[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.