Fusion of comic-book visual language in 3D animation
The cases of Spider Man: Into the Spider Verse
OUTLINE
Definition and Introduction
Background of Comic-book Style
Visual Expression
- Change frame rate
- Abandon motion blur
- Use chromatic dispersion to create depth of field
- Ink lines
- Hand-painted special effects and graffiti
- Shots and scene-switching effect with comic panel
Visual Effects
- Kirby Dots and Halftone
- Glitch Art
- Pop Art
- Cyberpunk
- Exaggerated Perspective
Embrace Imperfection
Houdini
RESEARCH
1 . Definition
Comic book film is one of the performance styles of a film. The performance form of comic book film is a unique comic film style composed of theme, picture, plot and other elements. There are many comic style characteristics: the story is science fiction, fantasy, fresh, dark, the picture style characteristics are obvious, like the comic world, colorful, strong contrast, strong visual impact, often used by the director in highly entertaining business works.
However, with the development of comic films today, the audience is used to the special effects stacking and narrative mode inherent in comic films. On the contrary, special effects have become the norm of comic films. The form of comic films tends to be the same, and the situation of storyline routines is becoming more and more serious. In this case, some filmmakers with keen sense of innovative spirit try to make a breakthrough in form and explore new ways of expression for the creation of comic book films.
As early as 2005, the comic film Sin City, adapted from the famous comic master Frank Miller’s classic comic of the same name, attracted a lot of attention when it was released. The film breaks the Convention in form, boldly uses black and white, high contrast and hard tone pictures, and strives to simulate the sense of form and picture atmosphere of the original comic book, forming a unique and new style of black comic film.
Introduction
Spider Man: Into the Spider Verse, released at the end of 2018, extends the adaptation technique of Sin City. It has proved to be one of the most innovative animated features released in recent times which uses 3D animation combined with more of a 2D aesthetic to bring the story of the latest Spider-Man, Miles Morales, to life. It not only breaks the limitations of the film screen in form, but also strives to restore the scene and atmosphere of the cartoon, so as to be more bold. The film not only won the high box office, but also included the best animated feature film of the 91st Academy Awards and the second best animated feature film of the 91st Academy Awards, The 76th Golden Globe Award for best animated feature film, the 72nd British Film Academy Award for best animated feature film, etc. This is not only the success of comic films, but also a great innovation of post-modern film creation techniques in comic films.
Antitheses
With Into the Spider-Verse, the filmmakers were looking to directly reference comic book panels in telling their story. In some ways, this was the antitheses of much of what Imageworks had been crafting on previous shows, both in terms of animated films and in visual effects, which was photorealism or at least material photorealism. Instead of realism, the film presents a highly designed comic book language where the effects looked artistically designed to fit within the overall comic book aesthetic.
Style
From the beginning, Sony image studio’s goal is to create something new, either to make the audience unable to figure out how to do it, or to never see it. The original intention of ‘Spider-Verse’ is not to make comics into animation, but to make a moving comics which stands out on its own as something new for viewers. Spider-Verse certainly had highly unconventional effects, including ‘glitching’ characters and buildings, a ‘multi-verse’ world, heavily stylised rigid body dynamics, custom sprite systems, 2D-inspired designs, and a need to highlight individual character ‘lines’ on 3D modelled characters.
Evaluation
After using CG technology to realize the basic animation model, through repeated experimental research, this film skillfully explores a kind of experimental style, that is, to manually describe the sense of line and modeling of cartoon into the 2d and 3d animation models of the film.
In the characterization, in order to enhance the character’s comic texture and enrich the character’s facial expression, the film creatively adds hand-painted comic lines to the character’s face and body. In terms of the texture of the screen, in order to give the audience a comic like viewing experience, the creative team creatively added speckles and textures to the film screen, and simulated the ink printing effect in the four-color printing era. In animation design, in order to pay homage to 2d animation and comics, in 3d rendering action, abandoning the fluency of 3d animation action, try to “frame” the dynamic picture, simulate the traditional 2d animation shooting “twos” shooting method, so that the dynamic picture of the film is not so smooth. This sense of non fluency is very similar to the feeling of reading comic books quickly. It does not affect the audience’s viewing experience at all. Instead, it echoes with the theme and music of the film, creating a sense of inexplicable novelty and cool.
Secondly, cartoon dialog box, onomatopoeia, cartoon grid, text effects, wavy lines and other elements appear directly in the processing of sub shot pictures. When these performance techniques that are used to in comic books appear on the film screen, the audience’s viewing experience is refreshed again, which is a bold attempt never seen in the previous comic films. In addition, a large number of special effects such as explosion, crossing, splash, spark and flash appear in the film, which not only carries out comic visual effect processing, but also uses the color contrast effect with very high color saturation, making the picture of the film in the explosion and sudden situation extremely cool and avant-garde. A lot of pop art elements and street art elements can be seen everywhere in the scene design of the film. This experimental picture effect breaks the sensory dimension experience of previous comic films and makes a bold exploration and innovation for the presentation of comic films.
This new attempt is no longer limited to the cartoon content and characters of the film, but let the film ‘caricature’. This strong post-modern style from content to form opens up a new way of thinking for comic adapted films.
