spider-man into the spider verse vs across the spider verse:
production company–
Even though both movies where made by Columbia pictures and Sony pictures animation there where completely different artists bringing different art styles and ideas to the production process. To make into the spider verse it took 177 animators, this was the most animators working on the project at once. However the production team only grew for the second film with over 1000 animators and artists working on the project throughout.
difference in art style–
It is clear to see after watching both movies that across the spider-verse pushed the limits of 2D animation even further then the first film. Characters in across the spider verse where created with 6 different animation styles that are used to separate the film into different sections, such as the style for spider punk and being inspired by 70s comic books published in India for Spider-man India. Contrasting the interesting but individual style used in the first film.
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the creative producers on the first film embraced the fact into the spider verse was a spiderman remake and used this to differentiate the film from the others with the style instead of story. The artists working on these films used a combination of hand drawn and computer generated animation creating a hyper realistic however vivid and saturated art style that is specific and recognisable to these films. This is what i admire the most about the process of making these films, as the creative choices made for the animation where completely optional, and instead of making a basic animated movie they embraced the comic background of the media they where making a remake on and let the animation thrive with a range of styles.
frame rate in relation to the story–
Something different that the animators on into the spider verse did was experiment with frame rate, this was by not sticking to the usually 24 frames per second like other movies. They didn’t stick to one frame rate at all. Instead, the frames per second followed along with miles as he began to learn how to use his powers. For example, in the beginning of the movie miles is animated in 12 frames per second, while his peers are in 24 this highlights him not moving gracefully and smoothly and is especially obvious in comparison to other characters. However continuing in the movie ones he truly becomes spider man he is animated just like the others making the visuals more cohesive and satisfying to watch.
Animators embraced non-photorealistic rendering in these movies to have more control of the final graphics and preventing the movie from looking like all the other CGI movies made recently. This also allowed them to embed the different art styles for the different characters seamlessly and not sacrifice the detail of the frames.
vfx comparison
avatar, the way of water vs interstellar
In avatar the way of water where the visual effects stood out the most was with underwater motion capture technology, this was specifically developed for this production and completely changed how water is perceived in film. this technology required custom built rigs and tanks of water 120 feet long, 60 feet wide and 30 feet deep. this also required actors to move there expertise underwater and train to hold their breath for much longer.
Weta FX also utilised AI to enhance the water effect to look more realistic and behave how it does in real life, this movie did so much for the improvement of photorealistic rendering, in both environments and characters. the technology developed for this specific project alluding to water physics, skin texture and facial expressions will continue to improve and contribute to other projects in the industry.
Another technique used in the making of avatar was focusing on the muscles in the face to achieve the most accurate facial expressions. This contradicts the common use of blendshapes in animation to create a characters actions. This technique was actually used in the making of the first film however, the animators on the second found blendshapes can only animate on the surface level ,and only form an expression on the surface mesh of the character, an unnatural appearance compared to a human. In order to create more detailed expressions the needed to go deeper then that.
On the contrary, Interstellar merged practical effects with CGI to render some of the most visually accurate renderings of space seen to date. One of the biggest visual effects achievements was the depiction of the black hole itself, Gargantua. This was a big project within the film and was vital to get right.
interstellar also uses practical effects extensively to still maintain the realism in the film, for example the spacecraft. it was important for this to be practical effects instead of CGI since the surroundings where extremely surreal so a fully CGI image may be overwhelming for the audience.
PORTFOLIO 