Alright y'all apparently I wasn't clear enough, even though it's the first thing I say in this video: the animation in this movie looks CHEAP. They (Disney leadership) made creative decisions to make it look a certain way, and those decisions were a BAD idea, which made it look CHEAP and BAD. I am NOT defending Disney's choices and saying "well it's actually good and you just don't get it", I'm just trying to not default to dunking on this movie by saying it's "woke" like every other video essay on this movie, and instead look at these creative decisions by the filmmakers objectively. I'm explaining WHY these creative decisions made this movie look like a TV show instead of a feature film by dissecting what "TV animation" even means. Explaining Disney's thought process does NOT mean that I'm defending their decisions, because I go on to explain why these decisions are misguided. And so I'm crystal clear, "misguided" is a synonym for "BAD." I'll do better in the future to be more clear about my feelings of the film I'm discussing, beyond saying it in the first sentence of the video. Also for the last time, Magnifico isn't the good guy.
SO many bad (graphical) decisions in this. * Skin textures (for the humans) looks too flat. (Could'a used some pores.) * Lighting is so diffuse that this '3-D' movie looks flatter than (some) 2-D (animated) movies. Not one lonely, _distinct_ shadow for miles around. * Magnifico looks like a _bleached_ , discount Dr Strange. Hair that's substantially lighter than your skin always looks freaky.
It's unfortunately common for a general audience to conflate artistic style, lighting, rendering and texturing as "Animation" when making these sorts of critiques, as opposed to the motion and the acting of the characters.
@@shuttittuppitt9355 I disagree with the statemment about pores. Photorealistic skin is not a style needed for something to look good. Especially when you merge looks into something resembling a 3D model hand painted with a brush. From the short film Saga of Bjorn to SpiderVerse and the new Turtles. But yes, I agree, then there should be other texture instead - maybe more painterly. Cheers
(at)j.m.w. The skin's pores don't need to be _exaggerated_ to look realistic. _Real_ skin (at least for young people) has only _slightly_ (visible) pores, but they're noticeable if you're close up. This movie shows us _lots_ of close ups of people's faces, but their skins almost always look (literally) _impossibly_ smooth. A _slight _ evel of texturing for their faces would've (probably) been enough to give their skin a smooth appearance without it looking _impossibly_ smooth. By the way, I'm not criticizing the character _designs_ for not being realistic, only the overly smooth skin textures
I think the biggest problem with giving Asha what she wants is with her having no character development. In Moana, Moana did get what she wanted but with a lot of trial and error. She had to learn how to be a leader and fail at her end goal only to realize that she can do it. She lost her grandmother and had to learn that her ancestors are always with her. There's more that can be said but the main point is giving them character development if you want to give them what they want.
@@NoTheRobot yeah. Exactly. I don't feel that Asha lost anything. She wants and she gets. If her parents were the king and queen and they were both evil as originally planned, then it might have worked or if her grandfather died then maybe.
@@fierygamer582 quite frankly I feel like fighting against her own parents is a lot more thematically intriguing, seeing as she's a teenager, and at what point do most teenagers draw the line between loving their parents and obeying them, and recognizing their faults and refusing to stick by them? Asha would have to learn to defy her own parents not because she's in some rebellious phase, but because she feels they genuinely are doing more harm than good and she cannot in good faith stand by their decisions.
@@fierygamer582 I think that them being her parents or secretly her parents because both already seemed to have a very parental bond with her and it would explain a good reason why Magnifico lashes out at her when she starts making suggestions about the wishes that he thinks are going to hurt her and his people and he doesn’t want to lose his family again or his home
Yeah I don't get why they didn't put together a team just to do one 2D animated movie since that's where they started. Maybe have it transition into 3D if you really want but a 2D film would have been really special for the 100th anniversary.
@Wiimeiser Lilo & Stitch, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron, Spirited Away, SEVERAL Pokemon movies, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie all released after Shrek and are great 2D movies. Shrek also is in and of itself a fantastic movie. What the actual fuck are you talking about?
