- Every once in a while
an animated movie comes out that is impossible to ignore.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is one of those movies.
It is without a doubt one of the best animated films
that I've ever watched,
and it seems like I'm not alone.
- And the Oscar goes to--
- [Both] Spider-Man!
Into the Spider-Verse! (audience applauds)
- The film won the 2019 Academy Award
for best animated feature film.
But what was it that made this movie so great?
Let's break it down.
So I would say there were two main aspects
that made Into the Spider-Verse such an amazing film.
First, a great story
and second, a unique groundbreaking animation style.
In this video, I'll talk about that second part.
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If you watched the film or even seen the trailer,
you probably noticed something was different
about this movie.
The way it looks and feels is different
from other animated films in recent years.
It doesn't look like 3D animation
but it's also not really 2D as we know it.
So what is it?
If we look back to when the industry first made a transition
from traditional 2D animation to 3D computer animation,
the shift was very clear.
It was obvious that Toy Story looked nothing like Lion King.
The differences were visually apparent.
Once the switch was made,
the industry worked harder and harder
to push the art form as much as possible.
Getting better and better renders,
producing more realistic results.
Films kept looking better each year.
But there's only so far we can push it.
At some point, all films just look amazing.
The fidelity is incredible and there seem to be no limit
to what we can now produce with computer animation.
Then the question had to be asked, what's next?
Now that we can make everything we can possibly dream of,
where do we go from here?
The people behind Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
found at least one end to that question,
that is playing with people's expectations.
At this point, we all know what to expect
when we go to the movies to watch an animated film.
Yes Disney has its signature style,
and Pixar is known for creating amazing worlds,
and Illumination is still trying to go the other way
with more edgy humor and cartoony characters.
Japanese anime is also rather visually predictable,
and Laika has mastered stop motion to the point
where it almost looks like CG.
Honestly, I got bored of animated films lately.
Sometimes I feel like I watch them because I have to.
Like I need to be on what's new
so I don't get left out of the conversation.
It became more of a chore.
One day, I don't particularly enjoy anymore.
It might be that I got older
but it also might be because most animated films
just feel the same.
But from the first minutes I sat in the theater
to watch Into the Spider-Verse,
I knew I was watching something different.
I felt something I haven't felt in a very long time
watching something new.
The film kept playing with my expectations.
I found myself staring at the screen
trying to figure out how they did this or that.
I fought the urge to pull out my phone
and start taking notes on all the things they did different.
I bounced between trying to analyze what I see
to forcing myself to just sit back and enjoy the experience.
Was it 2D or 3D?
Who the hell cares, it broke all of my expectations
and felt almost like a new genre of animation.
Like a new D.
Of course just to be clear, it's not a new D.
It's 3D animation but we'll get to that in a minute.
If we want to innovate with animation,
it's up to us to come up with visual ideas
that challenged our viewers in new ways.
Go right when everybody goes left.
It's not about making the art form more sophisticated
it's about using it in new and creative ways.
That is what the people behind this film did.
And now because you did click on this video
for the question posed in the title,
let's talk about the technical things
that movie did different
from professional point of view
and breakdown the whole 2D, 3D thing.
As I mentioned before, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
is a 3D animated film, not 2D.
By that, I mean that the majority of what you see on screen
was created with 3D models in a 3D program
and not by drawing the frames
in the traditional 2D animation way.
They used 3D models and rigs for the characters
and backgrounds in this movie.
However there were a few innovations they came up with
to make it look different,
mostly by adding 2D elements to the 3D assets.
They added line-work to the character's face
using 3D geometry
to give the artist more freedom
in creating expressive poses.
They also occasionally paused the film
and overlaid the shot with 2D illustrations
of that one frame
as a reminder they were actually inside of a comic book.
They pushed that idea even further
by adding typography into the scenes,
like cell phone rings, car screeches,
and even some narration.
The team also painted over most of the frames
and often used abstract backgrounds
that resembled commercial motion graphics.
In addition to creating specific tools
for producing a 2D feel to the movie,
the creators also made some very specific decisions
for certain aspects of the art style.
These decisions played an important part
in challenging our expectations.
I broke them down to frame rate, motion blur,
and depth of field.
So one of the most visually apparent creative decisions
in this film concerns the frame rate of the animation.
3D animated films are usually created
in 24 frames per second, and this film is no different.
However, the creators did something really interesting
with the animation of the characters themselves,
often reducing the character animation
to 12 frames per second also known as animating on two's.
Animating on two's is usually done in 2D animation,
stop motion and anime.
This means there's one new drawing every two frames.
When 3D animation came along,
the animation was done on one's
meaning every frame within
that 24 frames per second is changing.
Into the Spider-Verse still played on 24 frames per second
but the characters were often animated
on 12 frames per second.
While the camera movement and backgrounds
were still moving on one's.
That pushed that 2D feeling even further
and was one of the main elements that gave the film
its now signature style.
In other major decision was to not use motion blur
in its traditional sense.
If you're not familiar with motion blur,
it's that blurriness that occurs
when an object moves really fast on screen.
That blurriness is technically a defect
seeing in live action movies since forever.
But when 2D animation came along they had to recreate it
because viewers were already used to seeing it
and expected it.
But since we're using a software, we can easily turn it off.
This usually doesn't look so great,
as every frame is extremely sharp and crisp.
Motion blur makes the motion feels smoother and softer.
But the Spider-Verse people wanted to do it their way.
They turned off motion blur
and instead added quick drawings between fast motions
to give the feeling of motion blur.
It's a common trick in 2D animation
where motion blur can't exist organically.
They sometimes added broken body parts which they duplicate
to create that motion illusion.
Comic book uses similar technique.
This decision allowed the artist
to have even more control on how each shot looks
and again pushed that 2D hand-drawn
comic book style even further.
Lastly, the creators did something pretty interesting
with depth of field.
Depth of field is the blurriness of objects
that are not in focus.
Usually the main object in each shot is in focus
while the background and foreground objects are more blurry.
In Spider-Verse though,
in many cases when an object isn't in focus,
it starts splitting up into its RGB colors
similar to a phenomenon called chromatic aberration,
in which objects on the edges of the frame
start leaking their RGB colors.
This feature isn't just unique
but it also pushes the comic book feel
since printed comic books often had color misaligning
during printing which causes some colors to be offset.
Even when its almost unnoticeable,
this decision adds to the overall comic book look
they have built.
And now we have to ask ourselves,
does any of these matter?
Well, yes and no.
It matters because a studio has created a visual masterpiece
that challenged us as the viewers in new ways.
That is no small task and not one to take for granted.
And yet, it wouldn't have mattered
if the story itself wasn't so solid.
If any of the story elements
such as acting, plot, pacing and humor
didn't work so well together,
all of this visual extravaganza
wouldn't have mattered at all.
Well done Sony, well done.
And if you wanna learn
about how to make your own animated movie,
we have a free e-book we created
you can download it on our website
it's called Making animated short.
And we also have a ton of amazing animation courses
for beginners and experts
teaching some of the most popular animation programs
like Maya, Animate CC, Toon Boom and many others.
And for comic book fans,
we even created an amazing course
on creating and publishing your own graphic novels.
I'll put links to all of those in the description.
Thanks for watching.
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