2 . Background of comic-book style
The amazing stylistic history of comic books (including the art styles)
The Golden Age (1938-1950)
The Golden Age was truly an idyllic time. There was a clear stylistic distinction between good and evil, and superheroes were nothing more than happy-go-lucky do-gooders that battled and always defeated villains motivated by money or world domination. And that’s exactly why the comics of this age caught like wildfire. They fulfilled every kid’s dream of gaining larger-than-life powers, effortlessly overcoming their bullies and leaping out of their colorless neighborhoods into adventure.
Art styles of the Golden Age of comics
- Though printed in booklet form, comics did not deviate far from their newspaper ancestors, telling a straightforward story through basic sequential images.
- Cartooning was simple as publishers were not yet at the level of investing in or attracting serious artists.
- Panels were laid out in basic square grids, often full of more dialogue than imagery.
The Silver Age (1950-1971)
Not unlike the youth of its readers, the Golden Age was a time of whimsy and innocence that couldn’t last forever. Fans were growing up—some of them returning home from a horrific World War—and the idea of an invincible, caped avenger casually overcoming the world’s great evils became less and less convincing. These factors led to a decline in superhero stories and a rise in comic titles that would appeal to more adult sensibilities—the Silver Age of Comic Books.
Art styles of the Silver Age of comics
- Comics took their inspiration from art movements of the past, most notably surrealism, to illustrate the strange worlds in which their heroes lived.
- With comics now established as a lucrative medium, cover images relied less on cheap, attention-grabbing tactics and instead became an artistic representation of the issue’s themes or a protagonist’s state of mind.
- Comic books found true artistic expression for the first time in the Pop Art movement, which appropriated commercial objects such as product labels, magazine ads and comics for the purpose of fine art.
The Bronze Age (1971-1980)
It all began with a story in Spider-man in which the hero’s best friend suffers a drug overdose. Spider-man is helpless, and his alter ego, Peter Parker, has no choice but to take the stage, relying solely on his gifts of persuasion and empathy to save the day. The CCA opposed the inclusion of drug topics, whatever the message, but Marvel published the issue anyway with reader support. This caused the public to lose respect for the CCA and led to the end of censorship, paving the way for darker stories. As the stories became more focused around gritty, realistic stories, the style of the imagery morphed to match.
Art styles of the Bronze Age of comic books
- Comics traded in surrealism and experimentation for photorealistic depictions of the urban landscape.
- The alter-ego side of the superhero’s life is given more panel time, and sensational costumes took a backseat to depictions of everyday people.
- Depth of focus and lighting gave comics a cinematic style, heightening the reader’s emotional connection.
The Dark Age (1980-1993)
Unlike the actual Dark Ages, this era was where comic books achieved enlightenment. Until then, the Golden Age’s uncomplicated right and wrong still echoed (if just subtly updated to suit the times). Here, writers threw all of it out the window and showed us that a comic book hero’s world was just as gritty as the enemies he faced.
Ironically, as the imagery in these comics was becoming darker and more stylized—playing with lighting and deep, dark, contrasting colors—the genre was thrust out of the shadows of pulp and into the light of literary awareness. The idea of a sustained comic as a single work of literature led to the publication of several graphic novels, culminating in Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” the first comic series to win a Pulitzer Prize. Comic books were finally regarded as a legitimate art form, as malleable and open to creative expression as any medium.
Art styles of the Dark Age of comics
- Night was the prominent setting for virtually all stories of this age, leading to an art style that favored strategic lighting and long shadows.
- Similarly, artists took their inspiration from hard-boiled noir films of the 40s and 50s, creating gloomy, dubious worlds of smoke, rain, alleyways and silhouettes.
- Silver Age horror comics influenced the Dark Age in a more psychological sense, with disturbing portraits and unnatural angles that created a perpetual sense of unease.
The Ageless Age (1993-Present Day)
We’ve now reached the point in our journey across many colorful panels at which there is no definitive way to categorize the present “age.” Comics have expanded into something without shape or borders—a nebulous mass of nerd wonder.
One thing can be said about our current comic book age: it’s a time when the superhero doesn’t have to be heroic or dark or even present at all. Comic books can be as pulpy or as serious or as just plain weird as you want them to be. Like the invincible Superman of the optimistic Golden Age, now is a time when anything is possible.
Art styles of the Ageless Age of comics
- Advanced technology has led to creative illustrative techniques—everything from digital painting to 3D modeling.
- The line between film and comic is now so thin that some series are adapted into motion comics, adding voice actors and animation to the panels with no change to the art itself.
- The ubiquity of publishers has led to a wide variety of art styles. Design now varies drastically, depending on the nature of the comic and the choices of the creator (rather than the uniform “in-house” styles of the past).
3 . Change frame rate
One of the most noticeable differences involves frame rate. Animated films are typically 24 frames per second, and creating a different image for each frame is known as animating on ones. “Spider-Verse” broke the mold and animated much of the movie on twos as well, meaning they kept some of the images on screen for two frames, which makes the animation feel, as the producers describe it, “crunchy” .Each character’s pose lasts longer and is much more pronounced.