My beef with the star is that apparently, it was supposed to be animated in 2D, which would have been perfect as an homage to Disney's history, blending 2D and 3D animations. That plan was scrapped, and the source I read basically said it was because it would've been too hard. So instead, we have just 3D animation, as if Disney is saying that's the only part of its 100 year history worth celebrating.
yeah because Disney doesn't even have a 2D animation department anymore. like the only people currently employed at Disney are 3D animators, not 2D. why, you may ask? Michael Eisner. it's always Michael Eisner
one of the issues i have with the drawing style is just how smooth it is. They went for a watercolor look but also didnt push it enough. Just a "safe risk" which ended up making the overall picture look incomplete
Yeah. Like if you want a ‘watercolour illo’ look, just look at The Mitchels Vs The Machines. All the parts of Wish I’ve seen look like they just added an outline and a paper texture instead of the more textural look MvsM has… Wish just isn’t quite brave enough to really push that it seems
@@guyman1570 i think you can definitely see it in the way the background is drawn, though, the faded one-layer watercolour effect with marker lineart. At least it was the first thing I thought about when I saw it
Another reason why the style looks so wierd is because of the limited shadows. Normally Disney animated films has very detailed shadows and half-shadows with detailed lighting, but here shadows are straight up absent on some part of the characters. Like Asha's hands lack shadows from fingers and many characters have limited shadows on their clothing. I suppose it was made to flatten the picture to make it more story book like but a result looks more like a poorly rendered video game. I get what type of impression the animation team was going for, but it obvious that the were not given enough time and resources. There's a twit from the amimator from the team of Wish, circulating around, where he says that the movie was made during huge layoffs and a lot of corporate pandering was involved. So I blame the upper management. The film also suffers from poor directing, 90% characters are in the central part of the screen, breaking the rule of thirds. In the interview one of the directors, Fawn Veerasunthorn said that "out philosophy was whoever has power, is in the center of the screen" which sounds like a bullshit to me. Song sequence are filmed like a real Broadway song on a scene, making a lot of shots from the top and not utilizing free 3d camera enough. I do understand for what they were going with the Star, but I would rathey they went with the early concept of a starboy shape-shifter. Asha lacks any strong emotional connection with ohter characters so interetion with then Star might've salvaged it. Sight. This film's script is a mess. P.S. People are not saying thar the animation was done by AI, but rather that the script and the texts of the songs were written by it. Allegedly, if you ask ChatGPT to write a Disney movie script about the evil king, magical star and a female protagonist it will create something similar to the script of Wish. And the songs have some wierd lyrics, that are breaking both rhythm and the size. Look it up, it's a big Oof of a song texts.
Yes that's what I mean about the movie being evenly lit, it reduces the high contrast that you get from the shadows. The movie absolutely had issues with being made during a turnover period, I didn't want to get too far into that during the video but from what I heard they were scrambling to find animators. As far as Star goes, the directors said that the Star Boy version was too similar to the Genie from Aladdin, which I do agree would have been too on the nose for Disney to go that route. I've seen plenty of people complain about the animation style itself looking AI generated in addition to the script and songs, but also the script was written well before ChatGPT was invented (the directors said Jennifer Lee started writing this in 2018-19). But your points are valid, it really did start and end with a lack of leadership from Disney execs.
@@NoTheRobotthanks for the answer? Do you think that the crew could've make the current stule work and improve it if they were given enough money and time?
"Whoever has power is in the center of the screen"? Ouch. Nope. That's a clear indicator she has little understanding of film theory and framing power dynamics. Even in comics, superhero cartoonists have had it down to a science for decades.
@@wayIessI know, right? I think she said "whoever is in control is dead center of the screen, and when there is an imaginative feeling going on, the camera will start to spin". I'm pretty sure she knows the rule of thirds and all the jazz, but she choose to break all the conventions in a very unimpressive way.
Absolutely, the artists that worked on these movies are some of the best in the world for a reason. But even the most talented artists still need time to perfect their shots
I really think they redesigned Star purely to make it more marketable and producable as plushies or toys. A shapeshifter would be the perfect representation of pure creative spirit.
