Why Wish Looks Bad: Animator Explains
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- čas přidán 2. 12. 2023
- Was Wish really generated by AI? Let's discuss...
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Welcome to my review of the animation of Disney's latest feature, 'Wish'. As an animator with a passion for the art form, I've taken a close look at this film to understand the nuances and decisions that shaped its final appearance.
In this video, I explore the various elements of 'Wish' that have sparked discussion and debate in the animation community. From the unique animation style to the storytelling techniques, I break down the aspects that worked and those that didn't quite hit the mark.
Join me as I analyze the animation techniques used in 'Wish', compare them to other popular animated films, and discuss how these choices impacted the overall reception of the movie. Whether you're a Disney fan, an animation enthusiast, or just curious about what goes into making an animated feature, this video offers insights into the complex world of animation.
If you find this analysis interesting, please like, share, and subscribe for more content. Your support means a lot and helps me continue to create and share my thoughts on animation. Don't forget to leave your comments below - I'd love to hear your perspectives on 'Wish' and animation in general! ✌️
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Alright y'all apparently I wasn't clear enough, even though it's the first thing I say in this video: the animation in this movie looks CHEAP. They (Disney leadership) made creative decisions to make it look a certain way, and those decisions were a BAD idea, which made it look CHEAP and BAD. I am NOT defending Disney's choices and saying "well it's actually good and you just don't get it", I'm just trying to not default to dunking on this movie by saying it's "woke" like every other video essay on this movie, and instead look at these creative decisions by the filmmakers objectively. I'm explaining WHY these creative decisions made this movie look like a TV show instead of a feature film by dissecting what "TV animation" even means. Explaining Disney's thought process does NOT mean that I'm defending their decisions, because I go on to explain why these decisions are misguided. And so I'm crystal clear, "misguided" is a synonym for "BAD." I'll do better in the future to be more clear about my feelings of the film I'm discussing, beyond saying it in the first sentence of the video.
Also for the last time, Magnifico isn't the good guy.
SO many bad (graphical) decisions in this.
* Skin textures (for the humans) looks too flat. (Could'a used some pores.)
* Lighting is so diffuse that this '3-D' movie looks flatter than (some) 2-D (animated) movies. Not one lonely, _distinct_ shadow for miles around.
* Magnifico looks like a _bleached_ , discount Dr Strange. Hair that's substantially lighter than your skin always looks freaky.
It's unfortunately common for a general audience to conflate artistic style, lighting, rendering and texturing as "Animation" when making these sorts of critiques, as opposed to the motion and the acting of the characters.
No? Really?
@@shuttittuppitt9355 I disagree with the statemment about pores. Photorealistic skin is not a style needed for something to look good. Especially when you merge looks into something resembling a 3D model hand painted with a brush. From the short film Saga of Bjorn to SpiderVerse and the new Turtles.
But yes, I agree, then there should be other texture instead - maybe more painterly. Cheers
(at)j.m.w.
The skin's pores don't need to be _exaggerated_ to look realistic. _Real_ skin (at least for young people) has only _slightly_ (visible) pores, but they're noticeable if you're close up. This movie shows us _lots_ of close ups of people's faces, but their skins almost always look (literally) _impossibly_ smooth. A _slight _ evel of texturing for their faces would've (probably) been enough to give their skin a smooth appearance without it looking _impossibly_ smooth.
By the way, I'm not criticizing the character _designs_ for not being realistic, only the overly smooth skin textures
they should have just committed to 2D animation it would have been stunning and fitting as an actual homage.
Yeah I don't get why they didn't put together a team just to do one 2D animated movie since that's where they started. Maybe have it transition into 3D if you really want but a 2D film would have been really special for the 100th anniversary.
Blame Shrek. Since then, 2D movies started to fail. The Princess and the Frog was the last 2D animated movie not based on an existing 2D cartoon.
@@Wiimeiser while it was WINNIE THE POOH was the Last one, for NOW, and I have personally a musical Hand drawn Disney passion project in mind
I feel they should've commited to, well, something.
There's interesting choices but it's just a bit hard to tell what they're going for.
@Wiimeiser
Lilo & Stitch, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron, Spirited Away, SEVERAL Pokemon movies, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie all released after Shrek and are great 2D movies. Shrek also is in and of itself a fantastic movie. What the actual fuck are you talking about?
The fact that you have to explain so much of Disney's intentions with this movie is a problem. 😢
😬😬😬
Sentences like these make my Disney Stocks plummet 😢
i don't get it. I want someone to explain but not look like an asshole. So, 😬👍
@@beegboi6421 The issue is having to explain so much to a regular person with no knowledge of any of this to begin with. If you have to explain to someone why something is good but have to go so in depth and pull from things they might not know or understand, it becomes harder and harder for the common person to enjoy. Since they would logically need all this knowledge and information to enjoy the thing they're watching. It becomes less about the product they are watching and becomes all about the information most people don't bother to care about. And while you and I might enjoy something like that, to the general public, they'll quickly become bored, confused, annoyed and simply disinterested. And it's very cleae that from the reception of the movie that none of these facts really resonated/captured the audiences attention like disney thought it would. Its not really about someone coming off as a jerk or anything of the sort.
Yeah, this hit me especially with the explanation about the Star. Really cool explanation, but to someone just learning this, it also kinda sounds like an excuse for them going with the simpler, more merchandisable, and (to many reviewers, it seems) less manifestly creative design. I have mixed feelings about this film simply because I'm sure many people worked very hard on it, yet I cannot tell the difference in result between a creative choice and an uninspired one.
I think the biggest problem with giving Asha what she wants is with her having no character development. In Moana, Moana did get what she wanted but with a lot of trial and error. She had to learn how to be a leader and fail at her end goal only to realize that she can do it. She lost her grandmother and had to learn that her ancestors are always with her. There's more that can be said but the main point is giving them character development if you want to give them what they want.
Usually the rule is they can get what they want but they must lose a part of themselves in the process
@@NoTheRobot yeah. Exactly. I don't feel that Asha lost anything. She wants and she gets. If her parents were the king and queen and they were both evil as originally planned, then it might have worked or if her grandfather died then maybe.
@@fierygamer582 quite frankly I feel like fighting against her own parents is a lot more thematically intriguing, seeing as she's a teenager, and at what point do most teenagers draw the line between loving their parents and obeying them, and recognizing their faults and refusing to stick by them? Asha would have to learn to defy her own parents not because she's in some rebellious phase, but because she feels they genuinely are doing more harm than good and she cannot in good faith stand by their decisions.
@@fierygamer582 I think that them being her parents or secretly her parents because both already seemed to have a very parental bond with her and it would explain a good reason why Magnifico lashes out at her when she starts making suggestions about the wishes that he thinks are going to hurt her and his people and he doesn’t want to lose his family again or his home
Don't compare the Masterpiece of Moana to this 😭
I really think they redesigned Star purely to make it more marketable and producable as plushies or toys. A shapeshifter would be the perfect representation of pure creative spirit.
