posing dudes like action figures, recording their poses on videotape, and then digitizing and crunching the sprites into game-ready graphics. you just don't see it anymore.
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in reply to @erysdren's post:
I always thought it was strange this method died out, especially when it would be even more cost effective for an indie team today. Cellphone + cheap green screen off Amazon, kitbash some gear and guns from old vacuum parts and power tools, and you're already halfway there.
IIRC, there was a remake of the original Mortal Kombat that was going to use HD digitized sprites, but they supposedly cancelled it due to balance reasons.
I've heard it's because it was very time and cost consuming, more so than just paying an artist. Although we could argue that the 'successor' to it is motion capture tech?
As an indie who played games done like this, they came across as under expressive and badly rendered in comparison to pixel art or raster.
For video content though, I agree with you, it would be really cool to see something like 'Phantasmagorie' with living people.
I was just thinking about how time consuming cleaning up photographs would be vs just pixelling what you want directly! I also completely forgot that photos were supplanted by 3D models, which are still used as bases for complex pixel art.
I never considered FMV, but there's a lot of potential there, too. And adventure games in general are probably the best fit for a photo -> pixel pipeline given how grounded they are compared to other genres.
slamming my hands on the table in pure anguish over photosourced graphics falling out of the mainstream