Maybe have him start out as a bouncing ball in his introduction before making him a tiny shapeshifter man, kinda evoking TinkerBell in terms of size and the vibes, like a tiny fairy star. Boom! Problem solved. Marketable, fun, and interesting!
Yeah, I agree. Maybe his reasoning is what the animators justified things to themselves with but that is a marketable plushie design if I've ever seen one
@mackenziewoloschuk7375 making him a bouncing ball would also make sense as an animation reference. Learning how to animate a bouncing ball is once of the first things you'll learn when studying animation
yeah :/ honestly though i think it would have worked very well to have both. i haven’t watched the movie yet so idk really how the character is portrayed but i think he could start out as the marketable star design and then still be a shapeshifter like originally planned, and then go back to the star form when he needs to not be seen or smth
The animation is well made but I think the biggest issue people, including myself have is the art style. The characters really don’t look that different from characters that were in tangled, frozen, Encanto, Moana, ext. just with cel shading. which would’ve been fine three or four years ago. But in a world where more and more movies are adopting their own unique styles with spiderverse, the bad guys, Mitchells versus the machines, nimona, puss in boots, and mutant Mayham. People have realized they’re kind of tired of the art style Disney usually uses for their 3-D movies. In a world where it seems like everyone is starting to innovate and do something special in the animation industry it just makes Disney look stagnant in comparison
The lighting for much of the daytime scenes being flat and even also desaturates the image too much. Older films didn’t suffer as much, and also weirdly had better lighting effects like rim lights, which would’ve made it so much better. No motion blur aside it also lacks a lot of squash and stretch as far as I see.
@@keeneyong6580 I noticed the lack of saturation, too! I've been recording clips and cranking up the saturation, and it's like I'm seeing the real intended product. The clothes look much better, and Star is a lot brighter.
It would have been SO great so if Disney went back to their old 2D style (something like Snow White, Tarzan, even Beauty and the Beast). Wish just looks like it was rushed. The art style they used for magic is genuinely so lovely, I don’t understand why they didn’t just fully commit.
@@YourLadyNumbYourMentalPain The issue is having to explain so much to a regular person with no knowledge of any of this to begin with. If you have to explain to someone why something is good but have to go so in depth and pull from things they might not know or understand, it becomes harder and harder for the common person to enjoy. Since they would logically need all this knowledge and information to enjoy the thing they're watching. It becomes less about the product they are watching and becomes all about the information most people don't bother to care about. And while you and I might enjoy something like that, to the general public, they'll quickly become bored, confused, annoyed and simply disinterested. And it's very cleae that from the reception of the movie that none of these facts really resonated/captured the audiences attention like disney thought it would. Its not really about someone coming off as a jerk or anything of the sort.
Yeah, this hit me especially with the explanation about the Star. Really cool explanation, but to someone just learning this, it also kinda sounds like an excuse for them going with the simpler, more merchandisable, and (to many reviewers, it seems) less manifestly creative design. I have mixed feelings about this film simply because I'm sure many people worked very hard on it, yet I cannot tell the difference in result between a creative choice and an uninspired one.
While in line at the theater, I saw the giant poster/standee for Wish as my first exposure to the film. I joked that they designed the main character to sell old Isabella (Encanto) and Raya dolls that they repurposed.
@Imbatmn57 Aurora and Cinderella almost did(Aurora wore mostly blue, and while Cinderella's infamous dress was originally white, they changed it to blue to make sure they weren't just selling 6 year old girls a wedding dress), but from what I've heard, the reason Asha has a purple outfit is actually to reference the Fairy Godmother. Which doesn't actually work cuz the Fairy godmother actually wears more blue than purpleish blue like Asha, the claim only works when Asha wears a cloak that is just the Fairy Godmothers. But yeah, Asha's design, while I love the hair, is clearly reused, I even joked she looked like Isabella to my brother when we saw the standee poster for her lol
This is such a comprehensive deconstruction of the critiques to this movie, while still critiquing it yourself from an educated point of view. I never would have ever considered how the star is an homage to bouncing ball animation and that is honestly brilliant- I still have my gripes with the story but you’ve effectively proven that this movie had a lot of love visually put into it
So glad to hear that you enjoyed this! When I heard Chris Buck make the connection to the bouncing ball, everything clicked for me, it’s a brilliant homage. But yeah it’s far from a perfect movie, but to say it is “made by AI” is a disservice to the animation teams that probably put hundreds of hours into this movie.
