[jayeshsalvi]

Just what I was looking for. IMHO Arcane marks a milestone progress in Animation technology.

Also glad that the article confirmed that they don't use MoCap. It was such a great choice. I recently watched another visually exquisite animation movie on Netflix (the one in the Bright universe). There they used completely flat shading to achieve toon look for characters and environment, but made the characters move with MoCap animations. It looked very eerie.

[kranke155]

There's nothing new about the tech. It was just the willingness to go that far artistically. (am a 3d artist working in the industry)

Mitchell's vs the Machines and Into the Spider Verse are good examples of how the industry is slowly moving into allowing different styles of animation than the Pixar Standard.

[ketzo]

God, it's been said a thousand and one times, but in case even one person reading this hasn't seen it: you have to watch Into the Spider-Verse. I remember my mouth literally falling open at some of those scenes, and I'm not even, like, particularly "into" animation or anything. Such a visually astounding movie (aside from everything else to love about it).

[tomnipotent]

> Such a visually astounding movie

Could not have been a better introduction to Miles Morales. I'm so ready for another dozen Spider-man movies featuring his character.

[anchpop]

I agree. His character in the comics had a different design and was more noting imo. For example, in the movie when he’s complaining about his new school, he says “I’m only going here because I won that stupid lottery”, and his dad replies “you passed that entrance exam just like everybody else”. The comics also have the lottery but IIRC make no mention of an entrance exam. Lots of subtle changes like that added up to make him a much more sympathetic hero IMO

[dmitriid]

It's very surprising that in the 30 years of computer animation the sources of actual experimentation with the style come from ... Marvel and Riot Games.

[dagmx]

This is a terribly ill informed take.

Sony Animation ( who you misattributed to marvel) were already pushing animation style heavily. Just go watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

There's also tons of animation variety from outside America. The issue is that in America, a lot of the style was defined by Pixar. Which was probably the biggest experiment of them all.

But even among the major studios, there's a lot of variety in style. Trolls is incredibly stylized and DreamWorks really pushed style far in Kung Fu Panda 2.

Even Pixar are now experimenting more with style with Luca and Turning Red.

This is also only considering feature film work. If you pay attention to shorts, there's a huge variety.

It comes down to Art Direction. Arcane and Spiderverse are expensive and require an insane amount of per shot bespoke work. A lot of people also tend to find hyper stylized content not as compelling. So there's not a great risk to reward ratio.

[dmitriid]

> Just go watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

It's the same plasticky "Pixar style" as any other computer animated movie in the past 30 years. And I'm saying that as someone who enjoys the movie immensely.

> There's also tons of animation variety from outside America.

This is true, and it's my mistake not to mention this.

> So there's not a great risk to reward ratio.

Indeed. And that's why it's surprising to see experimentation to come from these two sources (Sony Animation may have made it, but it was Marvel who agreed to it: they guard their properties like hawks)

[dagmx]

Are you simply talking about the shading style? Because otherwise there's nothing similar in style between Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and any Pixar film of that generation.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was very much pushing animation style dramatically at the time and brought a lot of Fleischer, UPA and Looney Tunes animation into 3D for the first time.

Regarding your point of Marvel agreeing to it: Sony still owns the rights to Spider-Man for a lot of domains. That was purely a Sony film with little to no Marvel input. Source: I worked on it.

[kranke155]

I already said this above but

The source of experimentation have been Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who have been pushing for experimentation ever since they directed the extremely successful Lego Movie. They also did Cloudy with Meatballs.

They were producers in both Into the Spider Verse and Mitchell’s vs the Machines. They are the reason why this “willingness to do experiment” has happened - they succeeded beyond everyone’s dreams with Lego Movie and have taken a producer role in films that want to push the artistic envelope in 3D animation.

[dagmx]

You're confusing correlation with causality.

Lord and Miller definitely like to push the style of their films, but a lot of the technology used to achieve that style from Sony is from trying to closely adapt the rubber hose animation style of Fleischer cartoons in an attempt for Sony to differentiate themselves as a studio.

They really pushed it in Hotel Transylvania, their next feature film, where they were bringing Genndy Tratakovsky's style to 3D.

[kranke155]

The source of experimentation have been Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who have been pushing for experimentation ever since they directed the extremely successful Lego Movie.

They were producers in both Into the Spider Verse and Mitchell’s vs the Machines. They are the reason why this “willingness to do experiment” has happened - they succeeded beyond everyone’s dreams with Lego Movie and have taken a producer role in films that want to push the artistic envelope in 3D animation.

It’s now part of their MO to push the envelope and have each of these films “be their own thing”.

Fortiche has no relationship with them, but they would have never been allowed to do what they did here without those films having been produced IMO.

If you’re interested to know more I recommend you listen to the Roger Deakins’ podcast with them.

[dagmx]

Fortiche have been working on Arcane for almost seven years now. That predates Spider-verse being publicly known.

Additionally there have been tons of very stylized content pieces before that. Look at anything by Robert Valley, Alberto Mielgo or just look further out into European or Japanese animated work.

Certainly Spider-Verse helped prove the viability of a heavily stylized film, but Arcane would have existed without it.

A lot of what they did was being done in Gobelins films before (and I suspect Fortiche employs many Gobelins students)

Lord and Miller are fantastic and certainly push style. But I think you're attributing too much to them.

[kranke155]

Before Chris and Phil did what they did, there was nothing but the Pixar Standard in Western CG studio animation.

The artists you cite are not part of the industry, and the whole point is how Chris+Phil changed attitudes in the industry. The overall world always knew other styles were possible. But the industry needed a jolt.

I won’t push it any further, but they pretty much changed the industry attitude on this. I am aware of Fortiche’s previous work, but it’s a long way from a few million dollars in cinematics to this.

Even the style that Fortiche ie using in Arcane only seems to have fully developed in their other work in the past 2/3 years.

Anyway sort of a meaningless discussion. Not trying to prove anything, just saying they were leaders in this space.

[dagmx]

"are not part of the industry"?

Both Robert and Alberto are fairly well regarded art directors. You're clearly not familiar with the industry, which is fine, but at least refrain from making statements like that.

The fact that you can credit them with it all and dismiss Alberto as not being part of the industry is depressing. I suggest actually seeing who the initial art director they hired for Spiderverse was.

Even before Lord and Miller, Shrek is a completely different style of film than Pixar was putting out.

There were tons of CG films even around the early 2000s and 2010s that were experimenting in style. They just failed to reach critical success or weren't as in your face about it,

Lord and Miller certainly made the best films that also embraced style, but you're entirely too dismissive of the other people in the space, while laying too much at the feet of Lord and Miller.

They're certainly amazing directors and pushed style in their films, but saying they gave the industry a jolt is retconning things. Spiderverse definitely moved the needle a ton, but it's more than just them.

[dagmx]

I wouldn't say Arcane does anything new in terms of technology. It definitely pushes the style and technique involved, but not the technology.

[_trampeltier]

I don't know LOL, but even after just a few minutes from the first episode I was blown away. So much details!