Posted By: phannaway @ 11/16/2007 5:56:22 PM

Comment: One of the mistakes people make regarding "Gollum" in the LOTR films is that he is all motion captured and that Andy Serkis is the person who did all his acting. In fact, much of "Gollum".... many of his best shots are hand animated and acted by the animators on the shot. Character Animators are actors....... they recreate the performance themselves in order to imbue a 3D puppet or drawing with the "illusion of life". Because of the marketing contracts, the character animators brought into this film to "animate" Gollum..... yes animate, not edit motion capture, are not given their appropriate due for their talents in creating "Gollum", too. Andy was enormously helpful and the guide post for where to take "Gollum", but he did not act all the shots in the film. Much of that credit goes to the Senior Animators on "The Two Towers" who have never been acknowledged for their stunning contributions! These contributions included a drastic rebuild of "Gollums" facial system based upon, yes, dare I say it, traditional, key framed hand animation. The reason why Gollum remains a benchmark in animation, isnt because of the motion capture, but because a group of character animators acted out many key moments and put their souls into that character too. AMPAS knew this behind the scenes, when they decided not to give a digital acting award to the voice actor alone. Maybe it is time the entire world knew, that "Gollum" was not completely mocapped and, further, very often the character animators were responsible for some of the key moments in the performance.
The characters in both beowolf and polar express are dead, because, as Disney discoved years ago, 2D rotoscoping (tracing frames in films) an 3D rotoscoping (motion capture) shows movement without any soul. It is untimately the character animator and the performance and choices that he/she chooses to create, that imbues a character with soul from the inside out. You cant just paste data on a model and expect it to live and breath..... it never will.
So, for all of us animators that did, in fact, animated and perform the character of "Gollum", I raise a glass to a great job, and thank Andy Serkis for working with us. Salute!