@NoTheRobot I thought the AI point was not regarted to the art but the storyboard. Yeah people didn't like the watercolor style because it just felt off a bit. I am also glad they tried something new. But I am mostly just not understanding any of the story line... I live ashes design and texture and I just loved the magic from the king animated like they choose to do☆ art is diffrent but amazing but story and Musik sucked sadly dragging the artstyle down as well
@@NoTheRobot I'm not sure I would call it a "brilliant" homage, if *not a single person* is able to see it without being told about it first. It's a brilliant *idea,* but very very poorly executed. I admittedly don't know much about animation, but I do know something about cooking and baking. A chocolate sponge cake can be a brilliant idea, but if everyone thinks it's a mudcake (and points out how much better it would have been as a third type of cake) then obviously I did something wrong along the way.
@@NoTheRobot Personally I think the ball thing is an excuse considering how it does not invoke the animation exercise at all. Thats almost like saying the star is an homage to pokemon because pokeballs are spheres and so is the star. Just because something is a sphere doesn't make it a "reference." Chris Buck is going to say things that protect his team just sayin
Honestly I think my only problem I had with this animation was just the design of the characters *still* look like they could be plopped into tangled, frozen, Encanto and Moana. But when you look at a lot of other Disney movies, the character designs are much more unique. 🤷♀️
Yes they all look the same now and its all about a message rather than a story. All jokes are derived of a non human object or animal behaving in a human way. yawn.
I’m not necessarily defending Disney here, but I think it all comes down to the medium they’re using. A lot of the more unique character designs were from when they solely used 2d animation where they had a lot more flexibility with designs than they do with 3d animation. If they keep going for the hyper realistic/cartoony style they have right now that is.
the biggest issue I had with it is that that "watercolor" look, did not read as watercolor to me. And that's pretty bad considering I paint with the stuff daily. Instead it read as flat cell shading found in games like team fortress two where there is a severe lack of dynamic textures and lightings. If they wanted a watercolor look they should have looked at how the game Gris did its animation.
Thank you! I’m a watercolorist and painting in watercolor is arguably ALL ABOUT light and shadow. The lack of value and shadow makes a watercolor look bad and it makes this movie look bad too. Like Christ, did they ever LOOK at a good watercolor painting before??
I compare it to that Gwen and her dad scene from AtSV, where it has watercolor style. This movie defintely looks different than that. That's me saying as a rather beginner watercolor artist. Rather they look like those cursed unfinished 3d renders weve seen in behind the scenes.
What baffles me is that paperman and feast look better than Wish does? I feel like the issue is they didn't take enough of a risk, I imagine the method they used for this semi-painterly style was simply easier to do than an entire movie in the paperman artstyle or say, Klaus from netflix, so they took the easy way out. Which they have no excuse to be doing if this was meant to be a homage. Cuphead is an incredible homage to 1930s animation, because it took an incredible study of history and an incredible amount of otherwise unnecessary labor, and an incredible amount of dedication-- it was a feat of craftsmanship deserving of respect! And this line of work, animation, it is a CRAFT! The more expertise applied to it, the more it is worth. The positive aspects of the art style they chose for wish, besides perhaps the magic effects, is simply... the bare minimum I expect from someone who learned animation. Yes, I would hope you know how to exaggerate expression, push poses, but if you are supposedly the best animators in the business I need you to WOW me. Like in Roger Rabbit, where they famously showed off by having them bump the lamp so the light would be hard to animate. If you're so good at this-- do something impressive! " Oh, it was too hard" Yes! That's what makes it deserving of respect! Do you want an award or don't you? Try harder! And I don't blame the animators for that, not remotely, I'm sure its purely the higher ups restricting them from really doing anything that takes time-- they should have planned for a 100 year anniversary movie back at the 90 year anniversary frankly, but when I criticize the company I am talking to whoever is responsible for the mistake, whoever it may be.