What are Ones, Twos, and Threes in Animation? (resource: https://www.lifewire.com/what-are-ones-twos-and-threes-4057778)
Ones, twos, and threes refer to how long a single image holds on camera in relationship to frames per second. Ones mean every single frame is different, so at 24 frames per second you’ll have 24 individual and unique drawings with that second.
Twos means that something holds for two frames, rather than one. So, if we were to animate one second at 24 frames per second on twos, it means every other frame will be different. So we’d have a total of 12 individual drawings within that second.
How Changing the Numbers of Frames Creates the Illusion of Realistic Movement
Mixing content and changing the duration of frames is a great way to create the illusion of a realistic or even stylized movement. Faster frames imply faster movement, so we can plan each frame be different to show that there is more change in the position of whatever object we’re moving. The slower something goes, the more we can use threes or fours to show that between each frame, the subject moves a lot less.
It helps to think of ones, twos, and threes similar to how you would think of a storyboard. For each second of animation at 24 frames per second, you’ll need to fill in 24 blocks. Ones, twos, and threes just decide how many times you can copy and paste an image into those 24 blocks you’re trying to fill up.
Spider-Verse
Twos is the traditional practice of 2D animation. Forced to do so by 3D animation, people can have the illusion of texture of 2D animation. But at the same time, Sony chooses the background animation, lens animation and other displacement animation and keeps ones, so as to maintain the unique advantage of smooth lens of 3D animation.
The “Spider-Verse” animators alternated between on twos and on ones depending on the nature of the scene. They could make Miles seem fast or skilled in some shots, on ones, and struggle in others, on twos. Sometimes he would be on twos while other characters were on ones. When they’re swinging through the forest, Miles is on twos because he’s clumsy while Peter B. Parker is on ones because he’s more skilled. This subtly helped illustrate how Miles was slowly becoming more comfortable with his powers. Different characters have different frame rates. Whenever the camera switches, Miles it will be on twos, and when it switches back to other roles, it will be on ones, so as to show that the Miles is learning skills gradually become proficient.
On one hand, this kind of processing approach makes pictures focus on the texture of frame by frame animation. On the other hand, it engenders such an incongruent feeling that the characters and the scene seem not to belong to the same time and space, which has built up the connection and unity between the visual performance and story theme.
Although this kind of one shot two provides a good effect for the comic style, it increases the difficulty of special effects simulation. We must combine the animation data of “one shot one” and “one shot two”, and let the special effects engineers make their own decisions according to the part to be simulated and the part bound to the animation. One of the most challenging is the cloth simulation in the way of one beat two. In order to achieve a certain continuity of the fabric simulation of character clothing to the greatest extent, Sony studio calculated the function and inserted a “ghost frame” in the middle frame to result in a pause at any moment in the animation.
4 . Abandon motion blur
Motion blur is the smearing of rapidly moving objects in a still image or a sequence of images such as a movie or animation. In film, this happens when objects move too fast to be captured clearly because of a slow shutter speed. This is also a natural occurrence and limitation of the human eye, which is why we so readily accept film’s frame rate of 24 frames per second (FPS).
Animators created all these effects using traditional medias on acetate. Now with digital media, new motion effects are waiting to be discovered. The modern animator learns by imitating traditional techniques and then exploring new ways to create fast action. CG Animation typically suffers from relying on algorithmic motion blur. This results in a muddy image, making all in-between frames impossible to see. In this case, taking the discernment of speed effects away from the artist and giving it to a machine has produced mush.
Motion blur is a CGI trick which most new films use to soften a movement and make it seem more real. Instead, “Spider-Verse” used an old-school technique called a smear. This was used a lot in early cartoons to create the sense of motion. If you look at a single frame, you’ll notice things like multiple arms to create the illusion of movement.
“Smear animation” is a rapid movement portrayed across 3 to 4 drawings. The anticipation drawing is followed by 1 to 2 smeared drawings and finally the resolution. You can find this effect mostly in limited animation with lower budgets that produce fewer drawings. But it does find its way into feature films. It creates art that is more symbolic and abstract in nature and some artists regard this as a stylistic choice instead of a budgetary necessity.
Directors want every picture in the film to be like a picture scroll when it is frozen, which is more in line with the style of comic books, which requires eliminating motion blur. Finally, the team behind the scenes adopted a variety of solutions to this problem. For example: using line tools to let artists connect shapes while drawing blurred lines; using camera shutter technology; quickly panning the camera on the background, trying to avoid any smooth gradient or blurred objects due to motion blur.
For example, in the case of train shuttling, the line is placed above the train, and the shutter effect is introduced to indicate that there is no motion blur. The graphic elements and superimposed lines which used to avoid the situation of dynamic blur not only pay homage to comics, but also contribute to enhance the visual experience of hand-drawn style.
Sony studio’s line tool allows artists to draw speed lines that can be connected to the main body. There’s also technology inspired by the camera shutter. Basically try to avoid anything that looks like smooth gradients or blurry due to dynamic blurring, and instead use a very graphical approach.
