What If King Kong Had Smoother Stop-Motion?

What if the 1933 version of King Kong didn't have such choppy stop-motion animation for its scenes featuring Kong and other creatures? I used an AI program to interpolate the scene to a higher frame rate to see what that would look like.

Just a little experiment I did in honor of the upcoming Godzilla vs. King Kong movie. What do you think of the results?

✨ Programs used:

I'm #captrobau and I like to make interesting videos about AI. Don't forget to like this video and subscribe to my channel if you want to see more videos like this. I regularly upload AI upscaling examples, reviews/tutorials for AI software and more.

[idatethefatkid]

Honestly, even the original stop motion looks great. Can't believe this was made 88 years ago.

[dsamsooni]

0:40 This is probably the first time I've seen a Brachiosaurus portrayed as a meat eater

[cozmicmojo]

To this day, King Kong is in my top 5 movies of all time. It blew me away as in kid even in the 90s.

[MarceloSantos-hign]

"Choppy stop-motion!"...there was not choppy stop-motion almost 100 years ago there were THE INCREDIBLE VISUAL EFFECTS THAT BRING SUCH FANTASTIC CREATURES ALIVE...

[TobiAnimados]

Great experiment! I think the best would be to make smoother the stop motion segments, but keeping the original motion of the actors, to match both things closer. I don't even know if something like that would be possible.

[LilJay]

Ya know, the effects back then were pretty impressive.

[MrHereWeGoYo]

1:41 I love the way he looks back like "Fuq this train."

[HawkSickToxic]

When it is smoothed, the actors looked more super imposed. IMO the original captures more tension.

[cln_m]

I know it's hard to release fan edits sometimes without getting a cease and desist order from film companies these days, but I would love to see the entire film this way.

[PatrickLofstrom]

I was prepared to say that it's difficult to improve on the original vision, but you know... This totally works for me. Way less jarring when the live action scenes are on top of the stop motion action. Thanks for your hard work!

[chrisbullard]

The faster frame rate helps to a degree, but the reason go-motion was used in the 80s and early 90s is because it better mimics the blur effects.

To really get the most out of stop motion with Kong, you’d need a higher frame rate while simultaneously increasing the number of frames for a limb to move (to give the illusion of scale).

[secta]

Impressive that the film makers considered the physics of Kong stopping that plane with him reeling backwards instead of him stopping it dead in its tracks.

[THEremiXFACTOR]

The effects to this day are amazing. There's something special about Kong 1933. He seems so real, regardless of the techological limitations.

[Rassilon]

Smoothing out this style of stop-motion is like trying to remove film grain from older films.

[swifty]

It’s weird because when it’s smooth, it looses weight and size. It turns into a small puppet.

[Tchernobog]

silly how people just dismiss Kong as a "giant gorilla". He is clearly more than that and his own original creature.

[Reeal]

Interpolation is always neat to watch, but it's important to remember that it can undermine the source material/original artist's intent as well. The greater the degree of interpolation, the more artificial something begins to look. Interpolation AI calculates very direct, straight lines of motion, whereas actually recording at a higher framerate, or employing an 'inbetweener' approach with animation maintains the human element that makes things look more lifelike. Personally, I think interpolating the framerate to 8x the artificially and then arbitrarily hacking it back down to 60 just makes it look stale and robotic. Nifty to watch, for sure - high framerates are very pleasing to the eye. But I don't really think it adds any artistic value; if anything, it takes it away and makes the original illusions look even less convincing.

[voronOsphere]

This technology could replace human "in-between-ers" to make more traditional style animated cartoons affordable to produce again!

[franzhaas]

This movie was way ahead of its time. People most have been I completely amazed by it back then.

[larryguilfoyle]

A truly brilliant achievement, to think this was made in 1933, it still amazes me and I wouldn’t change a thing about it