I agree, it's like they just didn't commit to anything in particular. It's like they're made a 3D animated movie like they've done in the past years and then put a painterly post-processing effect on it. It's not really "the Pixar look" but then it's also not exactly obviously stylised.
@@evilsharkey8954Dragon Prince is probably trying to emulate Japanese animation, where the preferred paint for cel shading and backgrounds was gouache, which is frequently what people say when they talk about watercolor in animation.
I'm not mad at the artists, I'm mad at who wrote the story. Animators are great, looking at King Magnifico they clearly put a lot of attention to detail. But the story... Horror.
@GuineaPig361 I find incredibly problematic how the hero is said to be the villain and banished forever for being good. The rest passes mostly unnoticed.
The lack of interesting textures and lighting made Wish look like an episode of a Disney Junior Princess show. Might as well have been a special of Sofia the First.
Omg I came here from watching the Short to say this! It took me about halfway through the movie to get past the art style. I'm not an animator, so I didn't have the words to articulate it other than "it felt like I was watching a kid's channel or a tv special". This video (and many of the comments) explain it so well.
My problem with the animation style is the backgrounds and characters don’t look seamless at all. It looks like they are two different styles, or were drawn separately. Which is technically true, but that shouldn’t be as obvious. I know there’s no motion blur, but they should have added some sort of seam or clipping layer to make the movie more consistent.
Actually, THE BACKGROUNDS were one of the technical higlights, and if you think about, it can technically work by adding hand drawn animated characters, makes sense?
The backgrounds in wish feel so flat and uninspired. Theres no little details to make the environments look lived in or natural unless specifically interacted with by the characters. The colors and values match the characters too much leading to the image feeling flat overall with neither being too detailed or flat whereas old films had flat cell shades characters on top of very detailed backgrounds so both stood out against each other. With having everything have the same slight-watercolor-overlay texture, it feels uncanny and flat.
I had a popular TikTok about the distinct issues with the songs because I’m a musician and a lot of people were mentioning these myths about the animation in my comments. I’m so glad you took the time to make this nuanced view, it’s exactly what I was trying to explain to people (without the animation background) in my comments and failing to do!!
I saw your video!! And yes I did see some people say in your comments that the movie looks like it was made by AI. I feel like some of the people discussing myths about the songwriting in these comments would do well to watch your video too 😆
Ahh yeah that’ll happen haha I had a video go viral about working on the Flash and how the bad CGI is from systemic issues and I’m pretty sure the filmmakers saw that too. That’s just the nature of posting our opinions on the internet, at the end of the day it’s still public and anyone can see it, including the people we spoke about.
@@NoTheRobotbut what if it was done by people using AI? Many people seem to believe that the lyrics of many of the songs seems off because of the lyrics that seem so nonsense that AI was involved when writing the overall song.
@@huynguyen3953 The writer of one of the songs explained it was written as a love song and then repurposed for the movie in a completely different context by disney, so that explains a lot of these songs feeling out of place: they literally are. It doesn't make them bad song, but they're just not right for the scenes/story
@@huynguyen3953If I remember right, they had people who were well-trained in pop music and not musical theater do the music for this movie. Pop music has its place, but this decision was like choosing a square peg for a round hole. And the fact that musical theater is Disney's bread and butter makes this decision even more baffling
This was a very insightful perspective of the movie. At first I was like, “ this movie’s animation looks…not bad, but off.” Now I kind of get why I might think that. I still think some things are still too off, like some spots it looks like the characters are on/in a stage play with the backdrop painted behind them. it feels like there is no sense of depth ( like the characters are quite literally going to run back and just smack the flat surface). the characters and backgrounds, to me, don’t mesh well. But in all honestly if the story, characters, and songs were a lot better. I think people would be more open to the experimentation of the animation.
