'Final Fantasy' comes to life

"Final Fantasy" uses digital animation to recreate human characters in animated form

From Paul Vercammen and Mark Salzman
CNN

(CNN) -- "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" is being hailed as the dawn of a new era in digital animation.

The movie, which opened Wednesday in the United States, is based on a popular video game series, and it uses digital technology to recreate human characters in animated form -- down to the tiny blemishes on their skin and the smallest movements of their eyes.

"It has a dream-like quality that takes you to places that don't exist," said "Final Fantasy" producer Chris Lee. "I think it looks better than it would as live-action, actually.

"The only difference we have is that instead of being in their trailers, our actors are in the computer and they come out whenever we wanted them to come out," laughed Lee. "And they do what we tell them to do!"

Yes, but the computer actors needed voices of real actors to truly come alive. The story follows a female scientist named Aki who tries to save the world from invading alien phantoms.

Ming-Na voices Aki; Donald Sutherland plays Dr. Sid; and Alec Baldwin voices Grey, the captain of a squad that's defending humans.

Ming-Na says her character lives up to the movie's title.

Dr. Sid is voiced by Donald Sutherland

"I think she will be every man's fantasy when this film comes out because she's really cute, she's got a great little body on her and she can save the world. What else can you ask for in a woman?" asked Ming-Na.

Although her work was done off-screen, she went to any lengths to get the voice just right.

"You have to jump and run and scream and yell and act like you're picking up a big gun ... anything that it takes to get the sound right," she explained. "When I'm knocked down, I pretend to fall. You do all these silly things. When I'm kissing somebody, I kiss my hand."

Sutherland was impressed with the "Final Fantasy" final product.

"I couldn't believe it," he said. "This (is) art, this (is) beautiful."

Andy Jones, the art director on the movie, said this project was like the animated world's version of Frankenstein.

"We feel like we're bringing someone to life and convincing other people that they look real."

Lee concurs, and believes that this film is the start of something much bigger.

"I think the day of the digital character has been dawning for quite some time," he said.

Ming-Na is happy to be a part of it. The former president of her high school science fiction club, she said it's cool to be a sci-fi geek these days.

"Science fiction was considered always sort of geeky and a nerdy thing to do. But now look at this stuff," she said. "It's the cutting edge of technology and it is suddenly really cool to be in science fiction and to know about science fiction. We're in a really elite group now."