Animators React to ARCANE Bad & Great Cartoons

the motion feels very CG but like the look is very hand-painted it's really cool to see how far they're pushing the poses and not forgetting depth I love the shot of her just kicking and it just like shakes her gun oh yeah yeah I really got to see the show like watching all of this I'm just like oh it's so good huge thanks to keeps for sponsoring today's episode Stick Around to the end to get 50 off the best products to keep the hair that you have hey welcome back to another episode of animators react to the first one of the year we've got Alex snow on the couch for the first time no longer those fold up chairs welcome back man good to be here yeah I'm excited it's way more comfy so Alex just to brief anyone who may not know who you are tell us a little bit about yourself uh I'm an animator I'm working at Disney just finished on a contos Utopia plus and now I'm on Strange World the next film coming out in November been busy it's a strange world you can't just say the words back you can't just say the words back you can say whatever you want you have to put a little twist on them yep so there's a show on Netflix called Arcane this is one of the most heavily requested things for us to look at and why should we watch this oh a million reasons it's doing a lot that's never happened before the quality is at another level the style is a whole new thing also a huge difference is it's a series it's essentially like four movies the motion feels very CG but like the look is very hand-painted it's just yeah it's a really cool blend while you're feeling like it's hand painted and it's somewhere between 2D and 3D is it is both through texturing and also the 2D effects you're seeing there all the major effects are 2D there's some CG effects from what I understand there's about five people on the team I I know some of them and they're all amazing for the effects okay so there's five 2D animators from what I understand as at least the main team for all the 2D effects across the whole series when you say the 2D effects you're specifically referring to like a little like Explorer yeah like look at her gloves kind of yeah a little smoke coming out yeah the smoke coming out that's all 2D composited onto the CG so it says hand-drawn elements completely hand-drawn I would say 98 of the effects are hand-drawn so all these green trails and little bits and shock waves all that is 2D the CG animators did like put something in there for some scenes to give a guide to the 2D and also there are 2D effects kind of figured out and plan for in the storyboard phase but their storyboards are really specific and signed off on and they're really going off that it doesn't move much the budget was a lot but it's not even close to what it costs to make like a Disney movie or a DreamWorks movie it's doing that by spending all its money on two teams this doesn't work in the current pipeline of most Studios what's interesting from what I understand from their team is those painters are basically responsible for everything so whether it's the everything yeah the textures on the characters the textures on the backgrounds a lot of those backgrounds are not CG at all they're just composite or flat so the backgrounds are effectively painted back on this for a lot of traditional animation style you painted a picture and that's it to an extent yeah but then it's taking it to that next level of like multi-plane where like you'll see Riot trailers where it's just like a character with a cape flowing or whatever it's like an ad for the card game or whatever and they're warping the 2D in a way that the camera moves just a little bit and then they're also modeling based off the painting and projecting that on as well the projection mapping aspect of this this is really cool because you can have the high quality artwork but then also combine that with a moving digital camera that geometry now exists in 3D space like we're talking about and then you can move that digital camera so then you get like that sort of perspective shift on a 2D image making it look three-dimensional there's also still the ability to light on top of those projected textures say you do this couch right you might not get all these little bumps and crevices but it will warp around this so you'll see a mixture of all three where a corner of a room with molding on the bottom the shadow is just flat against the molding but it does warp around the corner of the room because they're projecting the textures that make it feel like the molding is there it's almost like an old video game exactly where it's like you're faking the detail because it's in the background yeah it's like there's no displacement map right the interesting thing about Arcane and from what I can understand is there's very little actual lighting being done on this show really so there's not really a lighting department from what I heard so all of the lighting is coming from the actual painting or a decent amount of it because I am seeing some specular highlight detail on their shoulder pads and whatnot as they're moving and catching those light highlights this is why this is done so well it's really hard to pinpoint when certain things are being used because I think they're using all of them so Disney or DreamWorks or Pixar you're having the eyes light different than the face so that they are never too dark because that's what you're connecting to even this is like a intense lighting setup you guys got here and this is nothing compared to CG where you have to pretend that it's natural light but also get everything exactly the way you want it and that's the beauty of Animation Beyond making a cartoony making it this and that you get it to be exactly what you want so when you have CG animation you know the computer is basically automatically doing a lot of the lighting the shading you know all that kind of stuff for you right yeah you just you kind of Define things I have a light here and I want to cast this kind of Shadows to be this color yeah it's like okay so the surface of the character will be like this the shadow will be here whereas here you're bringing back the