Essentially yes, It's less labor intensive that using Rotoshop. It took me 19 years to get the look right. This is made frame by frame too. It's a new type of animation and cheaper to do it this way versus pure live action.

What I mean by that is making special effects look believable to suspend disbelief when telling an engaging story. Pixar does the same thing by making everything look stylized. One is less likely to notice errors.

We all know what real things look like and if the artist misrepresents that reality it will not go unnoticed.