I think they are pretty solid considering that it came out almost 20 years ago.
http://kosmofilm.com/kosmo-film-blog/2013/6/13/dragonheart-1996
www.twitter.com/kosmofilm

This thing was on tv last night and I caught it as I was flipping through channels.
The effects don't look any better today than they did when the movie was released. But, because it was new and shiny, and came from (cue deep bass voice and echo machine)
a computer
(oooooooo!! Just like a
video game!
) everybody got a boner for it and decided it was to be the future of cinema.
It's hard to look at this movie and understand why computer effects were given a second chance after it, considering that practical effects of the day still surpassed the obviously computer generated character images in
Dragonheart
which were deemed, somehow, to pass muster.
They did a good job of matching color in the effects to the color in the live action footage, to which it was composited, but that's about it.
All I could think of was how the "eyes" and "mouth" moved around on the fake dragon thing looked like they were some sort of computer distorted shapes which were being projected onto a featureless object. And that the "skin" looked as insubstantial as an empty mylar balloon - printed with tons of color and detail on a thin, flimsy, polyester film surface which goes less than .005" deep, and completely hollow and empty on the other side.
And coming from Phil Tippett, too.that poor guy. He used to build tauntauns and AT-ATs and cantina aliens, for gods sakes.
Before anyone pipes up here with, "Well, maybe they didn't look that good, but they were still developing", I'd say to them "Well, then, if your magic tricks ain't ready to go before an audience, better keep 'em in your hat, and let somebody else back on stage".
Instead, people thought with their boners instead of their heads and threw lots of money at badly executed "magic", thus ensuring its future place in the firmament.
Considering the "great strides" apologists like to point to regarding CGI ("see, it doesn't suck nearly as bad as it used to, just keep spending money on movies that rely on it heavily, and someday, it probably won't suck."), I'd say "in your hat" is still the correct response.

i remember when i first saw it iwas blown away with how great i thought the cgi looked. i tried to rewatch it a year or two ago and i was laughing to myself how dated and unconvincing the effects look now. That's technology for you.
Sent from my 13 year old P.O.S. Desktop

Some shots still hold up, but most others make it look like a TV movie at times nowadays. The effects were quite the talk of the town when it came out.
I have an unusual set of skills

Armageddon had bad FX? WTF?? Most of them look awesome for 2012 standards.

Godzilla had horrible graphics? wtf. Jurassic Park, Dragonheart, and Godzilla all had much better, more realistic effects than the modern, fake-looking CGI.
Boycott movies that involve real animal violence! (and their directors too)

I am watching the movie right now, and I came here to see if anyone was talking about the dragon cgi effects. I can't believe how good they look for a 1996 movie.

Now another year has passed.
Have you seen it yet?
If not you are missing a great movie.
And yes the CGI is beyond good. I would say incredible, especially considering when it was made.

Wow, what the heck is your problem? This thread is over 2 years old, for one thing For another, who cares whether it's "graphics" or "special effects"? If that really matters that much to you, then I really don't care what your opinion is anyway. And to be completely honest, any interest I may have had in this film 2 years ago was very short-lived. I still haven't seen it, and I don't feel that I'm any the worse for it. So if you are seriously such a loser that you have to haunt virtually dead message boards to pick on people's word choices and give yourself an emotional high, go ahead. Your comment is of no interest to me.

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The effects are still impressive today. Obviously, it's not as awe-inspiring as it was 14 years ago, and we've seen much better CGI since then, but we've also seen much worse CGI since then too.
He still looks a bit cartoony because the technology for blending him into the environment was still a ways away from Avatar. But Drago looks awesome. All the texture and colour on him is meticulously detailed. Even if the CGI is obvious, he looks really natural, and not at all like an artificial creation.

All you had to do was look at pictures.
The graphics are amazing for the time, and still better than some of the things we have these days.
Basically, i'd say its way better than Godzilla.
I hope in the two years since posting, you watched it and saw

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Yes. The graphics still look good even among today's films.
Well, a c'est 'The Meaning of Life'.

I have never seen a more alive CG chartaer even to this day. I say hes on par with Gollum from LOTR. Did you guys know that the director even hired a editor to make a collection of sean connery close ups with all his different expressions and emotions and emulated them in Dracos face! Now THAT is dedication! I still say that Drac is the greatest CG character ever!
"Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen"
Im a film editor! please hire me!

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I kept thinking they digitally remastered the dragon's CG for today's standards and only now find out that they didn't change a thing I'm amazed that they were able to make that dragon in 1996.
_
I wish my lawn was emo so it would cut itself

What the heck. I can rehash a year-old (and insignificant) discussion as well as the next person.
how little it means in the broader terms of how to grade a movie.
Actually, I'm just a little above that. I really enjoyed "Forbidden Planet" from the 1950s. And I actually thought 2008's "10,000 B.C." had bad graphics. The difference is, Forbidden Planet had a storyline. 10,000 B.C. was entirely dependent on its graphics. From its first trailer release, it was essentially a CGI advertisement, however unsatisfying the final movie was. I'm also an enormous "Birds" fan, yet I'll acknowledge that some of the visuals in that movie are less than perfect.
Nevertheless, in this case, I'm looking at a movie that I know next to nothing about other than that it centers on some dragon. I'm also familiar with the fact that 90s movies (in my opinion) often have poor visuals. The old methods of creating visuals were becoming obsolete in favor of computer graphics, yet computer graphics themselves were far from convincing. I again cite Godzilla and even Armageddon as examples. So how am I to know that I'm not settling in for some cheesy mess?
But it really was just a simple question. I'm actually a big fan of older movies from Hollywood's golden era, yet these boards seem to be chock-full of "old" people who love to lord their age over the current generation and its shallow tastes in movies. So there's a lot of undeserved flak running around, especially with all these wild accusations made against people whose age isn't even certain.

Cause obviously you dont remember when it came out and dont appreciate how far "graphics" came and how little it means in the broader terms of how to grade a movie.

It's quite good, and this is coming from apparently the only person who thinks Gollum looked too CGI-ish (though by normal standards I'd define Gollum as quite good too).

OP
At least for me personally, I have YET to see a better portryal of a dragon, especially one with actual character and personality. This definatly is not cheesy. Than againm I am partial Points to name
"Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen"
www.youtube.com/user/dracotharpian

I'm not going to base my decision entirely on that. On the other hand though, "Godzilla" had such horrible graphics and depended so entirely on its graphics, that I feel like that was a waste of a movie.
But This wasn't meant to be such a big deal. It was just a simple question.

Perhaps not an @ss question, but if you decide whether or not to watch a movie based on the quality of the visual effects, you will miss out on a lot of quality cinema.

Not an @ss question I don't necessarily want to waste two hours of my life on some potentially low-grade '90s movie.
And what does my age have to do with it anyway?