5 . Use chromatic dispersion to create depth of field
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispersion_(optics)
In optics, dispersion is the phenomenon in which the phase velocity of a wave depends on its frequency. Media having this common property may be termed dispersive media. Sometimes the term chromatic dispersion is used for specificity. Although the term is used in the field of optics to describe light and other electromagnetic waves, dispersion in the same sense can apply to any sort of wave motion such as acoustic dispersion in the case of sound and seismic waves, in gravity waves (ocean waves), and for telecommunication signals along transmission lines (such as coaxial cable) or optical fiber.
Multiplaning is the technique of creating different layers of movement at different depths within an animated scene to create an effect of movement and dimensionality. This gives the scene a feeling of depth, as characters and objects move closer and further from the camera, and the camera shifts to provide different perspective.
Multiplaning was popularized by Walt Disney Studios. In 1937, inventor William Garity helped build Disney’s first multiplane camera. The camera used seven “planes” of glass to create dynamic scenery for Disney’s early films. Different layers of each scene were painted on each pane of glass. The panes were then shifted by hand as a camera pointing down at the scene took photographs of each frame.
With the advent of the computer, multiplaning has grown up. “Of course, we do it digitally now, but the principle is the same,” IdeaRocket founder William Gadea said. “The movement of objects that are close to the camera is emphasized, while the movement of objects that are far from the camera is de-emphasized.”
As technology has progressed, so has the art of multiplaning. The introduction of computer-generated animation (CGI), or 3D Animation, made the traditional multiplane technique obsolete. The last Disney film to incorporate the traditional multiplane camera was “The Little Mermaid,” released in 1989.
resource: https://blenderartists.org/t/animating-depth-of-field/468077
If you look at a comic book, you may have noticed a common error where the ink is misprinted. The filmmakers decided to use this misprint style in the film to create a depth of field instead of blurring the background. When something is in focus, the colors align and are crisper. This is similar to the live action movie. For example, sometimes some things in the lens are not in focus or blurred, so that the audience can focus on the important and clear picture.
One stand-out trait of comic books is the lack of motion blur or camera depth. That’s because in most illustrations, it’s pretty hard to convincingly draw motion blur. This is especially true in a field such as comics, which historically had very short turnaround times for publication. Spider-Verse‘s animators decided to avoid motion blur and camera depth entirely, but still wanted a way to showcase the focus of a shot. So, they took inspiration from old comic books and an “error” that became a trademark in comic book art styles: “printing error” dots. Back when comics were cheaply printed, they were layered with a series of colored dots that created a final, full color product. Sometimes, those dots would be printed off-center, giving the comic these gritty, shifted color palettes that we immediately associate with comics today.Spider-Verse animators used these dots to shift focus, completely avoiding the need for simulated camera focus and motion blur. On some shots, you can see these dots used to separate foreground from background, or to attract attention to the focus of the shot. This choice to avoid motion blur subsequently gave the film a unique trait.
The effect of dispersion and high overflow is to play the role of virtualization and blurring. For example, the poor printing situation mentioned by the director often appeared in the printing industry in the junior high school of the 20th century, when CMYK 4-color printing will result in wrong printing due to the error of matching. This kind of wrong printing has become a stylized treatment in the later development. The director noticed this and applied it to the film, which not only restores the texture of the cartoon to a higher level and resonates with the audience, but also uses this kind of dislocation to generate a sense of visual scene, which makes the film more hierarchical and solves the problem.
resource: https://www.xinpianchang.com/e14302
In “spider verse”, the production team studied the printing process in order to achieve the most suitable color with the comic style. The production team studied the printing process of many different types of comic books. They found that when all the colors are not aligned correctly, there is an image overlap mismatch, which is what we usually call “ghosting”. So they split and offset the image in a way similar to misprinted comic pages, and then applied this method to camera focusing, resulting in defocusing and the illusion that something is printed on the screen.
6 . Ink lines
Co-director Phil Lord said, “If you freeze any part of the movie at any time, it will look like an illustration with hand-drawn touches and all.” There are even moments in the film when hand-drawn still images pop up in the shots to replace the computer animation. They layered 2D ink lines on top of the 3D art to give the characters more of a hand-drawn look.
resource: https://www.sidefx.com/community/spider-man-into-the-spider-verse/
A key ingredient to the comic book look were line drawings on the characters, also known as ‘ink lines.’ When we read comic books, we notice that the facial lines of characters can give them emotion. These lines are not fixed and have no relationship with human structure. This inspired Sony’s idea of drawing lines on a character’s face, which is part of the animation, not a material or a model.
Inking may be one of the most misunderstood disciplines of the comic art world. All it involves is tracing over lines that have already been drawn. Inking is integral to the comic-making process before digital technology. It makes comics easy to reproduce and print on bad paper. The goal of inking is to enhance the pencils and make it stand out.
Finally, the production team decided to divide the lines into three categories. The first is the line fixed on the model, which does not produce any expression, such as the side line depicting the ear. The second is the lines produced from the perspective of painting, such as the lines of chin and neck, the segmentation lines used because of different colors, and the segmentation lines between the nose and the other side of cheek, which are used to depict the shape.
Ink lines is a key part in production, and it also helps to connect the image style of the film and cartoon. Sony image studio hopes that the film will have a two-dimensional drawing feeling. If it is hand drawn, you will get all the beautiful defects, such as line thickness, line weight, line color and so on. But it has little to do with emotional depiction, it can make the picture closer to the hand-painted style.