artist so the artist is going I want to put a shadow here and I want to put a highlight here so I'm going to take my literally my paintbrush digital paintbrush and go and like put the colors down the colors I want at the values I want and there's still some CG happening where the computer is also going I'm also going to add some lighting here just to save you some time and I'll do a little perspective shift here to save the time I'm having to redraw that but you're kind of blending the two worlds together which brings back almost like the slightly surreal not quite yeah realistic version of light that we all find so endearing when we look at paintings and hand-drawn animations there's a saying in art color doesn't matter as much it's all about the light values if you can make a painting or some sort of photo or image work using nothing but just black and white values you could throw any color in there and it's not going to matter because the thing that matters most are those light values but they're working really economical I mean there's another fight scene where Vai fights the cyborg arm Soldier foreign the arm of the cyborg character it has like two flaps here that go like this and then the shoulder pad sometimes does that and then other than that the arm stretches that's it that's the only thing in the rig I think people when they're like oh I gotta model this crazy mechanical thing it's a robot arm I want it interesting like Megatron and transforming and then you look at this and you watch it and it feels like that I did see that little bicep thing twist a little bit but again that like enforces what you're saying though it's very simple instead of having a whole bunch of stuff going around it's like the cylinder just goes yeah you'll see a shot here where she grabs her arm and punches Up Normally like you'd see that her hand shouldn't be in frame right they're bringing the hand in and cranking that arm back so that you can see the hand for just two frames and the spacing is really close so you catch it coming into frame and then you're able to do this big smear frame also if you put a marker like where that fist is the elbow is not at the same point either because that'll give it like a like a sticky feel the animator is making sure you see it it's like antic and then popping up so with an antic what I mean by that is anticipation so that's a big thing in animation for storytelling and for natural motion natural motion generally you antic everything and the antic is relative to the expectation so if I move here here here you know where I'm going right if I'm about to slap Nico and I'm doing it for real uh no you know I wouldn't want to be the Storyteller we're both sitting here and then all of a sudden unless you want it to be like the Hulk shot and even that it has a little bit of an antic right before if the storytelling was slapping Nico and it was like really big the faster I want that slap to be probably the bigger antic like Looney Tunes like the more here I go the more you can just zip off yeah like you can literally and then literally just like turn the layer off Neo taking off the Matrix boom and one frame is gone 100 but if he just was like hey everyone oh wait what happened as an audience it's not telling the story of course physics and things like that and you're pretending that he can do that yeah so the bigger anticipation also the more believable it is because you're going oh you need a lot of force the antic is also a storytelling moment so it's saying here I come and then oh it's easy to follow and you can push the expected return based on that anticipation there's a video it's live action I just thought this was super funny how important it is the money tell me oh wow this is like basically what magicians do yeah I mean this guy's good yeah that's great no this is exactly what you're talking about because he has all of the anticipation for moves that we already know and expect but then he doesn't deliver on it exactly like you don't realize that you're anticipating literally everything all the time so if I'm going like this and then I walk the other way it's also like can be a disappointment foreign [Music] comments leave a comment down below if you got them do you want maybe those comments to be like suggestions as the things we should look at no absolutely not today's comment I want you to just say nice Imagine Dragons okay yeah that means yeah this is definitely not gonna be on YouTube so subscribe to Corridor digital.com let's check this section of the video out foreign my favorite clips in the story The Boxing thing is something her sister does and so this is her older and she's kind of revisiting this and she's kind of doing it in her own very different than her sister way but it's really cool because it's so many things going on but it's easy to follow so it's keeping the movement really smooth the pose is really clear I love the shot of her just kicking and it just like shakes her gun oh yeah yeah you really just read that one pose but because of the jiggle it sells as motion yeah it gives the energy it's really cool to see how far they're pushing the poses and not forgetting depth I think a lot of animators kind of work on this puppet stage where you know we're kind of on right now I'm not moving in a 2d space like this you know there's depth I'm leaning forward I'm coming back depth is so important to Performance and I think it's something Junior animators forget a lot about because they're so focused on what's moving where and the arcs and the principles that they forget they're working in 3D space I tend to really focus on that 3D space when I'm starting to kind of block or start my shot that way I can then Focus through the camera on my poses and get the drawings to be what I want them to be and you can see like hair in this show is such a part of the flow and it's no different than an arms part of what's adding energy and posing and flow to the animation and so it's super important that the animator kind of handle that or at least create kind of like the base for that and then you can always build on top yeah if you're gonna try to like simulate those braids she'd