I think you're right on the money. The thought of "let's make the backgrounds look like the old 2D watercolor backgrounds from 100 years ago" is honestly a great idea. But in executing it perfectly, it ends up making the background... look like a flat piece of 2D artwork. Like they succeeded in creating this effect so well that it kinda works against them when meshed with 3D characters. I'm happy they're finally open to the idea of trying new things tho, they took a risk and it didn't pay off but I'd rather have that then the same old Frozen aesthetic yet again.
I fully agree on the animation. The movement is actually very good and the use of squash and stretch is apparent! Sadly it's not just the lighting that makes it appear to be TV animation. They claim they wanted to give it a watercolor look, and in the backgrounds, they mostly succeed! But they don't put as much of that same stylization into the characters, and not to the same degree in every shot. Some shots you can see a slight line and a bit of a gradient. You can see that stylization, though it's subtle. Other times it's not there at all, and the models look matte and unfinished. Watercolors also often have a textured look, thanks to the paper, and that's not really existent in the finished character renders. Additionally, they could have used cell shading to harken back to older animation, but didn't do so. They didn't push the style, and as a result, they got the worst of both worlds.
you just pointed out the issue i had with the whole 'watercolor style' thing!!! there's no TEXTURE!!! watercolor is a medium that doesn't work on anything but paper, and paper has texture! even if you're putting watercolor on smooth stuff like printer paper, any artist will tell you that the paper still warps, rises and dips, which causes the paint to collect in some areas and slide off others. it's this lack of control that makes watercolor so unique and beautiful and gives it that 'watercolor' look. i wouldn't have had any clue at all that they were attempting to imitate watercolors because it's all just smooth and even, not even a still png texture overlay. it's so crazy to me that they call this watercolor, and people are calling it watercolor when it doesn't even look like it, even to an artist who uses watercolors.
I really appreciate what you did in this video, it really takes some guts to explain these details without just going "wish is bad, guys" . And that made the video way more enlightening. I'm glad i came across your channel
So glad you appreciated that! It’s so easy to take cheap shots at this movie without being analytical about WHY this movie is the way it is. I didn’t want to be snarky and cynical like everyone else about this movie, so I’m happy that my objectivity came across. Thanks for the kind words! 😁✌️
My general understanding was that most people were accusing the writers of using A.I, not the animation itself, but I do appreciate the explanation as to why the animation looks cheap. It hadn't occurred to be that motion blur helped so much when it comes to TV vs Film animation, so thats good to know
thank u for this 😭 when u see how talented and passionate so many of the disney animators are in works like the frozen 2 behind the scenes documentary, it makes me sad when people just attack stuff they actually know nothing about under the shield of "big corporation bad". i mean, there are individual people who are artists working on the tiny and necessary details of this stuff from start to finish. even if the overall work needed a more compelling story (and disney movie dept overall needs MAJOR and QUICK fixing right now), it still disheartens me to see that sort of misguided / bandwaggony bashing, lol. i sound dramatic but it's a broader trend i swear
I don't think anyone believed the _visuals_ were made by AI, that's just stupid. AI can't be this consistent yet. What people are accusing it of is being _written_ by AI, which I wholeheartedly believe.
Even with the set being evenly lit, my issue is that there is so little contrast between things in the foreground and background. In many shots, the overall tone of a character that is the focus of the shot is almost exactly the same as assets in the background or in a matte painting. Even if you're going for the "2D watercolor look", artists always created some contrast between foreground and background objects so that characters would "pop" and there was some depth to the scene. Like literally just up the saturation and contrast of tones of the characters and this movie would be so much better visually.
Disney (as a studio) invented the multiplane camera, they KNEW how to make different layers in background and characters since Bambi (who has absolutelly beautiful background art and lighting technique). This one just looks flat and every space feels claustrophobic.
The fact they were going for water color and ended up with the flattest, clay blob animation style baffles me. Like the only thing they took from water colors is that the colors are muted that's it. It takes what should be a loose and imprecise style and turns it into the most sterile thing imaginable.