Maybe have him start out as a bouncing ball in his introduction before making him a tiny shapeshifter man, kinda evoking TinkerBell in terms of size and the vibes, like a tiny fairy star.
Boom! Problem solved. Marketable, fun, and interesting!
Yeah, I agree. Maybe his reasoning is what the animators justified things to themselves with but that is a marketable plushie design if I've ever seen one
@mackenziewoloschuk7375 making him a bouncing ball would also make sense as an animation reference. Learning how to animate a bouncing ball is once of the first things you'll learn when studying animation
My beef with the star is that apparently, it was supposed to be animated in 2D, which would have been perfect as an homage to Disney's history, blending 2D and 3D animations. That plan was scrapped, and the source I read basically said it was because it would've been too hard. So instead, we have just 3D animation, as if Disney is saying that's the only part of its 100 year history worth celebrating.
it should be hard!!! that's what makes it stand out, the effort!!! augh disney just doesn't get it anymore.
Two words: Treasure Planet
yeah because Disney doesn't even have a 2D animation department anymore. like the only people currently employed at Disney are 3D animators, not 2D. why, you may ask? Michael Eisner. it's always Michael Eisner
@@THEO00900like Disney literally invented a way to merge 2D and 3D decades ago, but now it’s too hard for them to do? It’s like an admission of defeat
they literally did that with this movie@@SyntheticSpy
Another reason why the style looks so wierd is because of the limited shadows. Normally Disney animated films has very detailed shadows and half-shadows with detailed lighting, but here shadows are straight up absent on some part of the characters. Like Asha's hands lack shadows from fingers and many characters have limited shadows on their clothing. I suppose it was made to flatten the picture to make it more story book like but a result looks more like a poorly rendered video game. I get what type of impression the animation team was going for, but it obvious that the were not given enough time and resources. There's a twit from the amimator from the team of Wish, circulating around, where he says that the movie was made during huge layoffs and a lot of corporate pandering was involved. So I blame the upper management.
The film also suffers from poor directing, 90% characters are in the central part of the screen, breaking the rule of thirds. In the interview one of the directors, Fawn Veerasunthorn said that "out philosophy was whoever has power, is in the center of the screen" which sounds like a bullshit to me. Song sequence are filmed like a real Broadway song on a scene, making a lot of shots from the top and not utilizing free 3d camera enough.
I do understand for what they were going with the Star, but I would rathey they went with the early concept of a starboy shape-shifter. Asha lacks any strong emotional connection with ohter characters so interetion with then Star might've salvaged it. Sight. This film's script is a mess.
P.S. People are not saying thar the animation was done by AI, but rather that the script and the texts of the songs were written by it. Allegedly, if you ask ChatGPT to write a Disney movie script about the evil king, magical star and a female protagonist it will create something similar to the script of Wish. And the songs have some wierd lyrics, that are breaking both rhythm and the size. Look it up, it's a big Oof of a song texts.
Yes that's what I mean about the movie being evenly lit, it reduces the high contrast that you get from the shadows. The movie absolutely had issues with being made during a turnover period, I didn't want to get too far into that during the video but from what I heard they were scrambling to find animators.
As far as Star goes, the directors said that the Star Boy version was too similar to the Genie from Aladdin, which I do agree would have been too on the nose for Disney to go that route. I've seen plenty of people complain about the animation style itself looking AI generated in addition to the script and songs, but also the script was written well before ChatGPT was invented (the directors said Jennifer Lee started writing this in 2018-19).
But your points are valid, it really did start and end with a lack of leadership from Disney execs.
@@NoTheRobotthanks for the answer? Do you think that the crew could've make the current stule work and improve it if they were given enough money and time?
"Whoever has power is in the center of the screen"?
Ouch. Nope. That's a clear indicator she has little understanding of film theory and framing power dynamics. Even in comics, superhero cartoonists have had it down to a science for decades.
@@wayIessI know, right? I think she said "whoever is in control is dead center of the screen, and when there is an imaginative feeling going on, the camera will start to spin". I'm pretty sure she knows the rule of thirds and all the jazz, but she choose to break all the conventions in a very unimpressive way.
Absolutely, the artists that worked on these movies are some of the best in the world for a reason. But even the most talented artists still need time to perfect their shots
one of the issues i have with the drawing style is just how smooth it is. They went for a watercolor look but also didnt push it enough. Just a "safe risk" which ended up making the overall picture look incomplete
Yeah. Like if you want a ‘watercolour illo’ look, just look at The Mitchels Vs The Machines. All the parts of Wish I’ve seen look like they just added an outline and a paper texture instead of the more textural look MvsM has… Wish just isn’t quite brave enough to really push that it seems
It didn't even LOOK like how a watercolor being animated. I'd say it's a strawman argument to even bother reaching for that defense.
@@guyman1570 i think you can definitely see it in the way the background is drawn, though, the faded one-layer watercolour effect with marker lineart. At least it was the first thing I thought about when I saw it
@@sandcrab7984 Some of the backgrounds you mean maybe? It didn't quite got to that point of actually looking like a watercolor
@@guyman1570 yeah that’s fair
This is such a comprehensive deconstruction of the critiques to this movie, while still critiquing it yourself from an educated point of view. I never would have ever considered how the star is an homage to bouncing ball animation and that is honestly brilliant- I still have my gripes with the story but you’ve effectively proven that this movie had a lot of love visually put into it
So glad to hear that you enjoyed this! When I heard Chris Buck make the connection to the bouncing ball, everything clicked for me, it’s a brilliant homage. But yeah it’s far from a perfect movie, but to say it is “made by AI” is a disservice to the animation teams that probably put hundreds of hours into this movie.
@NoTheRobot I thought the AI point was not regarted to the art but the storyboard. Yeah people didn't like the watercolor style because it just felt off a bit. I am also glad they tried something new. But I am mostly just not understanding any of the story line... I live ashes design and texture and I just loved the magic from the king animated like they choose to do☆ art is diffrent but amazing but story and Musik sucked sadly dragging the artstyle down as well
@@NoTheRobot i thought the AI part was more about the story because it has sooo many plotholes and inconsistensies.
@@NoTheRobot I'm not sure I would call it a "brilliant" homage, if *not a single person* is able to see it without being told about it first. It's a brilliant *idea,* but very very poorly executed.
I admittedly don't know much about animation, but I do know something about cooking and baking. A chocolate sponge cake can be a brilliant idea, but if everyone thinks it's a mudcake (and points out how much better it would have been as a third type of cake) then obviously I did something wrong along the way.