do the kick and be like like flip over and like hit her front and then like just kind of like dangle there as she continues the motion maybe gets stuck around her neck or something so it's like no there has to be intention behind the motion there and so that has to be manually animated so that actually reminds me I've been playing this game called Horizon forbidden West love the game but the main character has like this hair that is really long and it's physically simulated so every time she likes moves or sits down it's like her hair is chaotic all over the place yeah yeah I mean that's definitely the downside to leaning too heavily on Dynamics and the other side is it feels too stiff for not having every fine hair move together it feels like big chunks which is not how long hair necessarily works when it sits on your shoulder it will get fatter it will have some wash to it and some separation it's almost like a lion paw stepping the pressure of that line plus separates your finger dang you're right one nuanced observation about how hair moves yeah I mean everything has the same elements I think it's just how much can you actually dive in your shot with your limited time and build that on top of a performance that's already believable or flows in a way that sells the shot I mean at the end of the day all that matters is a storytelling and you know if two guys shake hands this is all that matters is that does it in a cool way or you know arcs in squat stretch and smears yeah explosions a big anticipation yeah so you have to integrate all these principles into it to build a believability and the style but at the end of the day that's all that matters I really got to see this show like I already knew I wanted to see it but like watching all of this I'm just like oh so good hey guys this is the part where I asked you to subscribe but guess what bookmark this page that's right make this video your home page uh your default load up page if you haven't made this thumbnail your phone lock screen at this point then you've failed us but if you don't want to do that hit subscribe help these guys out and catch us next time so you don't miss some awesome episodes hey hi it's me can you see hey can you see me I'm way down here yeah yeah hi tiny tiny in the image right now but guess what you know what isn't tiny today's sponsor keeps keeps is a subscription service that focuses on making it easier and more affordable for men to treat male pattern baldness online and you might be thinking Jake that's great but where the heck is the show and why are you telling me about this why are you standing in this huge field well the answers to all of those questions I can tell you in a minute but here let me give you a fact okay did you know that two out of three guys will experience some form of male pattern baldness by the time they're 35 I mean hip hip hooray because what do you do to keep the hair that you still have well you got to treat it and the best way to treat it is to use keeps they give you online doctor consultations where you can talk to a doctor get a consultation and a recommendation from them directly about the type of medication that you need and then that medication ships directly to your door every three months which allows you to take more time to do the things that you love and enjoy and not spend time going to the doctor's office to get treated for male pattern baldness super great oh and another way that they help you do this is they give you 24 7 access to your doctor through a great online doctor messaging system which also allows you to track your progress you hit them up you get the information that you need you move on with your life it's it's actually pretty genius and the last thing that keeps does is they give you generic versions of FDA approved medications which not only allows you to keep the hair that you have but also allows you to keep money because you're not spending unnecessary amounts of money on name brand drugs no you're getting the exact same drug just the generic version isn't that nice gosh these guys are so nice if you are experiencing some form of male pattern baldness and you want to treat it keeps is a great way to do it they've got hundreds of thousands of men who already trusted they've got a bunch of great reviews online and they can give you 50 off your first order if you want to get started that's 50 off by going to keeps.com Corridor crew or just click the link in the description below keeps.com Corridor crew so there you have it thank me later or now whatever you want and hey now let's get back to the episode what are those guys reacting to anyway it's definitely not a field Alex thank you so much for coming on the show today this was a huge blast to shoot with you I can't wait to have you on the show again next time absolutely it's always fun coming and I would absolutely love to come back and talk about more animation 2D 3D I really want to make sure we're looking at stuff you guys are interested in you guys should check out Alex's Instagram snowmation and his company's Instagram double plus Productions if you want to see what he is actively working on right now or even if you want to send him a question that's right I'm inviting you to get DMS for everybody no they're welcome I'm always happy to hear questions or help any way I can anyone out there thank you so much for watching we'll see you back here tomorrow tomorrow or you know next hit the next button thanks

Channel: CorridorCrew

Views: 1,436,813

Keywords: react, reaction, vfx artists react, animators react, animation, cartoons, shot breakdown, learn, how to, behind the scenes, arcane, league of legends, new, jinx, anime

Id: 7XQRQR2Ne54

Length: 16min 29sec (989 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 23 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/AutoModerator]

Spoiler Warning: This post contains spoilers from the Arcane episode mentioned in the title, and all that come before it. All discussion of spoilers passed the discussed episode or any lore spoilers will be removed, even if they have been hidden with spoiler syntax.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.