Animated Films with stylized animation (and how they did it)

 I got a ton of reviews for movies and shows that I wanna do but I feel like I've been doing a lot of reviews lately, so I'm gonna do this instead. It gives me a little else to talk about. Today I'm gonna talk about movies with animation that looks like nothing we've seen before and how they did it. I also put videos so you can see the process.

Spider-Man into the Spiderverse

Spider-Man into the Spiderverse is a groundbreaking film in many ways. But one reason is because of its incredible animation! How they made the computer animation look like a comic book is amazing! How they did it is they put a lot of 2-D lines on the characters face. Look closely on Miles' face, see how the wrinkles on his forehead look hand drawn. They also animated most of the movie on twos, which means that they are 12 frames of animation in one second instead of the 24 frames of animation in one second which is used in most animated films. They did this to make the animation feel more graphic, chunky, and hand drawn. They also got rid of motion blur. Motion Blur is when objects move super fast in animation and its a blur. Not in this movie, instead of doing motion blur, they gave the characters multiple limbs when they move really fast or they swipe which is like motion blur but is more 2-D looking. There is also moments when the characters are blasted with color or light and there entire body or a part of the body will turn that color. They do this in comics to. Sometimes the color will go outside the 2-D drawn lines like what happened when comics back in the day where printed. They also made the shadows vertical lines and they even went as far as to put the little dots on things. All these choices where made to make it more like a vintage comic book and less like a cg film. They really broke the computer to be able to bring out the imperfections in the cg animation. I feel like because of Spiderverse, other animated films are taking a new approach. Like the two I'm about to talk about.

Klaus

    

   Dang this movie should've won an Oscar. Hand drawn animation seemed like a lost art form, that all changed when Klaus came out on Netflix. Klaus is animated by hand like how they did back in the day. Though they do draw digitally, they still have the artists hand in the movie. Klaus did not just want to do 2d animation the same way it was done before, they wanted to make the characters blend in with there backgrounds and make them look 3d but still look hand drawn at the same time. A lot of the characters in hand drawn animated movies look like flat stickers on top of an intricate background. So the guys who made this wanted to change that. To do this, animators hand lit the characters which made these flat, 2d drawings, blend in with there environment and make them look 3 dimensional without losing that hand drawn quality. It is so nice to have a 2d animated movie come out in a time where computer animation dominates the industry. And I'm just so happy it was Klaus.

The Willoughbys  

    

    The Willoughbys is such a charming, delightful little Netflix film that reminds so much of the works of Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr. Fox) and Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare before Christmas.) It does have a dark sense of humor that I love so much(that's what you get when the narrators a cat.) and the characters are a lot of fun. When I saw the film, the animation looked like stop motion but was computer animated. I saw a video that explained that the animation is supposed to look like stop motion. And to make it look even more like stop motion, they made everything look handcrafted, very tactile, like your turning the pages of a book since this is based off of a book after all. So like fire would be made out off paper or clouds out of cotton. And off course I noticed that it was on 2s but I think some of it was on 3s and 4s.

The Peanuts Movie

    The Peanuts Movie took a similar approach to Spiderman into the Spiderverse in its animation 3 years before them! They two got rid off motion blur, it has 2d animated effects, its on 2s (but unlike Spiderverse, its on twos for the whole movie!) to make it look and feel more more 2d. However, they where mainly inspired by the Peanuts comic strips (unlike Spiderverse which was inspired by comic books), the tv specials, and even toys! They also had to change the characters model each time the character would turn its head in a different angle. Because if the characters don't look like and feel like there from Peanuts, the audience will notice. The know closed down Blue Sky (that was recently shut down by the always magical Disney! Good Grief.) pulled this off in flying colors and Its still Blue Sky's best film next to Ice Age. What a great movie Charlie Brown!

Loving Vincent

 

    I have not seen this movie yet, however, I've heard about it and heard its about Vincent Van 5. But the thing that attracted me the most is breathtaking animation. How they did it is they would Rotoscope. Rotoscoping is animation that is traced over live action footage. However in this movie, they oil paint over it! That's right! Every single frame of this film, is actually an oil painting! Over a hundred artist work on this film and over 65,000 paintings where made! That's crazy!

    The Lego Movie

 

    

    From the producers of Spider-Man into the Spiderverse comes another movie from these guys with animation that looks so different from the norm. The Lego Movie was one of those movies where everyone thought it was just going to be a Lego commercial. But that was far from the case when it was released. It was so popular with critics and audiences alike that people where furious when The Lego Movie didn't get a nomination for best animated feature at the Oscars! When I saw this movie, I thought it was stop motion that used actual Lego bricks. But actually its computer animated made to look like stop motion! Kinda like the Willoughbys except with Lego's. They built all the sets in the computer using a system where they could build with digital Lego bricks. The coolest thing about the animation is that everything from the smoke, water, fire, everything, is a Lego brick! It amazing! They also put scratches and fingerprints on the Lego bricks to show that have been used and worn. They also put limitations on the rigs so that the characters could move like Lego figures.  Rigging is the points of movement that is in a computer animated character that helps the animators move the characters. They limited them so they can move the characters like Lego's. And of course they moved them on twos to make them look stop motion. They made the entire thing look so much like Lego's that my tiny eight year old mind thought that it was stop motion! That is awesome!