@@NoTheRobot Personally I think the ball thing is an excuse considering how it does not invoke the animation exercise at all. Thats almost like saying the star is an homage to pokemon because pokeballs are spheres and so is the star. Just because something is a sphere doesn't make it a "reference." Chris Buck is going to say things that protect his team just sayin
I'm not mad at the artists, I'm mad at who wrote the story. Animators are great, looking at King Magnifico they clearly put a lot of attention to detail. But the story... Horror.
Yep. Rosas has lots of accurate history built into it, but it's never embraced.
@GuineaPig361 I find incredibly problematic how the hero is said to be the villain and banished forever for being good. The rest passes mostly unnoticed.
It's like the story was written by AI 😂
The animation is well made but I think the biggest issue people, including myself have is the art style. The characters really don’t look that different from characters that were in tangled, frozen, Encanto, Moana, ext. just with cel shading. which would’ve been fine three or four years ago. But in a world where more and more movies are adopting their own unique styles with spiderverse, the bad guys, Mitchells versus the machines, nimona, puss in boots, and mutant Mayham. People have realized they’re kind of tired of the art style Disney usually uses for their 3-D movies. In a world where it seems like everyone is starting to innovate and do something special in the animation industry it just makes Disney look stagnant in comparison
The lighting for much of the daytime scenes being flat and even also desaturates the image too much. Older films didn’t suffer as much, and also weirdly had better lighting effects like rim lights, which would’ve made it so much better. No motion blur aside it also lacks a lot of squash and stretch as far as I see.
Nah even 4 years ago In would say "This looks cheap. RWBY did this 10 years ago.
@@keeneyong6580 I noticed the lack of saturation, too! I've been recording clips and cranking up the saturation, and it's like I'm seeing the real intended product. The clothes look much better, and Star is a lot brighter.
It would have been SO great so if Disney went back to their old 2D style (something like Snow White, Tarzan, even Beauty and the Beast). Wish just looks like it was rushed. The art style they used for magic is genuinely so lovely, I don’t understand why they didn’t just fully commit.
And that's where we turn to independent animation content like Lackadaisy and The Amazing Digital Circus
What baffles me is that paperman and feast look better than Wish does? I feel like the issue is they didn't take enough of a risk, I imagine the method they used for this semi-painterly style was simply easier to do than an entire movie in the paperman artstyle or say, Klaus from netflix, so they took the easy way out. Which they have no excuse to be doing if this was meant to be a homage. Cuphead is an incredible homage to 1930s animation, because it took an incredible study of history and an incredible amount of otherwise unnecessary labor, and an incredible amount of dedication-- it was a feat of craftsmanship deserving of respect! And this line of work, animation, it is a CRAFT! The more expertise applied to it, the more it is worth. The positive aspects of the art style they chose for wish, besides perhaps the magic effects, is simply... the bare minimum I expect from someone who learned animation. Yes, I would hope you know how to exaggerate expression, push poses, but if you are supposedly the best animators in the business I need you to WOW me. Like in Roger Rabbit, where they famously showed off by having them bump the lamp so the light would be hard to animate. If you're so good at this-- do something impressive! " Oh, it was too hard" Yes! That's what makes it deserving of respect! Do you want an award or don't you? Try harder! And I don't blame the animators for that, not remotely, I'm sure its purely the higher ups restricting them from really doing anything that takes time-- they should have planned for a 100 year anniversary movie back at the 90 year anniversary frankly, but when I criticize the company I am talking to whoever is responsible for the mistake, whoever it may be.
I also agree, the problem is the pipeline, the visuals
I agree, it's like they just didn't commit to anything in particular.
It's like they're made a 3D animated movie like they've done in the past years and then put a painterly post-processing effect on it.
It's not really "the Pixar look" but then it's also not exactly obviously stylised.
Honestly I think my only problem I had with this animation was just the design of the characters *still* look like they could be plopped into tangled, frozen, Encanto and Moana. But when you look at a lot of other Disney movies, the character designs are much more unique.
🤷♀️
Yes they all look the same now and its all about a message rather than a story. All jokes are derived of a non human object or animal behaving in a human way. yawn.
I believe studios have to innovate from times to times. We already have the characters u mentioned so why not to add something new?
While in line at the theater, I saw the giant poster/standee for Wish as my first exposure to the film. I joked that they designed the main character to sell old Isabella (Encanto) and Raya dolls that they repurposed.
Yeah i could see that, the color of her outfits are too similar, cant they at least pick a different color so there's more of a difference. Even the original princesses dont have the exact same color pallet.
@@Imbatmn57 Aurora and Cinderella almost did(Aurora wore mostly blue, and while Cinderella's infamous dress was originally white, they changed it to blue to make sure they weren't just selling 6 year old girls a wedding dress), but from what I've heard, the reason Asha has a purple outfit is actually to reference the Fairy Godmother. Which doesn't actually work cuz the Fairy godmother actually wears more blue than purpleish blue like Asha, the claim only works when Asha wears a cloak that is just the Fairy Godmothers.
But yeah, Asha's design, while I love the hair, is clearly reused, I even joked she looked like Isabella to my brother when we saw the standee poster for her lol
The lack of interesting textures and lighting made Wish look like an episode of a Disney Junior Princess show. Might as well have been a special of Sofia the First.
omg you are so right.... i can't unsee it now, it's definitely looks like something from sofia 💀💀
Honestly I would have rather been watching Sofia the First; at least that show is /entertaining/.
the biggest issue I had with it is that that "watercolor" look, did not read as watercolor to me. And that's pretty bad considering I paint with the stuff daily. Instead it read as flat cell shading found in games like team fortress two where there is a severe lack of dynamic textures and lightings. If they wanted a watercolor look they should have looked at how the game Gris did its animation.
The Dragon Prince and Klaus are GREAT examples of how to create the look Wish was trying to go for, but actually doing it RIGHT.
Dragon Prince is far from perfect but it looks unique. And honestly 3D models on 2D background look theatrical and disappointing.
God Klaus was amazing. But I’m pretty sure it was 2D made to look 3D, which is what wish was going to do before they scrapped it cause it was too hard
My problem with the animation style is the backgrounds and characters don’t look seamless at all. It looks like they are two different styles, or were drawn separately. Which is technically true, but that shouldn’t be as obvious.
I know there’s no motion blur, but they should have added some sort of seam or clipping layer to make the movie more consistent.
I think that was the goal to look storybook like but agree that I dislike it
Actually, THE BACKGROUNDS were one of the technical higlights, and if you think about, it can technically work by adding hand drawn animated characters, makes sense?
@@laurens3857 it doesn't even look like a storybook. It just looks weirdly flat and further serves to make everything look cheap.
It looks like the background was made with watercolor while the characters were just CGI with cell-shading, then stuck together like paper dolls lol
I never doubted the animation was done by people- it was mainly the story telling and song writing
Those were also done by people. Let’s not get into the habit of calling things we don’t like “AI generated.”
