Agent Shinra has a report on the feature length CG film based on the video game, FINAL FANTASY. Take a look see, sounds pretty cool so far, a bit too sci-fi though, I want more fantasy aspects as the title would suggest.
Here's a report from Squaresoft, makers of the Final Fantasy 7 video game. Work has been progressing on the Final Fantasy feature length CG film due out in the year 2000. I've seen a fully rendered model of Grey, the main character of the movie. While I was told the name might change, two of the rendered test sequences I've viewed so far have displayed an absolutely incredible level of motion capture. Grey himself appears to have been modeled after actor Brad Pitt. While the designers had not set out to create an actual duplicate of Pitt, his appeal was apparently the watermark they were after. While I couldn't nail the script, I have seen various story boards and it looks intense.
The movie does not feature any of the characters from previous FF games, and the movie is in fact much more science fiction. The level of technology appears to be higher in the movie, with some sequences showing Grey riding hover bikes and firing laser guns in a densely populated city area. No other characters were shown, but I've seen rough sketches of several female characters. Keeping in tune with the FF game series, I'll go out on a limb and wager that the lead character will be involved in yet another love triangle. No voices have yet been recorded, and I was also told that "magic may yet play a part in the film." Squaresoft has hired top gun talent, including former Disney animators, one of the art directors from Besson's "5th Element", and the Japanese CG director responsible for the intro sequences to Capcom's Tekken 2 and Soul Blade. Currently, everyone single desk in the top 2 floors of the building has a Silicon Graphics Octane workstation on it. Rendering is currently progressing at the rate of a second a day until more computing power arrives.
