WinslowLeach wrote: It takes no actual artistic talent to do that stuff. It just takes computer knowledge.
It took no actual artistic talent for Ray Harryhausen to do his work. It just took knowledge of plasticine.
Its the difference between creating a cartoon character from scratch by hand and some guy using a pre-made computer program that will make a cartoon character for you.
"Some guy" often tends to have to write a computer program himself in order to get the results he wants, and in order to animate this cartoon character. That would be like asking a "traditional" animator to manufacture his own acetate cels, pens and pencils as well as animating.
Peter Jackson sitting in a computer room on a couch eating chips n dip while some guys on 100 computers in a building whip up some crappy looking King Kong footage?
Him sitting down eating while visual effects are being produced would be independent of the visual effects medium. It's also ridiculously poorly considered to think that a director would play no creative role in the visual effects process on his film. And with Peter Jackson he used a ton of practical effects in King Kong, which were too seamless to notice...likely due to the use of computer compositing.
However you want to call it, I still think (most) CGI is lazy.
Say what you want about it, but your arguments so far have been lazy.