The Master Class taught by Mexican animator Cruz Contreras, “Animation after Spider-Verse,” addressed the details of the technology used in Spider-Man: Through the Spider-Verse and its revolutionary impact on the animation industry.
Carlos Gutiérrez, director of Day of the Dead (2019), was in charge of formulating the questions addressed to Cruz, who shared that “each department has a series of tools that they had to adapt just to be able to bring Spider-Verse to the screen,” tools that are patented by Sony and are transferable for the creation of more of their films.
The workflow established at Sony for other feature films did not work with this sequel to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018). Cruz said that Phil Lord, one of the directors, said “that's great, because it means we are doing something new.”
“Spider-Verse is this way of telling studios (that) it's okay to take risks, it's okay to do crazy things, you don't have to fall into the norm,” said the animator.
The art design of this feature film is inspired by comics and can be seen in the dialogue boxes; in the imitation of chromatic aberration that occurs due to printing errors; in textures that replicate the halftone effect, a printing technique in which dot patterns create images; in the use of hatching lines, a shading technique that is based on the creation of parallel lines very close to each other; in the bit lines, lines used to represent the outline and details of the characters; in smirs, illusions of movement based on cartoons such as Looney Tunes and that replace traditional motion blur; among other elements.
To define the visual style of Pavitr Prabhakar's character, Indian comics were taken into account, with their thick outlines. On the other hand, the martial art kalaripayattu was used as a basis for its movements. In the case of Hobie Brown, they used different frame rates for his animation, on the body it was at 3 fps, on the vest at 3 fps but with a delay of 1 fps or 2 fps, on his guitar at 4 fps and on the outline at 2 fps.
Some films that have taken inspiration from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse are Bad Guys (2022) and the Oscar-nominated The Mitchell Family vs. The Machines (2021) and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022).
Cruz mentioned that in the future releases of Nimona (2023), Ninja Turtles: Mutant Chaos (2023) and Wish (2023) it will also be possible to continue seeing this influence.
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