn medium you don’t HAVE to stick to anything realistic, so limiting yourself is seen as a negative.
However, you can only create so many new designs before certain ones start looking similar. We’ve already got the archetypes of the barrel-chested square-jawed bodyguard and the mousy black-haired teenager looking specific ways to fit their personality trope. It’s just one step more to condense that into an actor ready to play a role in multiple IPs.
I could easily see something like Shrek or Buzz Lightyear playing Bob Cratchit in “A Christmas Carol”, just like the aforementioned Bugs Bunny or Kermit the Frog might. But that would be “A Shrek Christmas Carol” or “Toy Story Christmas Carol”.
But this is reusing the character, not the “actor”. “Hey kids, let’s watch Shrek in Romeo and Juliet!”, not “Hey, we have an animated Romeo and Juliet, and it uses the same character model for Romeo that we used in Shrek.”
It does seem a bit mind-boggling though that we can have nearly photorealistic animated people, but we still can’t make a convincing computer generated voice.