I'm hesitantly looking forward to this film. It looks like an interesting update/variation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Side note, it's crazy that movie is 34 years old, so I'm assuming most kids...
I'm hesitantly looking forward to this film. It looks like an interesting update/variation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Side note, it's crazy that movie is 34 years old, so I'm assuming most kids haven't seen it).
I find it interesting you think of it more as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? whereas I think of it as more of an Alvin and the Chipmunks style movie. Especially because this trailer literally...
I find it interesting you think of it more as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? whereas I think of it as more of an Alvin and the Chipmunks style movie. Especially because this trailer literally namedropped them.
As an animation nerd, it's the Roger Rabbit stuff that should be making me crazed to see this, but instead I'm turned off by the voices for the main characters (Say what you will about Alvin, but at least they got the voices right). In particular John Mulaney's voice is uniquely identifiable and unlike other unique voices (Wil Arnet for instance) he isn't really well known for voicing animation, so it doesn't really look like his lines match up with the mouth movements.
More than anything I'm really irritated by the 3D animation used to fake 2D animation. It has the effect of looking cheap even when it actually costs much more to produce than 2D animation. And in an era where the trend with American animation studios are trying hard to implement 2D aesthetics into their 3D films (The Bad Guys, the two Spiderverse movies, Charlie Brown - should I go on?), it just kind of feels lazy.
I assure you that 2D animation is cheaper, though that depends entirely on what you describe as acceptable results. Forget about costs of modeling, rigging, and rendering and just talk about...
I assure you that 2D animation is cheaper, though that depends entirely on what you describe as acceptable results. Forget about costs of modeling, rigging, and rendering and just talk about animating, and it's much more time consuming to animate realistic character movements in 3D than it is to do in 2D. 2D gives you a much wider range of what you're willing to believe; you have to fight people's sense of realism with 3D. I seem to recall from that Frozen 2 documentary series, one animator spent over three days trying to figure out how to realistically make Elsa do a simple jump. With 2D you only have to animate what's in the frame, but in 3D if you don't animate the whole body it starts to look unnatural.
2D and 3D both have strengths and weaknesses; A lot of anime does use 3D as well, but it's generally going to be used to make sets for dynamic camera movements (or to reduce the number of backgrounds to draw), or it's for complex mechanical objects like vehicles. Even with more modern 3D anime, a lot of them are supported by traditional 2D animation (Orange's work on Beastars is a pretty good example of this).
... so for good or ill, they likely chose the faux-2D for stylistic reasons.
I mean, the whole core of what I was trying to say was that it was a bad stylistic choice. But then again that's just my opinion.
I'm hesitantly looking forward to this film. It looks like an interesting update/variation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Side note, it's crazy that movie is 34 years old, so I'm assuming most kids haven't seen it).
I find it interesting you think of it more as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? whereas I think of it as more of an Alvin and the Chipmunks style movie. Especially because this trailer literally namedropped them.
As an animation nerd, it's the Roger Rabbit stuff that should be making me crazed to see this, but instead I'm turned off by the voices for the main characters (Say what you will about Alvin, but at least they got the voices right). In particular John Mulaney's voice is uniquely identifiable and unlike other unique voices (Wil Arnet for instance) he isn't really well known for voicing animation, so it doesn't really look like his lines match up with the mouth movements.
More than anything I'm really irritated by the 3D animation used to fake 2D animation. It has the effect of looking cheap even when it actually costs much more to produce than 2D animation. And in an era where the trend with American animation studios are trying hard to implement 2D aesthetics into their 3D films (The Bad Guys, the two Spiderverse movies, Charlie Brown - should I go on?), it just kind of feels lazy.
But the setting is so distinctly a world where Toontown has integrated with LA. In Alvin, they're comparatively unique in their non-human nature
And I do like that! I'm just put off by the other stuff.
I assure you that 2D animation is cheaper, though that depends entirely on what you describe as acceptable results. Forget about costs of modeling, rigging, and rendering and just talk about animating, and it's much more time consuming to animate realistic character movements in 3D than it is to do in 2D. 2D gives you a much wider range of what you're willing to believe; you have to fight people's sense of realism with 3D. I seem to recall from that Frozen 2 documentary series, one animator spent over three days trying to figure out how to realistically make Elsa do a simple jump. With 2D you only have to animate what's in the frame, but in 3D if you don't animate the whole body it starts to look unnatural.
2D and 3D both have strengths and weaknesses; A lot of anime does use 3D as well, but it's generally going to be used to make sets for dynamic camera movements (or to reduce the number of backgrounds to draw), or it's for complex mechanical objects like vehicles. Even with more modern 3D anime, a lot of them are supported by traditional 2D animation (Orange's work on Beastars is a pretty good example of this).
I mean, the whole core of what I was trying to say was that it was a bad stylistic choice. But then again that's just my opinion.
It's surprising they're using Best Friend by Saweetie w/ Doja Cat (NSFW, most likely) --- great track, but that's some heavy censoring for a trailer.