That’s a valid take. The report does, however, refer to their face-acting, which means that its author must have been seeing live actors. My interpretation of the tweet that
@Disney Irish shared is that CGI was being used to enhance these actors rather than to create the characters from scratch, but obviously I can’t be sure of anything.
I think I’ve proven quite convincingly that I’m not among those rooting for this project to fail, nor am I a conspiracy theorist by nature, so I’ve no ideological reasons to subscribe to the belief (or at least strong suspicion) that the classic-looking dwarfs that were ultimately unveiled were a panicked response to all the criticism. I’ll happily accept my mistake if there is definitive evidence to the contrary.