Since 2012, almost every year the Oscar for Best Animated Film has been awarded to one of the two industry giants: Disney or Pixar. However, last Sunday, Sony Pictures Animation and Imageworks had a historic victory with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It seems that justice has triumphed since public opinion had an effect on the voting and Spider-Man fans were heard.
Фото: oscar.go.com
"Spider-Man" received universal recognition in almost every area - from a diverse cast for "the democratization of superherodom" to its perfect translation of the comic-book style to the big screen. It was the latter - the carefully developed 2D aesthetics - that most amazed the audience.
With 177 animators at their disposal (approximately twice as many as is usually required for animated films); the Spider-Man team was able to experiment with new pipelines to determine how to use traditional animation techniques in their approach. As VFX supervisor Danny Dimian says: “One of the things we wanted to dowith this movie is bring the hand of the artist back. Bring line-drawings back.” As a result, they settled on the idea of using "dynamic line work" — individual rigs for each line — for amazing detailing of the characters' facial expressions.
Dimian worked with producer Justin K. Thompson on using the “misprint” effects. This effect can be in reality when layers of colored ink while printing a comic are accidentally printed through the intended lines. This “color bleed” effect inspired them to create a field of depth, not with the traditional focus blur, but with chromatic aberration.
Another stylistic solution for giving the "comic book" look was how they decided to work with FX in the film, especially with dynamic movements. To the naked eye, it is clear that the animators wanted to leave the more realistic motion blur, and decided instead to add classic effects similar to Kirby’s — stretches, smears, and motion lines.
Animators also skillfully manipulate the use of framerate. Most 3D animated features are shown at 24 FPS or 24 frames per second. In this case, the artists removed half of them, reducing the standard 24 FPS to only 12 FPS onscreen.
To choose this style, the development of new technologies, pipelines and transmission of the atmosphere of 2D comics through 3D animation was a rather risky move. Why did Sony decide to go for it? As Thompson summed up, "When you’re making a movie about supernatural heroes with crazy powers who come from other universes, it’d almost be detrimental to the story if we didn’t try to challenge the audience visually.”