“The fundamental problem,” notes Grochola, “is that that artists simply do not draw based on these limited rule-sets. We also realized tracking hand drawings to character animation was not a trivial task. We couldn’t just use texture maps because the drawings needed to adjust throughout the animation. We needed a way to take an artist’s drawing, stick it to underlying animation, while also having the control to adjust the drawings throughout the performance.”
However, because the movie will eventually be shown in 3D, we can’t just rely on 2D solutions to draw these lines. Therefore, these lines must exist in three-dimensional geometry that can move around. One way is for the production team to embed ink lines into the binding, and the other is for the animator to add them manually with various tools. Later, the special effects Department developed a system to add sidelines. You can add lines at the edge of the figure, and most of these lines appear for drawing and depicting the shape. But most of them are added manually. Finally, it’s up to the synthesis team to integrate all these manually and automatically added lines. Therefore, the entire sideline processing work is not completed by a single department, but the entire pipeline is involved in it. The solution came in the form of the procedural abilities of Houdini, along with its Python integration. Imageworks artists created a custom GUI in Houdini that executed Python scripts to create, destroy, reconnect nodes, change tools and ‘hop’ around the network automatically.
Finally, inklines were exported as polygon lines from Houdini to Katana. Artists then picked lines to allow lighting to adjust the line thickness at render time.
It is worth mentioning that the props and buildings in the film also add this unique line. This process actually starts from the modeling stage of buildings and props. This is because the panes of some buildings are not actually connected to the main structure of the building model, so the added lines are often floating. The technology Sony uses to achieve this look is also planned to be used in other works of the studio in a “more updated” way.
7 . Hand-painted special effects and graffiti
In the movie, we can see a lot of techniques and effects commonly used in American comics. For example, hand-painted onomatopoeia such as boom of explosion, ahhhhh of jumping from a building, dialog box describing the mental activity of the protagonist when running and before participating in battle; speed line, signal prompt of perceiving danger, etc. These are constantly let us review the feeling of reading comics.
Special effect
There are several moments in the film that involve explosions or particle effects, all of which have this said mix of a 3D and 2D feel. Inspiration for this effects work came, says Imageworks FX supervisor Ian Farnsworth, from 2D hand-drawn anime. “We had initially tried doing some smoke or explosions using some simple particles and spheres, and then having them erode or evolve in interesting ways using solvers and shaders. While the results looked really cool, they never really hit the mark, and definitely never felt stylised or hand-drawn enough. They always had this element of ‘CG’ to them, and while we feel given enough time we could potentially push it a lot farther, we decided to look for a 2D FX artist to help us out.”
That artist was Alex Redfish, whose Vimeo demos exemplified a style that would fit the desired language of the film. He provided Imageworks with a small re-usable library of 2D FX, starting with an explosion. “We had him provide as many layers as he could for us, so we could mix and match as needed, and also place things in depth for the 3D stereo side of things, too,” details Farnsworth. “He was able to provide us with a few explosion variations with multiple layers each, gun muzzle flash shapes, spark hit shapes, smoke, steam and flame elements.”
At Imageworks, an HDA in Houdini was created that would allow artists to select images from the library and then view the animation in real-time in the viewport. The same HDA also output a separate geometry for render. “Being able to view the animations in real-time was really important to us,” says Farnsworth, “so we created sprite sheets for all the animations we were going to use. This is a common technique used in games, where instead of loading a specific frame of animation for every card, you only have to load a single image that has all the frames on it already and you modulate the UVs to switch frames.”
The development of a particle accelerator by the character Wilson Fisk opens up parallel universes (and brings in alternate versions of Spider-Man) into our universe. But it also causes almost catastrophic glitching on buildings and in several characters.
Text Descriptions
The film uses many comic book expressions. They used words on the image to frequently represent sounds and motion. For example, text descriptions appear directly on the screen, and these text boxes follow the camera as part of its movement.
Signature Onomatopoeia
Many shots have added onomatopoeia often used in comics, such as: Bang ~ brake sound and so on.
Hand-drawn Symbol
The spider’s buzzing signal makes us watch a movie like holding a comic book.
Even the light beam of the car lamp is a comic-book technique.
These techniques of expression make the film screen more tension in the plane caricature, which is related to their changing attributes (the history of caricature follows different cultural paths, and has a lot of blending in the development, mainly from the perspective of American caricature techniques). Let’s take the common dialog box in comics as an example.
the revolution of dialog box
The appearance of words helps the painter to enrich the information outside the image to express the protagonist’s thoughts and activities, and at the same time increases the tension of the picture. Although these words are part of the whole, they are also independent of the image and have little relevance with the image. In the Central American civilization around the 7th century B.C., abstract symbols were used to summarize language. Later, this kind of symbol gradually developed into a figure similar to scroll or flag, which appeared in European Medieval and Renaissance art. Perhaps because of the limited composition, the language involved in this way of dialogue is relatively simple, but at this time the text has been able to better integrate into the picture.