@@NoTheRobotbut what if it was done by people using AI? Many people seem to believe that the lyrics of many of the songs seems off because of the lyrics that seem so nonsense that AI was involved when writing the overall song.
@@huynguyen3953 People have been writing bad stories and crappy songs for thousands of years.
@@huynguyen3953 The writer of one of the songs explained it was written as a love song and then repurposed for the movie in a completely different context by disney, so that explains a lot of these songs feeling out of place: they literally are.
It doesn't make them bad song, but they're just not right for the scenes/story
@@huynguyen3953If I remember right, they had people who were well-trained in pop music and not musical theater do the music for this movie.
Pop music has its place, but this decision was like choosing a square peg for a round hole. And the fact that musical theater is Disney's bread and butter makes this decision even more baffling
I had a popular TikTok about the distinct issues with the songs because I’m a musician and a lot of people were mentioning these myths about the animation in my comments. I’m so glad you took the time to make this nuanced view, it’s exactly what I was trying to explain to people (without the animation background) in my comments and failing to do!!
I saw your video!! And yes I did see some people say in your comments that the movie looks like it was made by AI. I feel like some of the people discussing myths about the songwriting in these comments would do well to watch your video too 😆
@@NoTheRobot 😭 i felt really badly because apparently one of the songwriters saw my video and commented on it
Ahh yeah that’ll happen haha I had a video go viral about working on the Flash and how the bad CGI is from systemic issues and I’m pretty sure the filmmakers saw that too. That’s just the nature of posting our opinions on the internet, at the end of the day it’s still public and anyone can see it, including the people we spoke about.
Please post it on your channel here, too. I think it could add some interesting context to the discourse surrounding this movie.
This was a very insightful perspective of the movie. At first I was like, “ this movie’s animation looks…not bad, but off.” Now I kind of get why I might think that. I still think some things are still too off, like some spots it looks like the characters are on/in a stage play with the backdrop painted behind them. it feels like there is no sense of depth ( like the characters are quite literally going to run back and just smack the flat surface). the characters and backgrounds, to me, don’t mesh well.
But in all honestly if the story, characters, and songs were a lot better. I think people would be more open to the experimentation of the animation.
I think you're right on the money. The thought of "let's make the backgrounds look like the old 2D watercolor backgrounds from 100 years ago" is honestly a great idea. But in executing it perfectly, it ends up making the background... look like a flat piece of 2D artwork. Like they succeeded in creating this effect so well that it kinda works against them when meshed with 3D characters. I'm happy they're finally open to the idea of trying new things tho, they took a risk and it didn't pay off but I'd rather have that then the same old Frozen aesthetic yet again.
Better story idea with much better plot twist:
Asha wants to release the Wishes so every wish is granted
And the Audience is shown how evil the Sorcerer is.
But then it's revealed that Asha is the Daughter of the Sorcerer, and it's just in her rebellious phase and the Sorcerer isn't evil at all. 😅
But oh snap, the Wishes are released, and even the bad ones, causing the Kingdom to fall into chaos.
And Asha need to use the Master Wishing Star to undo all the Wishes.
I have not seen Wish but I would definitely watch your version lol
this is actually a really funny story, wish it was real
Gives Bruce Almighty vibes 😂
7:45 I'm going to call out that take: The issue with Wish's visuals is that it didn't push the medium into any specific direction and only went with "generic" while also having almost no original or unique cinematography to help bolster the feeling they are going for. Frozen 2, for instance has some REALLY good cinematography at times and can be quite atmospheric. Wish, on the other hand, has almost ZERO atmosphere or truly creative decisions. Every potentially creative decision seems to be weighed down by some sort of demand to not be "too creative".
Saying they tried to combine "Tangled with Fantasia" is a disservice to both movies as both of those had much more distinctive art styles that pushed the medium of animation into a specific and innovative direction. Nobody would take any moment from Wish and compare it favorably to "The Firebird Suite", "The Rite of Spring", or "Night on Bald Mountain".
Wish's greatest sin is that is doesn't try to be anything specific and has no identity. Story? Barely there. Characters? No very interesting. Animation? Technically good character animation, but the characters themselves aren't memorable so it doesn't matter if the performance is good. Cinematography? Almost no camera moves (could be intentional) but also no atmosphere. Visual originality (conceptual designs) also not very interesting to look at. It shouldn't take one very long to figure out a myriad of more visually interesting ways for this movie express itself, but it decided to take the quick and simple route for almost all of them.
I fully agree on the animation. The movement is actually very good and the use of squash and stretch is apparent!
Sadly it's not just the lighting that makes it appear to be TV animation. They claim they wanted to give it a watercolor look, and in the backgrounds, they mostly succeed! But they don't put as much of that same stylization into the characters, and not to the same degree in every shot. Some shots you can see a slight line and a bit of a gradient. You can see that stylization, though it's subtle. Other times it's not there at all, and the models look matte and unfinished. Watercolors also often have a textured look, thanks to the paper, and that's not really existent in the finished character renders. Additionally, they could have used cell shading to harken back to older animation, but didn't do so. They didn't push the style, and as a result, they got the worst of both worlds.
They should have done a Fantasia like movie with each segment representing a different era of their animation/movie styles instead of this
While I will be the first to sing the praises of this wave of new, experimental art styles that Spiderverse arguably kicked off, I do also worry that it’ll inadvertently get simplified to ‘make CGI look like 2D’, when there’s so many other places to take CGI than just variations on toon shading. Like, sometimes if you want the 2D look so badly, it’s worth considering just _doing it hand-drawn._
CGI can do photorealistic lighting and surfaces, that’s one of its amazing strengths. And you have movies like Rango, for example, that leaned hard into a very gritty, tactile appearance in a way that felt distinctly un-Pixar and that very few big CG films have tried since. Why not make a CG film that uses photorealistic rendering, but everything is lit and staged like a community theatre production, complete with props clearly made from painted up plywood and backgrounds that are obviously canvas curtains? We could have an animated film rendered to look like a stained glass window come to life, or a Lotte Reniger-esque shadow play! The possibilities are infinite, which is why I don’t want the creativity things like Spiderverse and Arcane have helped unleash to end with the industry sinking into yet another visual rut.
thank u for this 😭 when u see how talented and passionate so many of the disney animators are in works like the frozen 2 behind the scenes documentary, it makes me sad when people just attack stuff they actually know nothing about under the shield of "big corporation bad". i mean, there are individual people who are artists working on the tiny and necessary details of this stuff from start to finish. even if the overall work needed a more compelling story (and disney movie dept overall needs MAJOR and QUICK fixing right now), it still disheartens me to see that sort of misguided / bandwaggony bashing, lol. i sound dramatic but it's a broader trend i swear
I really appreciate what you did in this video, it really takes some guts to explain these details without just going "wish is bad, guys" . And that made the video way more enlightening. I'm glad i came across your channel
So glad you appreciated that! It’s so easy to take cheap shots at this movie without being analytical about WHY this movie is the way it is. I didn’t want to be snarky and cynical like everyone else about this movie, so I’m happy that my objectivity came across. Thanks for the kind words! 😁✌️
Disney has a lot of stuff going on in the background, and I feel like they would get a lot more appreciation if they advertised it more.
