The "Cats" trailer received mixed reactions from people after it was released on Friday, with many wondering how exactly human actors were able to be transformed into their feline characters.
According to a behind-the-scenes featurette released on Wednesday, filmmakers were utilizing a new combination of CGI and motion-capture technology to bring the "Cats" characters to life.
"We've used digital fur technology to create the most perfect covering of fur," one of the filmmakers said in the featurette.
In early April, behind-the-scenes footage from the film was presented at CinemaCon, and showed the actors wearing "motion capture suits" and VFX dots on their faces. According to IndieWire, "the VFX will add fur onto the actors and make their faces appear more cat-like," which seems in line with the "digital fur technology" mentioned by filmmakers in last week's featurette.
It seems the "digital fur" technology touted by filmmakers is a combination of motion-capture and CGI, with the sets being live-action, for the most part.
Despite filmmakers' best efforts, however, the digital fur actually comes off as more distracting than innovative. Considering the fact that most of the cats seen in the trailer have human faces and bodies, with fur, ears, and tails as their only feline attributes, the whole thing feels a bit off — and people took notice.
Even though it seems that filmmakers used pretty cutting-edge technology to give human actors feline characters, many felt that the "digital fur" was distracting and disturbing.
—Neil Floyd (@NeilTFloyd) July 19, 2019
—emma (@lemurlovr96) July 19, 2019
—Matador (@TheLoneMatador) July 19, 2019
—Aaron R Hale (@OverdoseOfAaron) July 21, 2019
—Megan Rosenfeld (@MeganRosenfeld) July 18, 2019
—David Mack (@davidmackau) July 18, 2019
And some felt that the original manner of styling the characters — which involves costumes and makeup instead of CGI — would have been more effective.
—Kata 🍭 (@KataDoodle) July 19, 2019
—A I D E N (@kWkaiju) July 19, 2019
—please watch tangled the series (@rapunzelvangogh) July 20, 2019
"Cats" will premiere in December 2019. You can watch the trailer here.
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