Since the 18th century, political caricatures have been popular, in which there are a lot of dialogues. Cartoonists in this period have been very familiar with how to use dialog boxes. Some are like simplified scrolls, and some are like balloons with thick front and thin back. In short, the form is very close to the dialog box in modern comics. Moreover, these dialog boxes have been able to carry more text, playing a certain role in rendering the atmosphere of the screen.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the role of dialog box in comics has been very important. At the same time, it also derived some comic techniques, such as onomatopoeia, emotional symbols and so on. They are not only the transmission of content and ideas, but also have the functions of emotional expression, promoting plot, atmosphere rendering.
8 . Shots and scene-switching effect with comic panel
In the movie, there are many places to use “comic panel”, which is the most commonly used narrative form in comic books. For example, we often see the “four panel comics”.
But from the perspective of film lens, because the animation changes with time, the production becomes quite complicated. It means that it cannot only ensure that the actions in each frame remain independent, but also integrate into a whole, so it is necessary to arrange the animation sequence of multiple actions to work together. In addition, animators need to adjust the grid shape or aspect ratio to better tell the story. Comic panels made out of webbing show montages and background action.
9 . Kirby Dots and Halftone
Kirby Dots is an artistic convention in superhero and science fiction comic books and similar illustrations, in which a field of black is used to represent negative space around unspecified kinds of energy. They are typically used in illustrations of explosions, smoke, the blasts from ray guns, “cosmic” energy, and outer space phenomena.
Halftone is the reprographic technique that simulates continuous-tone imagery through the use of dots, varying either in size or in spacing, thus generating a gradient-like effect. “Halftone” can also be used to refer specifically to the image that is produced by this process.
resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirby_Krackle
This shows energy without having to use small particulates to simulate energy beams, like many have done with CGI in the past. These dots really keep the “comic” feel intact within the movie. The Kirby Dots also come into play with the use of the ubiquitous “POW” markers that come into frame with physical action. Comic books like to show action with verbiage creatively illustrated beside the drawing to let the reader know what kind of action is being conveyed. When you have a limited medium such as illustration, you have to work around your limitations. The animators of Spider-Verse made the choice to include “POW” markers in their project. So, it feels like a comic book come to life.
The film adopts the 4-color printing mode of the digital version of the old comic book, which increases texture and visual interest by mixing cross ink shadow lines and halftone dots. This mode runs through the whole picture of the film. They used a technique called half-toning, which uses dots to create colors and gradients. Shadows were created with hatching, or crisscrossed lines. Legendary Marvel artist Jack Kirby was known for his abstract dots, or “Kirby Dots,” which create the illusion of energy. The film references and uses the effect multiple times, when the portal opens and when Miles is spray-painting.
With the inspiration of comic books as the starting point, film makers also focus on the effect of offset printing. The static offset printing effect is applied to the dynamic film, so the splash texture makes the picture more cool. Another rules used is to avoid smooth gradients. If an area is gradients, it will be implemented with dot patterns. For example, at the crucial moment of the climax of the story, there is a string of floating bubbles in the air. This kind of design with dots and splashes looks cool. They are like passing through multiple universes.Using the digital version of four colors printed in traditional comic books, mixed use of cross hatch ink and halftone points, with halftone to create colors and gradients, add texture and visual interest. On one hand, the combination of these two filters simulates the situation of using a small amount of primary colors to get different bold colors and gradients and on the other hand, imitating the imperfection of color shift.
10 . Glitch Art
There is a form of new media art called “Glitch Art”. As shown in the figure below, in order to show the influence of multi universe on things, the “Glitch Art” is introduced in this animation. As an art form, it comes from some common details in our life – the failure of data and digital equipment. Visually, the picture becomes a broken, defective image and distorted color. Glitch Art has become a unique visual language, which is gradually accepted by artists. They not only represent imperfection, but also mean accidents and changes. Every failure is like a recreation breaking the convention.
Glitch art is a great opportunity for brands. Not only is the form visually stunning, the inherent provocative nature of glitch art creates a memorable image behind a product. Although this DIY-focused, haphazard-looking art form seems to operate without guidelines, it’s important to understand where it all came from and ways to begin if you’re new to working with glitches.
Computer images are made up of pixels, and when several of those pixels misfire, it ends up with a glitch. The effect of pixelation is most productive when attempting to anonymize an aspect of the design, leaving the exterior and abstract views of the space within. There’s a controlled imperfection to glitch art, and it’s a reminder of the technical elements of design. It visualizes technology as having a combination of textures and patterns but without perfection.
resource: https://99designs.co.uk/blog/design-history-movements/glitch-art-design/
“Using 2D animation as inspiration,” adds Farnsworth, “we also did some fun timing experiments on rigid bodies, outputting the geometry on 2’s, and sometimes switching from 1’s to 2’s or vice versa to get us a unique ‘stepped’ look that matched what the character animation team was doing. We used that in combination with some minor re-timing to really create a nice ‘punch’ and accentuate the action as desired. We also had to create a few custom boolean-based tools for creating stylised patterns and cuts.”
“The glitching effect splits the screen into cell patterns and assigned an alternative camera to each cell,” explains Imageworks FX lead Viktor Lundqvist. “One cell could be a zoomed in version of the character’s eyes, the next one could be the character’s face seen from a 90 degree angle shift. This created a fractured look of the character.”