I got a lot of ads for the actual movie and plot, but if it focused more on the 100 Year Celebration, it might’ve been realized why it was good
Respect bro didn’t say first
@@SafouaneMarrakh Thank you
Yeah, it was really jarring seeing the movie and realizing that it was more about celebrating 100 years of Disney than it was about telling a solid fairytale story. There are so many details in this movie, and it’s clear that the crew works really hard on it. I think if they were upfront about this movie being more like Fantasia than Tangled, it might’ve done a little better.
@@NoTheRobot Even the Wish logo uses the Fantasia logo font.
I didn't even notice that haha
It's not that this movie isn't technically competent. It's that it's ONLY technically competent.
I just found this channel from your Insta & love your analysis. I really like the way you describe how the ANIMATION itself is incredible, it’s more about the subconscious associations we have with the art style/the way the final concept was realized-I haven’t heard this argument yet & I agree.
Hey thank you for making your way over here! I appreciate the kind words and I’m glad you agree😁
My general understanding was that most people were accusing the writers of using A.I, not the animation itself, but I do appreciate the explanation as to why the animation looks cheap. It hadn't occurred to be that motion blur helped so much when it comes to TV vs Film animation, so thats good to know
The fact they were going for water color and ended up with the flattest, clay blob animation style baffles me. Like the only thing they took from water colors is that the colors are muted that's it. It takes what should be a loose and imprecise style and turns it into the most sterile thing imaginable.
I think Puss in Boots shows how to fix the lack of motion blur... graphical effects can be used to compensate and still maintain motion.
thank you so much for this, ive gotten really tired of the entire discussion of this film being 'disney bad lol' when it actually had a lot of (albeit squandered) potential
All this time I've been like - "There's nothing wrong with the animation, it's very expressive and fluid."
The issue is the very flat lighting that recreates a flat 2D look. Except it did not go hard enough. So it's in uncanny valley between true cell-shading and luxe 3D.
They should have gone cell-shaded if that's what they wanted.
"Uncanny valley" - spot on! It sits right in the middle, looking as it lacks artistic direction and visually it reads neither 3D nor 2D nor watercolor.
That was really informative and is way better than 90% of the content on this site covering the animation of wish :)
Hey thank you, I appreciate you checking this out! It’s difficult to have a nuanced conversation about this movie without a brigade of people dunking on this movie. Like yes I know it’s not the best, that’s why I’m trying to analyze what happened. Anyway, thanks for the comment!
@@NoTheRobot Ur welcome! I also love learning about animation (aiming to be a storyboard artist someday).
But aside from that I joined the wish bandwagon late and I actually thought the animation was alright. Not bad at all in terms of disney. I think the writing, corperate meddling and the whole environment around the movie ruined a lot of the charm this COULD have. I also love the optimistic addition at the end, it didn't feel like it was added in last minute but it felt like something that nobody's talked about. Sorry if im rambling I just thought this was awesome
As an animator as well, wish's only sin is being very bland looking in color in a lot of scenes, and the characters being kinda flat (and i mean in texture)
It’s a huge shame that the movie was rushed because it should have been better.
It needed another year of production; it should've been released in 2024.
@@GuineaPig361 Yes and they should have kept the great ideas and they should have made the 7 dwarfs appear in the movie and make the characters be the characters instead of just being sad excuses for references.
@@GuineaPig361 It doesn’t feel like an anniversary movie at all.
i like the nuanced view of the movie. i honestly didn't think it looked that bad when it first came out, especially when people were complaining about the "animation", so hearing that the ANIMATION itself isn't bad makes sense
I don't think anyone believed the _visuals_ were made by AI, that's just stupid. AI can't be this consistent yet. What people are accusing it of is being _written_ by AI, which I wholeheartedly believe.
Maybe it would've looked less cheap if they had leaned more into the watercolor aesthetic. They could've mixed 2d and 3d and added brush strokes or something. Similiar to the beginning of Across the Spiderverse.
The animation style is not a problem. The problem with Disney the last several years is style over substance. The movies look great but often have no soul.
That’s my main problem with this! I can’t watch animation that’s useless aesthetically as long as the characters and story actually resonate. No soul!
But Wish does look fake and theatrical due to 3D models on 2D backgrounds and Little Mermaid does reach uncanny valley
Personally, i find the idea of not simulated magic effects it's brillant, it perfectli matches with the feel of traditional animation that also puss in boots and spiderman are triyng to replicate.
I don't think that the absence of motion blur it's an issue, also spiderman across the spiderverse didn't have it.
I think that the main issue is the lighting: while the other 2 films keep a 2d look, they still have global illumination, the lighting is still realistic. In wish i don't see global illumination or ambient occlusion, the light doesn't bounce, there are no shadows. I know that they want a low contrast, but i think you can keep a low contrast look even if the scene isn't illuminated uniformly.
This type of lightning and this pipeline makes the result look like a 3d software preview. There's a scene in the trailer at 0:26 that looks almost like blender's modelling viewport.
Having a watercolor look does not imply to remove the illumination. They should have changed the post processing effects, instead of the lighting. Whithout global illumination everything is fake and soulsess
i'm really happy with the note you ended on about how this shows their recognition of different styles other than just photo realism styles on the big screen!! yayyy
Always trying to look on the bright side😊
What do you think of the reports coming from Disney animators who have been saying Disney executives interferes with the film’s development?
Considering the film is written by a Disney exec, I believe it
Incredibly refreshing to see someone genuinely analyzing the movie instead of just hopping on the hate bandwagon
I do agree that saying the animation is bad is an exaggeration. I personally don't even think the randering is bad, or it looks unfinished. it does look odd because it is not even 3D nor 2D. When we see animations like The Bad Guys, Spiderverse, arcane, we can see it is 3D animation, with a coat of paint that looks like tradicional and 2D animation. Wish looks like it was stuck in the middle, and even thought I know the team did their best, it looks like they didn't bother to give an extra spark
also, I see what you are trying to do, but saying they took a risk with this movie is not right either. if anything, they hold on everything that worked in the past 10 years and throwed references from the past 100 years. They took more risks in the concept art: a Romance that it was doomed to fail between Asha and Star boy, a villain couple, bringing back 2D animation. Those were risks they thought of making but decided not to.
