Centaurworld is one of those shows where you might not reeeaaally know how to feel about it
until the end. And the strange thing is I just finished it and I still don’t know how to feel.
In a dazed punch-drunk kind of way. I mean, the animation is fantastic.
It’s so good I could hardly pay attention to anything else. It’s one of the best
hand drawn X puppet rig hybrids I’ve seen, just, a really phenomenal example of what animators can do
with modern 2D techniques. Why? Why is it so good? And to do it with horses of all things? Literally
centaur everything. You couldn’t pick something easier like… random shapes,
or vegetables, or people. Animal shaped people. (tuca) Squishy puff animals that only—by
some insane stretch of imagination—might vaguely resemble a horse? I dunno!
Not this. Not Spirit of the Fluffing Cimarron
dropped into some colorful... escapist lunatic asylum where everyone bottles up their trauma
so tight it feels like they’re gonna HNNNGH— Just like the struggling main character Horse
(yes that’s her name), Centaurworld feels like it doesn’t know what it wants to be.
Is it a teary drama? A goofy absurdist humor series? Musical theater? Horror? I don’t know,
I don’t know what it is! It defies classification. Based on the trailers you would not expect
at all the first episode to start the way it does. Pretty sure I spent the first
twenty minutes open-mouthed gaping. Anyway, there’s a reason Centaurworld is
interesting from an animation standpoint, but it also happens to be a huge spoiler.
If you enjoy animation—and especially if you like musicals—not to mention a fabulous take on what a
villain song can be—I’d recommend watching the 10 episode season before continuing this video.
Here’s your opportunity to pause, come back another day, go watch some of the
other hundred Scribble Kibble videos that talk about animation and how it’s made.
Kay. Spoiler time. The main character’s design
changes throughout the entire season. That’s right. Throw out your character reference
sheet ‘cause it ain’t the same, that 360 turnaround puppet will do you no good.
In fact Centaurworld is animated by two different studios in two different countries
with two different programs. So you’ve got one studio doing the majority of the cartoony show
and the other dealing with human action sequences. If you pick through the credits
you can see which episodes are all Mercury Filmworks and which had action done by Red
Dog Culture House (which typically does anime). Mainly it’s the opening and ending episodes that
have both studios and I can only imagine what insanity it was to coordinate two different art
styles at the same time in the same shot. Hah. The whole point was to literally put a character
from one world into the other, so why not assign a separate animation studio to each world?
Horse starts as a character from this world. She has hard edges. A dull color palette. Cel shading.
Meanwhile the centaurs are felt tipped outline, textured soft shading.
Horse undergoes a gradual transformation into the new world. First she loses the armor. Then
her hairstyle changes - not only that, but the outline of the hair style changes while the body
stays hard line. Finally the entire design switches, right down to color palette. The
nose stripe is white now, the hooves are blue, it’s all slightly more saturated, whee.
See, the thing about animation is you draw the character so many dang times that you get really
good at it. But when the design is different every time, you never get to settle into that comfort.
So to see a main character become new every third episode is a feat. This to this is more than just
a unique outfit for a holiday special. By the time you get here the character is structured so
differently it isn’t even animated the same way. It’s animated more like...
two beach balls had a weird kid. If you’re wondering how artists handle an
ever-changing character, it’s with separate style guides for each appearance.
Instead of one character sheet, you’d need three. Not to mention another paper to track
the stages of the key Horse wears, and a couple other sheets for custom outfits.
As long as you go in thinking “this character will be different every time I draw them” it’s not too
bad, but it’s still highly unusual to see so much change so quickly on a series main character.
Centaurworld pulls off the rapidly changing design with a consistency that deserves praise.
Even when two different art styles are on screen together it looks good; you can feel
the characters sharing the same space even though it could so easily fall into the realm of awkward
art collab where it’s vastly obvious your friend is way more skilled than you are. Ha...ha…
And it’s not live we’ve never seen two art styles in the same show before.
It’s just not very common. All this of course begs the question:
What would happen to the character designs if they spent too much time in the other world?
Why are there these bugs everywhere? When did this lady’s portrait get here? Who is she,
we don’t even know her name! Horse, Rider, Woman, how come no one in minotaur world has an
actual name - did the Nowhere King steal them? Gosh the show is just so weird. Hmmmmnh. I can’t
stop thinking about it you guys. So I guess the only thing to do is make you suffer too. Enjoy!