adywan said:
You can now view the finished Emperor scene on youtube in 720p:
Let me just say that it is all too easy for me or anyone else to criticize something you've spent hours or days working on, so please take this with a grain of salt.
The positives:
(1) picture quality and color timing is excellent... I don't think I've ever seen EMPIRE look this good.
(2) the mouth of the Emperor may be a little off, but overall it works quite well (I could possibly see if you could take the slow-blink from the original Emperor and add it onto the new one... just the eyelid part, not the extended eye-socket make-up area)
(3) (at 1:03) I like how the lights on the columns in Vader's holo-room have a blue tint to them, further giving the impression of being the projectors. I also notice that you included the tip of the steps from Vader's pod on the far left too.
The negatives:
(1) while I can go with still seeing the SD tower when the asteroid hits it, it now has the impression of a CGI explosion being overlayed upon the tower which is very much completely intact. I would rather see a slightly larger explosion (with the possibility of larger chunks of model debris, maybe taken from other spaceship explosion scenes from other movies) and showing only the neck of the tower intact, or simply not show the tower head remaining.
It may also be that the Star Destroyer doesn't budge at all after getting hit so hard.. it seems to be not effected physically at all from the impact despite the explosion (which is an issue with the original scene as filmed.. I don't know what could be done, since a shudder might not work either, and I don't know how you could show the SD tilt away from the explosion short of filming an actual model).
(2) there is WAY too much flickering on the Emperor hologram... I can understand the slight wave as it flickers on in the beginning (even then, I would rather see it slowly light up, as opposed to the wavy effect), but even compared to the original (which had a slight pulse to it) it is very distracting, and I found myself paying more attention to the flickering than to the dialogue. Subtler would be better, at least for myself.
I can't say I have a problem with the forehead, as it is mostly covered with the hood anyways... maybe the eyebrows could be given a tweak in at least one shot (maybe when he says "yes... YES".. his eyebrow area raises slightly to convey the emotion in his voice), but the focus is on the lower area of the face, specifically the mouth, so as long as the mouth matches the dialogue that should be perfectly fine.