While I will be the first to sing the praises of this wave of new, experimental art styles that Spiderverse arguably kicked off, I do also worry that it’ll inadvertently get simplified to ‘make CGI look like 2D’, when there’s so many other places to take CGI than just variations on toon shading. Like, sometimes if you want the 2D look so badly, it’s worth considering just _doing it hand-drawn._ CGI can do photorealistic lighting and surfaces, that’s one of its amazing strengths. And you have movies like Rango, for example, that leaned hard into a very gritty, tactile appearance in a way that felt distinctly un-Pixar and that very few big CG films have tried since. Why not make a CG film that uses photorealistic rendering, but everything is lit and staged like a community theatre production, complete with props clearly made from painted up plywood and backgrounds that are obviously canvas curtains? We could have an animated film rendered to look like a stained glass window come to life, or a Lotte Reniger-esque shadow play! The possibilities are infinite, which is why I don’t want the creativity things like Spiderverse and Arcane have helped unleash to end with the industry sinking into yet another visual rut.
I disagree so much with this-but it’s not really with you personally. It’s just I’m an indie game developer and I’m so excited with the possibility of making a game that looks exactly like 2D art. 2D art is my favorite style. And it’s awesome that we can more easily bring 2D art to life using new tools. Artists still design the characters. It’s just we can bring them to life in a new way. I don’t think 2D artists will ever be replaced. Their toolset will probably just expand. And they’ll be working in tandem with others such as modelers. But-basically even in the indie gaming sphere there is so much resistance to using the new tools. I find that lack of creative innovation to be disappointing. You shouldn’t look at it as “big companies will someday make this copy paste and boring”-well, you’re right, but you know what companies literally will do that with anything. Even in 2D art. For example Disney is notorious for reusing 2D art from prior movies and tracing over it for their new 2D movies. (Example: Snow White dancing with dwarves and that was traced over in Robin Hood for dancing night party scene) But, there will always be people who do make creative art. And new tools open the door for MORE creatives to make beautiful projects. You’re going to get more artistic works, not less. Because it’s more accessible.
@@Pangie12 Thanks for replying! I really appreciate hearing your perspective, and I actually completely agree with you. I hope that it didn’t come off like I at all dislike CG styled like 2D art. Quite the opposite, I’m hugely enthusiastic about that approach and all the wonderful stuff that can be done with it. As both a 2D and 3D animator I was practically squeaking with delight in my cinema chair throughout both Spiderverse movies, getting to see things visually realised in ways I’d either always hoped someone would try, or had straight up never anticipated could be done. The concern in my comment was not “oh no, I hope they don’t make more CG movies, tv and video games inspired by 2D art”. It was “I hope that we also explore even further than that”. Like, let’s make sure we don’t make this a dichotomy between two predefined looks, when instead we could be looking at each film and asking ourselves ‘what style would be the best way to bring this specific story to life?’. That could be something fairly subtle and familiar, or maybe every character in the film is twisted out of colourful neon tunes like signage in downtown Tokyo. Whatever suits that project. I think one of my worst fears is for the narrative around this to get flattened into some kind of ‘the chad Spiderverse-style vs the virgin Pixar-style’ thing. Which sounds like a silly thing to worry about, but I’ve watched ‘Calarts style’ become an insult people throw at cartoons they don’t like. Comment sections on movie clips continue to trot out this ‘practical effects vs visual effects’ argy-bargy that can get genuinely venomous and divorced from the reality of actual filmmaking. Teenage artists are relentlessly bullying each other on Tumblr and TikTok over which colour palette or way of drawing noses is cringe this week. People can get……. weird… about art styles. Maybe I’m too preemptive here. Almost certainly, actually. So I definitely understand your reaction to my first comment. I guess my ‘potential-for-petty-tribalism-to-spoil-a-wonderful-thing’ senses have gotten dialled up pretty high after all that I’ve been through and seen 😅. I can’t wait to see where indie developers like you take 2D-esque graphics in the future! I dabble in making games / real-time graphics myself, and the potential is there for so many cool, unique styles to make their way onto screens. So good luck with it, and stay curious!