Yes we wanted a original story from Disney, we also wanted the come back of fun and evil villains. but that is not what we got. we got a studio trying to give us what the public wanted but not being able to reach a compromise with what they want.
I don't think there is nothing to celebrate, not even as animators fans. at least not from Disney.
maybe instead of just turning off motion blur, they should have also gone hard on the squash and stretch and smear frames. Instead of just having the exact same animation style of tv animation, it would've been its own unique style. or y'know, they could've just made it 2D.
I get it supposed to look watercolored, but they should have made really itterated on the look before going into production, because anyone could tell you this does not look as good as it could look. I guess since its 3D the shaders were made during production, and maybe the rendering/shaders department ran into issues and couldn't iterate further?
A feeling I get out of this is that Disney isn't exactly "Disney" anymore. Through the last of their 2D productions, "Disney" defined traditional animation: 12 principles, polished drawings, smooth keyframes in service of a fairy tale. There were different periods to that where the processes changed, but Disney style as a kind of standard-setter came up all the time when comparing traditional animation versus limited animation. Fans of limited animation had to make the case for that aesthetic being more than just "cheap", that an approach based primarily around strong storyboarding could be more visually compelling than just showing a lot of frames of motion.
However, to this day, there's a large audience that still wants "Disney", traditional Disney, with everything as smooth as possible. And I think current Disney is caught in between knowing they have that audience, but also that the industry is doing other things now and they should try to stay current. And whichever way they take their aesthetic, they'll be damned for it.
Algorithm brought me here, and honestly hearing it from an animator's perspective was very interesting! As you mentioned, the film needed the audience to have any kind of animation knowledge, and I imagine most of the audience does not. I personally would have wanted to see more distinctive styles of animators themselves, such as the Milt Kahl head swaggle, which is unfortunately hard to replicate fram what I've heard. If they wanted to pay homage to their animation legacy I feel like adding distinct and classic Disney animator's trademark styles would have been a better move. This is all coming from someone who has not watched Wish so I don't know if any of that is present.
All of this word wall is to say this wan an enjoyable and informative video! Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
This is a really interesting video and interesting to get an animators point of view. Just a side note though; the background music is a lil too loud and its kind of distracting.
Good to know, I’ll make sure to lower it going forward. Thank you for the feedback!
@@NoTheRobot thank you 😊
Idk, I think you're giving Wish too much credit.
For one, you can’t possibly convince me the star was like that because it was inspired by the animation ball, rather than because it was easier to animate it that way (vs 2D) and it can be turned into a marketable plushie.
Even with the set being evenly lit, my issue is that there is so little contrast between things in the foreground and background. In many shots, the overall tone of a character that is the focus of the shot is almost exactly the same as assets in the background or in a matte painting. Even if you're going for the "2D watercolor look", artists always created some contrast between foreground and background objects so that characters would "pop" and there was some depth to the scene. Like literally just up the saturation and contrast of tones of the characters and this movie would be so much better visually.
Disney (as a studio) invented the multiplane camera, they KNEW how to make different layers in background and characters since Bambi (who has absolutelly beautiful background art and lighting technique).
This one just looks flat and every space feels claustrophobic.
I think when it comes down to it, the animation is definitely good, but it didn’t suit the movie or the backgrounds
There was definitely a disconnect between the animation style and the aesthetic that they tried to go for. They took a risk, and not all risks pay off, but I would rather see them experiment with the art style then produce yet another photorealistic animation that looks like Frozen.
As an animator, I disagree about the animation being good. Many of the performances were pretty pedestrian. I watched it with some animator friends and we groaned out loud every time a character did a 'W' pose or used a point, some extremely basic acting choices (often seen in TV animation too!). We also caught some suspiciously repetitive beats, even across neighbouring shots! I know the anim team had extremely limited time to complete the show, so i can't blame them for going with these basic choices, that's on the execs. But I can still say the animation performances were generally...pretty subpar for a Disney movie, and supposedly the best animators in the world.
all that on top of the horrendous rendering and lighting style choices, poor dialogue, and the unmemorable songs. Thanks for this video though, I think you really gave a good overview of why someone not versed in the industry would be put off by the film!
Came from the short, and really liked this. Love your video. Keep it up!
Thanks for making your way over here!😁✌️
@@NoTheRobot thanks for sharing a great perspective! It encapsulated some of my feelings I had but didn't really understand I had? If that makes sense? I never got the hate for the look, I thought it was interesting and a cool way to try and capture the old style with the new 3D animation approach Disney takes. I have little kids and so we've been watching old and new favourites as a family for a while now, and the visuals capture, imo, the essence of the old and new together really well.
There's still some level of awkwardness that I couldn't put my finger on, aside from writing which I really disliked, and I think it is a bit of that preconceived notions bit you identified.
All this said I think the fact we're revisiting so many films as a family, the preconceptions as you point out weren't as big a hurdle but just something in the back of my head I couldn't put words to. But knowing that, and rewatching clips, I think it's easier to set that inherent bias aside and look at it with fresh eyes.
I think, if the film was written better, and if they had been able to somehow clip the modern expectations of 3D animated film off somehow (in the narrative maybe? I don't know) then it could have helped.
I think the idea and the love letter to animation and it's evolution as you point out was good idea, but the execution is definitely lacking. But like you said, taking a chance and failing is better than by the numbers remakes and rehashes. I for one would prefer one of these efforts every couple years on the film roadmap instead of so many live action/animated remakes as often as they are.
@@NoTheRobotdefinitely do more shorts. They drive people to channels like you wouldn't believe.
From one (aspiring) animator to another, This was a very great video. I look forward to your VR film!!
IMO the movie overall really felt rushed. Animation of main characters in itself was great, no doubt, although the absence of motion blur in itself was weird. But as soon as you look at the backgrounds, they are really inanimated : characters in the village dance scene all follow the exact same movements, in an orderly grid, and then just stop moving at all, while the action keeps on going.
Lighting is not only plain, it's also glitchy, in quite a noticeable manner !
The environment lacks developement, and we have thus little connection to it.
And the story moves waaay too fast, too.
Asha's arc feels OK though, she gets what she deserves, and not what she wants at the very beginning.
Just because it was intentional doesn't mean it wasn't bad or ugly, you can intend to make something that looks ugly, it doesn't stop being ugly because it was the intended objective.
I also disagree heavily on the star, cheap marketable plushy is the vibe it gives, the human Star character might've been more interesting for the dialogue, and looked cooler
my brain couldnt quite grasp that it was 3D, because of the- dare i say- flat colors and little shading in the clothes folds, and it hurt me to look at. likely just me, but still
oh man! I absolutely love your views on all of this. I'd love to be able to chat with you more about stuff like this, sort of a short-ish interview at some point, as I am extremely passionate about films and am aspiring to make films myself, specifically animated ones. I'd love to hear more about your project and i'll be snooping around for news on it. Thank you for being here and making this stuff, it helps me a lot when it comes to bringing stuff up like this in conversations, and I love your technical take on all of it.
