Here I will address some specific scene of this movie that director may or may not notice but possilbly make this movie better. Each dissections are ordered in order (movie timecode). Some cases are quite trivial. I may not see this flaw if I saw it as casual moview watcher.
- Lighting on Soldier's Costume (00:12:44)
The first time I watched this battle scene, I thought that there are three types of soldiers distinguished by its armors (mainly colors). One is leader who is wearing very black armor and the others are general soldiers with dark and redish armors each. As I reviewed it several times, I realized that there are only two types. Soldiers' armor got different lighting condition betweeen real shot and CG. Below first and third frame shows CG and it is redish but the second on is quite darker than CG. This is because lighting is not so bright when they shoot real actors in various scenes.
- Explosion of Cannon (00:13:31)
As battels goes on, enemy shoot lot of cannon to destroy villiage. This effect is a combination of CG and tradition explosion effect. In some cases, the behavior of explosion looks strange. Since it flys very fast and impact onto ground, pond, and etc, it inevitably followed by big explosion. One example of flaw here is that cannon ball impacts digonally not vertically. Then, explosion must form a corresponding shape for this. But following shot shows that it looks like explosion of mine on the ground.
- Penetration of Big Monster's Claw (00:13:55)
I was looking at foot of CG creatures to see whether there is any mistake. It is well done overall but I found one at 13:55. Claw of huge creature penetrate into the ground. Following three frames clearly show this moment. This may be too trivial to figure it out and fix since there are whole lots of creates moving around. One can explain that this is because ground is soft soil and creature is too heavy, then makes sense. But then, there should be lots of footprint after their march. I will address this issue later.
- Miss Order of Cannon Smoke (00:14:03)
Cannon on the back of creature looks good and their movement works faily well. Only on flaw I found here is a mis-match of smoke. The first scene below indicates that right cannon comes first and left is later. The smoke right after fire mis-ordered. Left one comes first and then right one. The third frame below show right order compared this previous flaw.
- Shadow (darker in CG scene) (00:14:08)
Shadow is always not an easy topic in Graphics world. In D-War, obviously the shadow casted by virtual object seems much darker than real scene. When they designed this battle scene, it is cloudy day, which means very weak shadow if existing. This is true for real shot as shown in the first frame below. On second frame, CG, we notice that shadow is darker than real one. The third frame where soldiers are rushing into catsle shows more contrast on this.
- Footprint or Trace of huge creature (00:14:10)
I was tring really hard to find some effect of creature's footprint. Especially heavy guys. No luck here. They tweaked this kind of possibility really well in the move. I mean there no obvious scene showing the ground right after big creature walking. Sometimes it is out of camera frustum or change camera frame immediately after or something else. One possible guess of mine is following scene (14:10). Subsequent three frames shows nothing for footprint even though this creature looks big and heavy. The soil ground still looks clear and flat after them.
- Flocking of Army & collapsed circumballation (00:14:16)
Flocking scene of battle field does not give good sense of human movement. When they cross the circumballation of the catsle, they are sort of too fast and look like sliding quite a bit. The contrast between soldier and ground make this scene looks artificial. Compositon of this shot is not that done.
The second image reveals the difference of CG and real set. Collapsed circumballation in CG is pretty wide and there are more than 4 to five soldiers passing at a time but real shot of this sceen (second image) is so narrow. Those two frames are showing in the move back and forth and make this discrapancy clearer.
- Hopping on stone brick fence (00:14:22)
In the village, there was a shot where hopping creature jump against brick fence with tapping on top of fence. Ahhh, so passive and tiny reaction. Only a few of debris and strange smoke. Does this creature's foot is so hot or has something explosive to make this smoke? I do not think so. This reminds me very only TV show style SFX.
- Dust particle & Crushing person (00:14:41)
Dust around virtual creature is somewhat overly used in the scene. We know that this is a good way to hide or minimized the artifacts of composition but should give a good sense of "Dust" as dust. Below scene shows one of the extreme example of this dust effect.
At the same this, this scene has another flaw. Crushing person on the ground.
In the first image, the ground is really flat around fallen person. The third image... he is too much ready for next happening. He is already half way buried on the ground. This is good try but not working very well. Main reason they made it like this is to make creature foot step naturally onto flat ground (my guess). I remember other movies such as Gozilla have something similar scene but do not remember how they trick it.
- Combination of CG & Traditional SFX (00:16:23)
Fight scene of enemy soldier and monk... What a so diffent effect from other scene in the movie.
There are cases like this especially when real actors involved. Below scene start with CG and end up with real spark effects. The effect looks not so good for monk. I felt that I am watching 1980s movie.
- Shaking Camera & Inconsistent Scenery (00:17:47)
The last topic of dissection here is the cliff scene around 17:47. Imoogi is chasing main actor and actress till the cliff. They shakes camera a lot to give the sense of crisis and Immogi's apporaching. Trees are shaking and falling down. It is almost like the same impact as earthquake... No movement on character side. With such huge quake, they stand still and actress' long skirt does not move at all. If they made some kind of wind blow in real shot at least, it would look better here.
One more comment here, the change of environments. The first two frames show that lots of pine trees on right side of screen, then suddenly only a few trees remains in the following third image. It would be better to have consitent sceneray. Also if there is fallen and corrupted trees in the last image, it would be more realistic.
