(dramatic music)
- At every facet of this,
Phil and I were always asking like,
what's the thing that we can do in this movie
because it's Spiderman,
that we couldn't get away with in another movie?
And right from the very beginning,
the idea of having the movie feel like
a comic book come to life where any frame, if you paused it,
could be a still painting of a comic book, was the goal.
And the thinking was, there's all this amazing concept art
that gets done for every movie
and then when you see the finished movie,
sometimes it doesn't have that artist's hand on it
in a way that the concept art did.
And so we thought,
why don't we just try and make it look like the concept art?
And have the concept art be comics influenced.
- When you're reading a comic book,
you're reading something that somebody sat down
and drew with the intention that one person at a time
is going to be reading this.
We kind of wanted to see if we could
get as close as that as we could
in the making of Spider Verse.
So, the animation style, gigantic part of that,
and like something as simple as
the way our characters are modeled in 3D,
we tried to model them so that the light would hit them
and create shadows the way that a comic book artist
would draw shadows in a comic book with ink.
Our biggest challenge when it came to animation
probably was the decision to try and animate this on twos
rather than ones.
Which basically is half as many poses as you would use
as in a typical CG animation movie,
which has perfectly fluid, you know, super soft movement.
When you're animating on twos,
that's what they used to do in the sixties Disney films,
you know, 101 Dalmatians or Jungle Book.
It's snappier, it's poppier, it's more,
it's inherently more graphic because you have,
you're rendering motion in a different way.
It's a really subtle, you know,
sometimes not so subtle, effect that I think
gives the film a huge part of its visual identity.
- I remember one of our animators asked our core team,
could we do something like that?
Could we have the skipped frames
and the core team was able to pull something together
and it came off really genuine.
So when that trailer dropped and fans saw,
oh, it's not going on every frame, it's skipping frames,
it has this look that the Spider Verse has,
and having the onomatopoeias when he's punching someone
with the whips and the bams like,
that just, it just helped elevate the game
to another, to another level.
And also in a way, you're seeing things
that you haven't seen before,
just like with the art style from the movie
of being able to pause it
and having it look like a comic book at any frame,
for us it felt like how could we make this game
feel like something you haven't played before?
What have you seen from all the Spider-Man games before?
What is something that we haven't seen,
that we can introduce in Miles
that feels core to his character
and feels new to the player?
So going down different avenues with that
and figuring out, definitely set it apart.
- Yeah, I have to say there were a lot of things
that you would have thought would've
been hard to get past the bosses,
that were not nearly as hard as you would think.
That the main decision point was just the filmmakers
kind of deciding, why don't we do it like this?
And then it was very few people got in the way,
I got to say. Most people were just excited.
- You guys made the way Miles moved
and the way that everything around him sound,
feel rich in a way that just isn't impossible on the page,
so little bit jealous, but.
And then in the game, there's nothing like, you know,
some of the best writing right now,
I think in genres is happening in video games.
And there's nothing like a video game
except maybe a novel
for making you get in the head of a character
and making you feel like you're associating
with that character.
The myth, right?
Because superheroes are our modern myths
and the myth gets built across these different media.
And it's not really complete until
we've all kind of had our say in our own genres.
- Yeah. I'll just, my recollection of these moments are
you can try to plan it the best you can.
You can put all the preparation
you can muster into a game like this,
or a story like this in the film context,
but it's those emergent moments that come from your team,
like a cat in a backpack for us,
was one of those things that we never had on paper, right?
And then now Spider-Man the cat is a big thing
because a developer said, hey,
can I travel around with the cat in the backpack
and kind of put a little Spider-Man mask on his face?
And we're like, you better do that, right?
It's like, please do that.
It was definitely part of the Insomniac spirit for sure.
Is the great ideas come from anywhere, so yeah.
That's what gets me excited about the endeavor is
you don't have all the answers when you start,
but you hope and you trust that you'll get there
at the end when you lean on the people around you.
- Yeah, 'cause I remember
when I first started coming to battles like,
oh, are you going to be able to swing with the cat?
And it's like, oh that's a thing now. That's scary.
How do we do this?
How do we make this cat feel believable
as he's swinging around?
And learning to like, it's okay to be afraid,
but don't let that fear stop you.
You know, things are gonna come up.
Things are going to change,
but don't let stop you from like,
trying to go after greatness
and trying to achieve these things.
- I think I've talked a little bit about
how inspiring it was to, you know,
be working with these guys
and how their pursuit of excellence is, it's infectious.
You know, it makes you want to push for your very best,
you know, even when you're sitting in the mix room
at three o'clock in the morning, Phil. (laughs)
You're still like, it could be better.
I mean, it's in reach.
I see how it can be better. I can't turn away from it.
I'm trying to carry that torch myself
and bring that to the things that I do.
- I have one question for you guys, if you don't mind.
Where did no expectations come from in the film?
- You know, I think we initially wanted Miles to kind of
be resistant to the pressure of potential.
There was a lot of language in the screenplay about that,
that he has so much potential
and that is, when the movie starts,
he wonders whether that's too burdensome, you know,
and in the movie, he actually goes, you know,
down to try to undo his spider bite, right?
He's like, I don't want this.
What was your takeaway as a viewer?
- When you set expectations,
you can be let down or you can not live up to it yourself
when you expect yourself to do these things.
But when you just try to genuinely be yourself,
that's when you find out,
that's when you do your best work a lot of times.
When you're just trying to like live in the moment and
you're doing your, you're doing the best that you can.
So that's kinda what I got from it was
him saying like, regardless of what the old Peter,
what the old Spiderman had done,
and regardless of who my parents are,
I gotta find a way to be myself.
And that was my takeaway from no expectations, so.
- I mean, you just, you spend a lot of time in these jobs
wondering if you're good enough to do them.
And I think that is mostly a waste of time (laughs)
because you're not good enough to do it
until you've already done it (chuckles)
so you might as well get started.
I'm really moved by the work you guys did.
I don't need to tell gamers that what game-playing does
for people's empathy is really powerful
and when you apply it to something
like the thing you guys made,
it really moves me.
So, good on you and thank you for that work.
- Thanks, and thanks for inspiring us with your film.
(everyone talks)
- We'll see you soon
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