“It was crucial to have a high level of control of how the characters were ‘pieced’ together,” continues Lundqvist. “We used Houdini to procedurally create both an array of ‘alternative’ cameras and cell pattern. This was used as an input to a custom HDA that automatically kicked off renders and gave a preview of the resulting look.”
The fault effect produced by the combination of hand-painted pattern and multi-layer effect shows good visual beauty and creative stimulation for animation. There are many breakthroughs in the visual of this film. The creative team is very bold to mix a variety of characters with different styles, rationalize the concept of parallel universe, and achieve a high degree of unity by combining the visual language with the theme of the whole film through graphic cartoon. The whole film reveals a sense of contradiction which is unstable everywhere. Instead of weakening the contradiction, the creative team shows them all.
11 . Pop Art
Pop art is a kind of art style mainly derived from commercial art forms, which is characterized by magnifying and copying some details of popular culture, such as comic strips, fast food and packaging printed with trademarks. Pop art developed in New York in the late 1950s, when its opposition to abstract expressionism was in its final boom.
In the past, comics were drawn with dot paper. Later, pop artist Roy Lichtenstein enlarged the origin and copied the characters’ prototypes. He put them on the canvas with flat color blocks and accurate and solid black line drawing. Even the dot in the cheap color printing process was copied.
Ben day dot, whose full name is “Ben day dot plate making”, is a printing plate making technology invented in 1879 after Benjamin Henry Day, Jr., an illustrator and printer. According to the principle of color and optical illusion, it generates the desired effect through the spacing, size or overlap of small color dots. For example, magenta dots are widely spaced to form pink. Color comic books in the 1950s and 1960s were very popular, but the cost of full-color comic books was very high, so comic book publishers used Ben day dot in four-color printing (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) to print shadows and secondary colors For example, green, purple, orange, flesh color, etc., because of the characteristics of this wear point, this way can save a lot of ink, comic book manufacturers can produce comic books on cheap paper through such a cheap printing method, so as to obtain higher profits.
Later, this method was fully used and carried forward by Roy Lichtenstein, the American pop art master. In the middle of the 20th century, when abstract performance painting flourished, he and the younger generation of painters in New York proposed a new form of concrete painting — pop art. In the 1960s, pop art became famous and became the main promoter of American new art movement. Even many foreign cultures that had been influenced by American business also felt the shock of his works. Lichtenstein’s paintings or sculptures are based on cartoons, daily necessities, advertisements and the works of some famous artists in the history of fine arts. Combined with the characteristics of Ben day dot,, they represent the strong commercial culture and the characteristics of the times in American society at that time.
The film highly restores the viewing experience of comics. The use of Ben day dot in the rendering of the picture makes us feel the texture of reading paper comic books. The difference between Ben day dot and halftone is that the size and distribution of Ben day dot in a specific area are always the same, while halftone can adjust the size and gradient of points according to the color details of the image.
12 . Cyberpunk
In the film, the night scene of New York City is brilliant and dazzling. Relying on animation technology, it creates a cyberpunk wind city which is in line with the concept of parallel universe and has a strong sense of science and technology. It is similar to the hue of silver wing killer 2049, shell attack agent team and number one player.
Cyberpunk is a subtype of science fiction, which constructs an anti-utopian future with advanced science and technology, but only on one side. On the other hand, illegal trade, underground gangs, political corruption and social unrest coexist at the same time.
Traditional cyberpunk scenes are mostly dark environment with colorful lighting rendering, creating a bright and colorful sense of prosperity.The distinctive characteristics of cyberpunk: dark, decadent and desperate. However, punk culture insists on describing the darkness of this era and the struggle of people in the dark to reflect the brightness and hope of the world.
13 . Exaggerated Perspective
In comic books, the use of exaggerated perspective of the image processing technique is very common. But in 3D images, using exaggeration is more difficult to deal with. Because it means that this not only increases the difficulty of processing the lens, but also distorts the structure of the actual geometry. Therefore, in the film, the production team has done a lot of work, especially in the performance of the urban environment.
In the animation, when Miles jumps out of the building, all the buildings are actually guided by a character centered ring. These buildings are not perpendicular to the ground, they are seriously inclined, and the height is five to eight times higher than the height set by New York buildings.
14 . Embrace Imperfections
Good taste is more important than accuracy.
It’s not just the computer, it’s the hand of the artist in there as well. Sometimes having things miss a line or feel slightly imbalanced is appealing and adds to the design.
The animation team created a hell of a great looking film. The way they approached the style and animation design was perfect, even with all the imperfections.
Those are some of the things they borrowed from older animated films, but there’s plenty of new innovations too. Some things they borrowed from comic books, but we’ve never seen them in a movie. Basically, the entire movie is a comic book that moves.
The Spider-Verse filmmakers have a complicated relationship with the computers that enabled them to make this stunning film. “Computers are too perfect and that’s one of those things that felt sterile,” Beverage said. By bringing their hand-drawn expertise to the film and using that to create a new technology, however, they made a true piece of art. “They had so much more design in it because there’s all these little misregisterings, little misalignments, and contacts aren’t absolutely perfect,” Beverage added. “The imperfect is charming, life’s imperfect.”
