How Spider-Verse Broke The Rules of 3D Animation

You asked for it! Here's my video about The LEGO Movie and how it changed everything about 3D animation -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDCfbs56BuQ

"The lego movie walked so that spiderverse could fly." So poetic, wisest words i've ever heard.

I really thank Spiderverse not just for existing, but for being inspiring Dreamworks to do the same. Puss in boots last wish is an amazing movie not just by the story, but because of the animation style that takes after spiderverse

I love how Hobie was animated differently for multiple parts of his character just because he’s a rebel, but it kinda also ties back into his line of “I don’t believe in consistency.” Edit: Holy cow, 2k ppl agree with me. That is very coolio :)

3D animation studios: Noooo, you can’t just break the rules of 3D animation, it won’t look as good or as smooth. Sony animators: Nah, imma do my own thing.

It's so cool that they weren't breaking the rules just to break them. It was intentional. Like Miles being animated at 12fps vs 24fps like the other spidermen symbolizing he hasn't fully become Spiderman yet. And of course with Hobie being on 3/4 (sometimes) because he's a non conformist. Like all of that isn't just breaking rules for fun but adding another layer of the character beyond just the image of the character. It's 4D at this point

also i love how spot still has the skeleton on him, the sticks and stones, lines and circles, foundation of art

honestly obsessed with your decision to put the fact that you worked on the bad guys in the middle of the video, a lot of art youtubers tend to frontload their videos with their industry experience if they have it. also i'd love to see a video talking about the lego movie! definitely underrated when it comes to 3d animated films breaking the typical style conventions, i was convinced it was mostly stop motion until i actually met a guy who worked on it haha

I think it´s cool, that the sketches of Miguel are shown pretty often, like the circles and lines in his face. As an artist, this detail always makes me smile

One thing that truly shows the masterful nature of the work on Spider-Verse is that, despite all the "messy" elements - the smear frames, the choppier animation, the way Hobie is animated in that eye-searing and distracting way, etc. - Spider-Verse is imminently followable. I can tell what's going on and follow the action at all times. Compare to the first Transformers movie, where these grey CGI machines were taken into closeup on shakeycam to the point that it's impossible to tell WHAT is going on. It must have been an enormous amount of work to get something with this much "busy-ness" on screen, this much stylization and this many things that normally are cheats to make up for a lack of smoothness but are instead done deliberately here in order to make this movie as easy to watch and tell what is going on as it is.

I love how Hobie was animated. I didn't think much of it during the movie when I watched it for the first time, but he was done perfectly. Literally every part of his character bleeds into the way he's animated, as he literally never conforms to an animation style, as he never looks the same in two frames thanks to the effects around him, all his moving parts like his limbs or jacket move at different framerates, and how he looks like he just doesn't fit in, like they cut him out of a punk art piece and just glued him into the movie. It makes his "I don't believe in consistency" line work on multiple levels

Makes me think about how art used to be to make something almost photoreal and then we had surrealism that broke those conventions … great video guy

A little more inside (I worked on comp on spiderverse) the example smear frame you used that was lines on his feet were all hand drawn and added in later. There are also major distorted frames for smears as well. (see miles slamming the door when he leaves Ms Webers office). Also, lighting was basically non-existent. Miles and Gwen had basic lighting, but it was all done in layers in comp. It was basically a giant moving coloring book.

I absolutely love how Hobie gets his own animation rules. My favorite is definitely the whole “any of these rules are breakable at any Tim because he ‘doesn’t believe in consistency’,” which honestly so cool. I also like how when Hobie wrote the letter to Gwen that was attached to the watch he made, his handwriting shifted from uppercase to lowercase consistently for the same reason.

Pleeeeease talk about the bad guys work flow. I’d love to hear about the rules you guys set for yourselves and how the first Spiderverse movie changed the conversation of developing the movie

Spiderverse didn't break the rules, they made them far better.

I can never be more thankful to Spiderverse for pushing the boundaries on what animation could and should be.

4:22. Oh man, as a software engineer, I can totally relate. Sometimes we have multiple meetings just to decide whether or not we should change the colour of a button from blue to red.

2:29 zesty ahh punch

Across the spiderverse was so amazing, that it finally made me put pen on paper and start drawing again! I hadn’t seen the first one so I was just mesmerized the entire time!