For all the work that went into the animating the characters and movement, and all the little callbacks - Disney unfortunately keeps sticking to the most uninspired character designs that only get blander with time. The other movies mentioned here experiment with bold, colours, exaggerated and eyecatching styles, while this one looks like Frozen 5
The more I think about animation, the more I want to get into it. My only block is patience and fear of it being too difficult, but I really REALLY want to get into it.
In some scenes it also looks a lot like that cell shaded Prince of Persia Game because of the use of fake outlines and, like you said, the flat colors with almost no dark shadows.
i can't really agree because although some scenes are expressive and well-animated, if you look closer especially at background characters, certain animations are pretty poorly done and snappy, and i'd argue the animation of shadows & such is part of animation. i mean i've literally seen ads for merge mansion knock offs that have just as good of animation if not better-looking than Wish. saying "but disney good. look at these fee instances where all the money in the world got us some well animated scenes" and "well they were going for a certain look people just think it looks cheap bc it looks like tv" doesn't really cut it. watercolor is an inherently blurry art style, so for one, the lack of smudging or blurring is a set back rather than a good intention. if they were fixated on the animation style of their older films, straight up going for 2d or those 3d styles that replicate 2d would've been far cry a better than "if we take out all the good parts of the animation, but keep the style the same, and makr the coloring slightly more watercolor-like, that'll be good" nah
the problem isn't "wish took risks that didn't pay off" the problem is "wish was unwilling to take risks so they only changed minor details that made it look like dogshit and that didn't pay off"
It's kind of ironic because the actual legacy of Disney is to tell good and entertaining stories for the whole family, but they were so wrapped up in their narcissism that they wanted to see who could have the most clever reference instead of having the most important reference a good story that touches the heart
Great video, appreciate your perspective.
As an animator myself... the final product looks incomplete, I wish Disney knew they are Disney and could make a 2D department again or work with other studios rather than keep trying to replicate 2D instead of doing it. I love Spiderverse, Puss and Boots, Bad Guys, etc, but it doesn't look as Disney is trying to do the same thing when it mimics 2D in recent years. And as a story lover, not to be rude, just my opinion, but I personally wouldn't applaud changing a character that could be developed with an original story for a marketable ball for the excuse of the bouncing ball, there are so many more ways to honor animation by how a character behaves and moves, they could have done so much more for this character than making him a ball to honor animation, like I imagine if he had a lot of smears if he moved floting by one side to another (the fact he is a special character could make the excuse to not make him look as the other water color characters if that was the issue), having him smoothly floating with satisfactory follow-throughs remainders of the classical Disney films, giving him that softness, make him a show of the 12 principles of animation, more than any other character, he could have more extreme expressions, etc, he is not a human, he could be more ethereal, his original story sounded very interesting and unique. Honestly, I repeat what I said in my other comment, is quite devastating imagining Disney, of all studios, never doing a 2D film ever again and just accepting 2D animation is dead for them when don't come to shows. I don't blame the animators working in the film.
I get why the animation and shading are like this, but when I saw a compilation of Disney movies, I thought for a quick second they used incomplete footage when Wish came up 💀
Thank you! I've never been able to put my finger on WHY i thought the art style looked somewhat 'flat' but you've explained it so well in the association with tv animation!
my expectations were so extremely low that I found the movie generally okay. The art is pretty and the animation is great though.
YES DUDE!!!!!!!! I haven't seen Wish yet but that's amazing to see how studios not considering their modern audiences' biases are going to suffer. Context is key yet again! From what I can see here Wish looks gorgeous, it's too bad people are automatically assuming AI, but it's even worse that the characters/story don't hold up traditional filmmaking standards. Even something made on post-it notes can be emotionally captivating if done correctly.
One of my favorite bits that I noticed when watching this was how with the forest, they managed to capture the style of how they filmed the background in Bambi.
I love the popular consensus, of how a movie that takes absolutely no risks and end up flopping.
I thought this ever since the first trailer came out. I get the effect they’re going for with the harsher lines and less shading, it definitely looks like an homage to 2d animation. But they unintentionally made it look cheaply made. They should’ve done either the 3d style they’ve developed over the years or gone back fully to 2d, not tried to mash them together. They could’ve even done a combo and had certain scenes animated in 2d like how they did during “Your Welcome” in Moana.
i love your balance and positivity!
Thank you!🙏
I think the main issue with Wish is definitely its writing, and the animation is a more tangible thing to target for people that hasn't seen the film. The animation itself, on a technical level, is pretty good. Agree with a lot of what you said though I think there are ways to make the animation seem less cheap while keeping the watercolor story book aesthetic. The main thing is more smear frames in place of motion blur. It'd help sell cartoonier movement without banking on photorealistic techniques that'd ruin the illusion. I also think the backgrounds could have had more contrast to them since watercolor paintings can have a lot of depth but Wish's backgrounds look more like billboards. Even on the character models you could do a stylistic shading method kind of like Arcane did with its combination of cell shading and painted shadows. Maybe some sort of shading engine to simulated color bleed or pigment layering that you see in a lot of watercolor paintings instead of the fairly flat and subtle shadows they used.
But yeah, this doesn't fix the film. The plot is still confusing, Magnifico was full of wasted potential, the magic is unexplored, the songs range from passably catchy to downright bad, and the thing felt both bloated and boring. I think people saying the script or songwriting feels like AI is more an issue of it feeling very jumbled and manufactured, feeling kind of stitched together, likely due to executive interference. Did they use AI? Maybe, I don't know, I wasn't in the writer's room. The animation though, that's not AI. It's a bunch of talented people caught in the crossfire of poor management and chaotic deadlines that ended with a murky vision of something that could have been really fun and interesting. But that's just me.
If they wanted to celebrate 100th anniversary why not make an actual movie about mickey for once, like a comedy movie about mickey, donald, and goofy. It would have been a good chance to actually make a decent project with their main characters for once.
I feel like the problem when you are making a ton of references to other movies, is you have to be careful that your audiences arent just left thinking, yeah I wish I was watching literally any of those works right now.
Honestly the main gripe has nothing to do with the animation (but the way clothes warp like rubber instead of fold bothers me a lot), the writing bugs the hell out of me.
i think the way some of the lyrics were written seem very redundant and inhuman. theres no chance in hell disney would ever use ai like that, but the fact that something like 'i let you live here for free; and i don't even charge you rent' was in the final cut is odd. the words sound awkward with no flow, or a flow that sounds clunky, unnatural, and definitely not the standard disney sets for it's music in general.
it genuinely sounds like it could be an ai output, and that says something equally interesting and disappointing about this move in general. it makes me wonder what sort of groupthink or corporate overreach happened where this was not only a song in a major release, but the main one i've seen advertised by disney media.
