Into the Spider-Verse’s legacy in American animation

By James On Jun 5, 2023

When Polygon asked Januel Mercado, co-director of Puss in Boots: The Last Wishabout animation that inspired the visual look of his DreamWorks movie, he had a simple answer: “Sure Spider verse.” The film’s evocative oil painting style bears no resemblance to the Shrek franchise from which the film sprang. But it doesn’t just give an existing series a makeover. Like so many American animated films released in recent years, The last wish deviates from the aesthetic that defined American animation for decades, and moves towards a more impressionistic and dynamic design.

And for that we have Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse to thank.

In 2018, the first Spider-Verse movie redefined not only blockbuster superhero movies (and if you want to be specific, Spider-Man movies), but also American animation as a whole. The stylized approach celebrates animation as a medium that can do it all. It didn’t just show the audience some animated movies could be It also encouraged directors and animators to push the boundaries of accepted aesthetics and take a chance on more stylized and personal art.

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

Image: DreamWorks

mr. Shark, mr. Wolf, mr. Pirana, mr. Snake (Marc Maron) in costume and surrounded by cops in The Bad Guys — *The bad guys*

For most of the history of American animation, studios have copied past successes. The Disney branding defined cartoons for decades, and when Pixar started releasing movies, it established a set of CG standards that everyone else aspired to. After a final wave of traditional cel animation, CG became the norm in the United States. And while technology has revolutionized animation from the days of Toy Story until 2022 Light year, the pursuit of realism became the stylistic norm. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but just as it became tiresome to see other studios copy Disney’s musical formula in the post-Renaissance era, seeing the same visual style over and over again – not just for audiences, can be tiring. but also for the public. but for the animators who make these movies.

“I find [the long-standing style]… ‘boring’ is probably an exaggeration, but I want to see something different,” says The bad guys director Pierre Perifel. “Honestly, I’m not the only one. […] You can see that the trend is shifting a bit.”

“We are in this place where so much has been conquered [in terms of realism]. Now it’s more about, how do you use it? So it’s not like we have to make a completely new tool. It’s a bit more: Oh, but can’t I actually make it look realistic?says Enrico Casarosa, director of Pixar’s Luke.

Luca and Alberto look out at night on a city across the water — *Luke*

A girl in a red jacket and blue skirt stands on a mountain surrounded by five boys in matching orange shirts with purple clouds in the background. — *To blush*

When it came to that 2020 sea monster movie, animating water provided an interesting scenario. For a long time, animators coveted the ability to animate photorealistic water – rendering convincing, believable textures was the final goal. But Casarosa wanted more warmth and expression for the water in his film: “The computer wants to make a nice splash of water that contains every drop. And we’re like No, I’d like it to be a nice line that’s simple and poetic.”

“There’s just something tactile that you feel is missing from a lot of CG animation,” To blush says director Domee Shi. “When it came to shade of clothes or skin textures [in Turning Red]there was just a little more of an artistic touch to it.”

Not every animator out there tries to break free from veracity. The one from last summer The sea beast, for example, definitely leans towards the realism side, especially when it comes to the crashing ocean waves. But now American directors have more choice – a choice they weren’t allowed to make before In the Spider-Verse proved that the public was hungry for stylistic experimentation.

The sun sets over a rugged northern winter landscape, as seen in Klaus — *Klaus*

Indeed, part of the long-standing limitations they faced stemmed from the physical limitations of what computers could display, but part of it was simply what studio executives felt was worth investing in. While American animation has stuck to one style for the past 20 years, international studios aren’t bound by those expectations. Animators around the world were pushing the boundaries of what CG could be, fleshing out the hand-drawn animation that major American studios had abandoned. However, aside from a single Studio Ghibli movie, the majority of American audiences have been notoriously indifferent to foreign animation.

In the Spider-Verse wasn’t the first movie to reject the Pixar-influenced style of CG animation, but it was the first with such a distinct look that really reached American audiences, achieving widespread critical success, and especially for studio heads, To earn a lot of money. The door opened for animators to take a chance on something new and different, and they were eager to experiment. Realism became an option, not the default.

In the Spider-Versethe sequel, Spider-Man: About the Spider-Verse, pushes the visual stylization of the first film even further, mixing up dozens of different styles, from the dripping watercolor washes of Gwen Stacy’s word to the cut-out collages that make up Spider-Punk. Every moment of the movie is a visual feast, brimming with possibilities that will likely continue to inspire studio animators.

“I think maybe we’ve fallen into a bit of a standardized version of CGI, which it doesn’t have to be,” Klaus director Sergio Pablos told Polygon in 2019. “It’s good to see things like Spider versefor example by pushing that medium. Because to me every movie should be an attempt to do something different.”