Anime Series and CG Movie of 'Final Fantasy XV' Announced

On-topic: Kingslaive looks gorgeous. Storylines tend to be hit or miss with FF movies, so I expect a full-on buffet with the visuals and expect a lot of other things, such as storyline, to possibly take a backseat. :x Also, gotta love the all-star cast…Lena Headey, Aaron Paul, so cool!

I've seen the first few episodes of Brotherhood and really enjoyed it…probably more than I will with Kingslaive simply because I'm more interested in Noctis and his friends than his parents but it'll still be interesting to see a full 3D Final Fantasy film, you know?

Off-topic: There's been a lot of discussion thrown back and forth about CGI vs hand-drawn 2D stuff so I'd like to offer my two cents on it…

I was with a team where we had to make a decision a few months ago about going full on 2D versus 3D and we eventually opted for 3D because 1.) it's cheaper and easier…you simply make the assets by modeling/texturing and placing them in the scene and 2) the camera angles and shot changes were easier to make. As far as production pipeline goes, hand-drawn frame-by-frame animation is FAR MORE TIME-CONSUMING than it's worth if you don't have a massive team or budget and if you have to redo a camera angle, you basically have to completely redraw the entire shot which is incredibly annoying and time-consuming. I didn't think the guys I was working with could really mesh their hand-drawn styles together cohesively (and I didn't want to draw a ton of key poses for them to basically sloppily draw the in-betweens) so 3D felt like a much more natural choice for the piece as well as our team's skill. Animation is rarely "one way is always better" than the other. You have to kind of opt for 2D or 3D based on how appropriate the decision is for the individual project as well as the skill level of the artists you're working with.

As for me, I personally love and need both in my life. Both are artforms and both are incredibly difficult to achieve successfully. For the people that respect 2D, people like me thank you! You keep the appreciation of the original artform alive! For the people that love 3D, we also thank you! You keep the budget more uhh…manageable, especially if the piece is a lengthy one and we need to swap out assets quickly.

On the subject of toon-shading, it's actually cheaper and easier than regular textures, especially if you use a built-in shader. The range of color values are reduced and shadows sort of coalesce into a smaller range of values (which is always adjustable) to give your objects a sort of cool-looking cartoonish vibe. This often requires a regular color render pass (for the simple textures) and possibly a second render for the outline pass (which can be later composited in a program like AE) to be laid overtop…

But considering how SIMPLE it is to usually calculate toon-shading, you're saving yourself a TON of render time due to how much simpler it is to calculate your scene pixel-by-pixel. While a simple 200-frame render pass of a scene could normally take me a couple of days, a toon-shaded scene (especially in a default render engine like Maya software) could only take a few hours. That's actually kind of the nice thing about toon-shading.

Money. Even Hollywood can only fund a handful of blockbusters every year.

The last time Square did a big FF movie it almost killed them.

Reminds me of America were every tv show or videogame has to have a token black guy. It's really ridiculous, SquareEnix can make the game whatever they want. Freedom and all that.

When Square Enix actually puts their whole heart into things, they can create complete works of art with deep stories, beautiful music, and interesting game mechanics. It seems like they are doing that for the world of FFXV. I'm excited! :D

Wow, the CG looks really good.

Cool I guess. Didn't really care about anything post FFX, but maybe I'll pick up XV if this turns out good.
Still hoping for FF6 cartoon...one day!

I had to do a double take a couple times the first time i saw it, when showing it to my friend he was surprised a bit through when he realized it wasnt real actors.

Woot! It's been so long since the last FF anime (not to mention movie)

Kingsglaive looks pretty fucking good.

I'm not watching this till I finish the game :I

No joke, for a second i couldn't tell if it was CGI or real.

That character you said was written out of the show was not. She's Noctis's fiancee and she is definitely there.

The game starts off with the guys heading towards Noctis's wedding (probably after a lads weekend) and all hell has broken loose. All we know initially is that the guys are heading towards his fiancee's place. That's it. We don't know if she will become a playable character, we don't know about other female characters (apart from the mechanic) BECAUSE IT'S A SPOILER TO SAY WHO ELSE BECOMES A PLAYABLE CHARACTER!!!!!!

When X/2 came out no one was ranting that it was a vagina festival. Seriously get over the bishounen hangup! So many fans now-days are so hung-up over whether a show will appeal to the fujoshi fanbase. Who cares? If you're not a fujoshi yet still enjoy it is that a problem? Does it really matter if some other demographic likes the game as well as you??

Toei average salary is double than what other studios offer.

God, if it was ALL female, you would shut your mouth and say best game ever, if it's all males you find every retarded reason to shitpost your salt all over it, just go back to fapping with RWBY , you are worse than this generation's ''feminist'' girls

Well I should probably give it a watch but I would rather watch other things.

shaft fan lmao, and yet the anime has over the top quality by A-1

yeh sorry it was Spirits Within. But Advent Children wasn much cheaper.. At least 50mio best. Not less. Saw the budget of "Space Pirate Captain Harlock" .. really small budget with 30mio, but comes from Toei and their underpayed worker ;D . Would say this wont be a 100mio + production, more like 20-30mio over Harlock.

But still too much for a normal anime series, if one Episode costs more than a whole season of 12 episodes.

Absolutely. The ONA is related to the events of XV alone. Experience with previous FF games is unnecessary, as each main game in the franchise has its own unique world and characters.
Good luck, Sean Bean.

You are thinking of the spirits within not advent children, they never released any statement on AC's budget but did say the movie was a financial success and some people have estimated it was around 30 million in budget. The reason they never released a budget for it is cause like the FFXV movie there never was one, it was basically as much as it takes until visual works finished the movie, unlike other shorts visual works are alot cheaper since everything they produce is inhouse and made on fixed by the hour payments of its staff rather than commissioned paychecks, they are a part of square and work daily on stuff.