#like yeah man stylization is the key to good animation congrats you figured it out. nobody had thought of that yet ig

[orpheusilver]

sooooo fuckinf glad that spiderverse started a cool new trend in mainstream 3d animation of making it look good

[riggedbones]

#like yeah man stylization is the key to good animation congrats you figured it out. nobody had thought of that yet ig#its not like 2d animation had been doing that for more than 100 years already#like listen i get that when 3d animation was young realism was difficult and therefore applauded when achieved#which then influenced trends and industry standards for the next few decades i get the reasons why#but realism is not compelling for audiences especially for kids and especially when thats basically all there is#its like the graphics shit with aaa video games like yea you can see her pores but is her character design interesting?#im just glad things are gonna get more interesting from now on

(og tags)

responding to this mostly because i think it's interesting to talk about and like i totally get where u are coming from with it. but i will say that a blanket lack of stylization is not the problem with mainstream 3d animation, because there is a lot of stylization! a lot of the people who founded the basics of 3d animation, especially the stuff used in animated films, were 2d animators. they know all of the ways to shape a character to make it fit animation, and they're doing it in their films. just like, compare a pixar film to a triple a game or like the "live action" lion king, which is. essentially an animated film done with zero stylization. it's there, i promise, it's just... not enough.

i think the main 2 reasons why most 3d animated films of late feel so visually uninspired is 1: not knowing what to do with the increase in texture detail and 2: oversaturation of the pixar style.

the texture thing is the big one. 2d films do not have the ability to add textural detail like 3d films do. while it may be tempting to say that a lack of detail is better (and some films do reduce textural detail on purpose to create a look more analogous to 2d, like the hotel transylvania movies), it's important to note that itsv and the films inspired by it do play around with stylizing texture + using textures that aren't analogous to the materials being depicted (no million pores for skin, for example). this isn't something that one can just lift from experience with 2d. also, like, a point that doesn't excuse pixar at all, but a lot of the technology that allows for this sort of thing just... has not existed for a while because of lack in demand. a lot of technical stuff was made to get itsv how it looks. im saying this doesn't excuse pixar though because they are famous for picking film subjects purposefully so that they can develop new technology to depict whatever that subject is. so. they just haven't been doing it.

and of course there's the pixar style, everyone stylizes the human form etc. in the same way. this is like, definitely a corporate thing. pixar kind of made the only good looking animated films for a while, every other stylistic attempt kind of faded out because well. it didn't look good, at least to a widespread audience. big studios became the face of 3d animation and whenever a smaller studios want to make a 3d animated film... they are going to try their hardest to make parents think that the movie is by disney/pixar/illumination/dreamworks etc. this is honestly just something that happens regardless of medium (disney's 2d animation style pretty much defined what animation looked like for a while, there were other big companies that had their own distinct styles in the beginning, but disney pretty much defined what good and cinematic animation is for a lot of people.) i think it's likely that pixar may have had more of a chokehold over 3d than disney did with 2d because of how much less competition there was when 3d was gaining traction. bad 2d animation is just like, bad. bad 3d animation gives kids nightmares, yknow? and pixar films looked pretty decent from day one.

anyways i think there is a bit of stylization/simplification philosophy that really makes the pixar style really... mediocre... and that's the fact that while they increase the amount of detail in each of the textures, they don't really... allow those higher fidelity textures to be anything less than perfect. hairstyles are perfect. all of the millions of pores are so smooth and even. i think beyond the obvious ideal that this presents, this is liked with the sort of simple, stylized look that these studios try to go for. the hair is perfect or perfectly imperfect so that they don't break the strong silhouette. the skin is perfect so that there isn't too much cluttering detail, etc. i really think this is a bad thing because while everything gets more realistic... it simultaneously becomes way more unrealistic. it's so close to being uncanny valley levels but they've been able to keep it from going down there just barely via general design sense that does still exist in these studios, because these are artists that are trained in these things. it's just, um. well sometimes it's hard to see variation and improvements from that variation when you live in a capitalistic society and you're working in a medium that requires immense amounts of labor and skill to produce

sooooo fuckinf glad that spiderverse started a cool new trend in mainstream 3d animation of making it look good