I know this isn't your area of expertise, and it certainly isn't mine, but it's been stuck in my mind for a while, wondering exactly what they were thinking with any of this. it feels utterly baffling to me, as someone outside the industry.
It’s not an AI output because ChatGPT was not invented when they wrote the script or the songs. I know this because animated films take up to seven years to make, and everything would’ve had to be written between 2020 and 2021 for their pipeline to be able to start production on this movie. These movies don’t take a year or two to make.
@@NoTheRobot i was agreeing with the fact it's just not possible it was ai written, im just saying it's already damning if theres so many people who think it might be. i fully agree with you here.
I think the problem with the look of the movie is that they didn’t commit ENOUGH to the watercolor storybook style. Because the shape design of all the people and environments looks exactly like all the other main Disney Animations in the last 15 years, the flat lighting doesn’t read as “watercolor” it reads as “Disney movie with cheap animation”. There is no reason a watercolor style needs to look cheap if they actually pushed the uniqueness of the designs.
Honestly I thought the "made by AI" bit mainly applied to the writing. The animation's pretty gorgeous, all things considered.
Thank you for actually pouring research into this video instead of pulling everything from assumptions. There's way too much misinformation spread around this film because of people's bias against Disney, instead of looking into the core root of the film's problems which honestly had less to do with Disney's micromanagement but of the creative team's confusion of what exactly the film should be: a tribute to Walt Disney Animation or its own thing?
Wasn't just due to the usual disney micromanagement but because of a back and forth confusion with the creative team and producers of what exactly the film should be
Thank you for appreciating this, it’s so easy to dunk on this movie for clout without actually giving any helpful critiques or analyzing this film objectively. It was very hard to remain neutral, but defaulting to “Disney bad” is a very tired argument. I agree though, it was definitely more due to the fact that the team had little direction about what kind of movie they were making
couldn't concentrate on the video, your plant is just too gorgeous!
This is a super interesting video! I had thought that something looked a little weird about the clips I'd seen, but since I couldn't really put my finger on it I assumed I was just being influenced by the negative hype. But something about the characters' movements just seems almost robotic.
Great observation synopsis of this movie, I had mixed feelings watching it, and you nailed some explanations I couldnt quite put my finger on.
Side note, I struggled a bit with the music volume on your video, made it hard to hear you clearly
Excellent explanation, Thankyou.
While I do want movies to experiment with different styles it doesn't mean they are immune from criticism when it fails to impress
Mightve been cool to do a fairy tale story set in roughly 1950s-2023 maybe based around an animator or someone completely different following their dreams or something to make it feel different to everything theyve done recently, and maybe more worthy of the disney100. Like i dont think fairy tales have to be set in some olden time fantasy world and im not saying to be like enchanted, im saying be more like paperman etc and maybe couldve met characters that appear like inspirations for the fairy tales e.g. they meet a modern cinderella like character who is downtrodden and working hard and even though she is surrounded by negativity she retains her hopes and dreams and passes this onto the character. Then they move on the next one and so on.
My main issues with the look of the film:
1. The colors look washed-out in a lot of the scenes, almost as if the saturation slider was turned down for normal scenes and turned back up for others. While changes in color saturation are a useful tool for visual storytelling, it makes most of the movie look bland
2. It wouldn't shock me that there are a lot of shots that did not fully finish rendering given the reason you mentioned that "Disney realized the 100th anniversary was coming up and they needed a movie to celebrate it"
3. As part of it possibly being rushed, I understand why 2D animation wasn't used as that would have taken longer than the 3D animation we got. I also have heard that the animators at Disney now don't have the skillset necessary for high-quality 2D animation, but that might just be a rumor. Regardless, it would have been a much better idea to focus on 2D animation for Wish, especially since more than half of Disney's history as an animation company has revolved around 2D animation
I understand that there's a reluctance to use 2d animation on films today, but is there a reason they couldn't have used similar techniques to those that video games use to make a 3d environment look 2d for that water colour and story book look they were going for, similar to what Dragon Ball FighterZ - to give one of the more successful examples at replicating 2d animation with 3d models I can think of - uses?
Because I've seen 2d aesthetics replicated with 3d animation a lot within video games, sometimes more successfully than others (and sometimes similar techniques used for a not-quite-2d look)
Looking at the end result it feels like they didn't commit to this storybook, watercolour, aesthetic they were apparently going for enough, even within the limitations on achieving that 3d animation imposes (and I don't think you even need an entirely 2d animation process to achieve that aesthetic, I'd argue the 2013 commercial The Bear and the Hare also hits a 'story book come to life' aesthetic with it's combination of cel-animation and stop motion within physical, 3d, sets)
Just watched this on TT and had to come find the YT video.
Thanks for adding another view to this video too! 🙏
Absolutely gread analysis! Only thing, I feel the 'Watercolour look caused the flat look' is short sighted. Watercolour can be very rich in saturation and contrast and many projects have previously shown there is nothing stopping this from carrying over to 3D. High level art direction or possibly management have decided against it.They also decided against any paper structures, ink splots etc. while committing to a rather high framerate. So, it's not the idea, it is once again the execution that hurt the look there. Knowing what the LookDev team is capable of at the studio, I am sure they were just as disappointed to not go all out as we are.
I believe one of the ways that made it feel more cheap is that they didnt use smears and other techniques to their fullest extent to compensate for that loss of motion blur, spiderverse and puss used these when the animation wasnt using motion blur on 2s, and even on 1s when the motion was made each frame by hand and not using curves. Smears in general i feel should be used in any highly stylized movie (that being the style isnt hyper realism) as you can feel the art and creativity in each smear that haappens
Disnet used to have beautiful animation, and excellent writers and songs. So many of brilliant minds behind Disney are dead, or gone. I love 2-D animation, and I'm really enjoying that other artists are getting their work out there
Thank you for the unique perspective. In watching the previews I was wondering why it seemed they didn’t put any animated effort into a movie they were trying so hard to promote, especially for Disneys 100th. I’ve not seen it yet, though I’ve heard many (mostly negative) critiques (and as these critiques relate mostly to plot line and how the characters handle themselves/development… I now only want to see it to decide for myself rather than be excited to see a Disney film.).
thank you so much for this video! As someone who's trying to dip their toes in animation, it's really interesting to hear a professional's opinion on movies like Wish.
THE BACKGROUNDS were one of the technical higlights, and if you think about, it can technically work by adding hand drawn animated characters, makes sense?
I don’t think people blame the animators for not pouring their soul on this project, I think everyone rightfully blame the awfully bad art direction.
Making it in a style that is used to cut costs is effectively a cost-cutting decision.