15 . Houdini
When the Spider people travel to our universe, they go through the ‘Multi-verse’. After exploring a number of ideas for how this should look, Imageworks landed on a highly detailed environment consisting of procedurally generated web-like structures, mixed with many points and volumetrics – crafted in Houdini.
Of course, Spider-Man would be nothing without his signature webs. Houdini was relied upon again here, especially for its procedural nature, as Farnsworth explains. “Using one setup as the base, we were able to easily create unique web variations for some of the different Spider-Man characters as well as the webs in the Spider-Man hideout and the webs wrapped around Miles during one sequence. Mile’s and Peter’s web was very thin/fine and had a few extra spiral webs around the main core, with a graphic almost 2D looking ‘eiffel’. We built on that and modified it for Gwen’s web. Her web was much more ribbon-like and graceful looking just by tweaking a few parameters. The hideout and ‘wrapped up’ webs were packed with more small webs along with ‘knots’ randomly added into the structure.”
To get the webs into shots, the animators used a ‘curve’ rig that would then go through CFX. That department had a web rig for simulating secondary motion and also added that ‘eiffel’ end-piece. “Having this in their court was ideal,” says Farnsworth, “because of web-cloth interaction. When CFX was done, the webs would go through the procedural setup in Houdini and, depending on the variant they wanted, it would add spiral webs around the main core, and completely replace the effect with a more stylized and customizable one.”
Houdini allowed us to iterate fast and go through many variations with some minor parameter tweaks, and really allowed us this painterly abstract leaf placement that would not have been easy to get otherwise. –Ian Farnsworth | FX Supervisor
For a forest scene, Houdini was used by Imageworks to help create leaves. Like the rest of the film, the trees in the forest appeared in stylised form. “Having somebody hand place thousands of leaves just to hit the look wouldn’t be very efficient,” suggests Farnsworth. “The artwork we got had leaves floating on their own as if an artist just used a loose brush stroke to add them. We ended up turning to Houdini to scatter, place, and colour all the leaves for the trees. Houdini allowed us to iterate fast and go through many variations with some minor parameter tweaks, and really allowed us this painterly abstract leaf placement that would not have been easy to get otherwise.”
Tentacles on the character Doctor Octopus were another thing that Houdini was used for, in particular to generate extra wires and geometry inside of them. “The need for them came late in the game, and so instead of going back through the whole modelling, rigging and animation pipeline,” says Farnsworth, “we used Houdini to generate all of the extra geometry procedurally in the shot level, saving us a lot of time. This setup was eventually automated to the point where we could just run it anytime there was an animation publish, and it would create the geo, publish the geo, and submit renders for you.”
Additional uses of Houdini included for procedurally generating snow mounds at the bases of tombstones and trees, and on other vehicles or buildings. Plus, the software helped generate motion blurred streak effects, this time referencing such effects done in traditional 2D manga animation. “We also used a similar technique on the snow streaks when Miles and Peter are being dragged through the city by the train,” adds Farnsworth. “The stylised look of the snow was done with Houdini, not a result of real motion blur. These effects gave the scene more punch and also helped reinforce the comic-book style of the film.”
Book References
Hughes, D., 2012. Comic Book Movies-Virgin Film. London : Virgin Books
Simon, M., 2003. Producing independent 2D character animation: making and selling a short film. Boston : Focal Press
O’Hailey, T., 2010. Hybrid animation: integrating 2D and 3D assets. MA : Focal Press
Parent, R., 2012. Computer animation: algorithms and techniques. MA : Morgan Kauffman
Whitaker, H. and Halas, J., 2002. Timing for Animation. New York : Focal Press
Wheeler, L.J., 1969. Principles of cinematography: a handbook of motion picture technology. London : Fountain Press
Grunwald, R., 2007. Thin film micro-optics: new frontiers of spatio-temporal beam shaping. Amsterdam : Elsevier
Rhoades, S., 2008. Comic books: how the industry works. New York : Peter Lang
Nickelson, J., 2018. Fine Art Inkjet Printing: The Craft and Art of the Fine Digital Print. CA : Rocky Nook
Martin, G., 2019. The Art of Comic Book Inking. OR : Dark Horse Comics
Jeffries, D., 2017. Comic Book Film Style: Cinema at 24 Panels Per Second. TX : University of Texas Press
Johnson, D., 2019. Transgenerational Media Industries: Adults, Children, and the Reproduction of Culture. Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press
Kerlow, I.V., 2009. The art of 3D computer animation and effects. N.J. : John Wiley
Sabin, R., 2013. Adult comics. New York : Routledge
Betancourt, M., 2016. Glitch Art in Theory and Practice: Critical Failures and Post-Digital Aesthetics. London : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
Brod, H., 2012. Superman is Jewish?: How Comic Book Superheroes Came to Serve Truth, Justice, and the Jewish-American Way. New York : Free Press
Rogers, D.F. and Earnshaw, R. eds., 2001. Computer graphics techniques: Theory and practice. New York : Springer-Verlag
Hughes, D., 2012. Comic Book Movies-Virgin Film. Random House. London : Virgin Books