@@joa1401 Oh no, as I hopefully said a little bit--I knew you had nuance and this comment of mine was mainly speaking from others I recently worked with. There's essentially good and bad with everything. 2D models can be done with little creative innovation or with lots. I'm more of mindset that 2D art will always be there and I think it in some ways might grow as an industry. I know that might sound surprising, but essentially modelers will need 2D artists to create the original design of the characters. That includes designing all the facial expressions, clothes, etc. It's a lot of concept art. And they will likely be involved in some games/movies directly going over the models--2D artists could learn how to do that. There's a lot of independents like me who are now hiring artists for the very first time in our lives because it's worthwhile for us to do so. I did hire one artist for my project so far. And they're designing all my characters. Which, BTW, I never would have been able to hire an artist before--there's no way because I wouldn't be able to afford to. But now, independents are hiring artists--there's more work available for artists. And even in my project the demand for 2D art is growing. My plans have shifted to requesting more and more art from the artist--which I am paying for. For example, originally planned for just one outfit for characters but now I need two outfits, etc. I think 2D artists are going to get a boom in demand as more people make games/films in that style now that it's a feasible possibility.
7:45 I'm going to call out that take: The issue with Wish's visuals is that it didn't push the medium into any specific direction and only went with "generic" while also having almost no original or unique cinematography to help bolster the feeling they are going for. Frozen 2, for instance has some REALLY good cinematography at times and can be quite atmospheric. Wish, on the other hand, has almost ZERO atmosphere or truly creative decisions. Every potentially creative decision seems to be weighed down by some sort of demand to not be "too creative". Saying they tried to combine "Tangled with Fantasia" is a disservice to both movies as both of those had much more distinctive art styles that pushed the medium of animation into a specific and innovative direction. Nobody would take any moment from Wish and compare it favorably to "The Firebird Suite", "The Rite of Spring", or "Night on Bald Mountain". Wish's greatest sin is that is doesn't try to be anything specific and has no identity. Story? Barely there. Characters? No very interesting. Animation? Technically good character animation, but the characters themselves aren't memorable so it doesn't matter if the performance is good. Cinematography? Almost no camera moves (could be intentional) but also no atmosphere. Visual originality (conceptual designs) also not very interesting to look at. It shouldn't take one very long to figure out a myriad of more visually interesting ways for this movie express itself, but it decided to take the quick and simple route for almost all of them.
As an animator, I disagree about the animation being good. Many of the performances were pretty pedestrian. I watched it with some animator friends and we groaned out loud every time a character did a 'W' pose or used a point, some extremely basic acting choices (often seen in TV animation too!). We also caught some suspiciously repetitive beats, even across neighbouring shots! I know the anim team had extremely limited time to complete the show, so i can't blame them for going with these basic choices, that's on the execs. But I can still say the animation performances were generally...pretty subpar for a Disney movie, and supposedly the best animators in the world. all that on top of the horrendous rendering and lighting style choices, poor dialogue, and the unmemorable songs. Thanks for this video though, I think you really gave a good overview of why someone not versed in the industry would be put off by the film!
Disney has a lot of stuff going on in the background, and I feel like they would get a lot more appreciation if they advertised it more. I got a lot of ads for the actual movie and plot, but if it focused more on the 100 Year Celebration, it might’ve been realized why it was good
Yeah, it was really jarring seeing the movie and realizing that it was more about celebrating 100 years of Disney than it was about telling a solid fairytale story. There are so many details in this movie, and it’s clear that the crew works really hard on it. I think if they were upfront about this movie being more like Fantasia than Tangled, it might’ve done a little better.
Better story idea with much better plot twist: Asha wants to release the Wishes so every wish is granted And the Audience is shown how evil the Sorcerer is. But then it's revealed that Asha is the Daughter of the Sorcerer, and it's just in her rebellious phase and the Sorcerer isn't evil at all. 😅 But oh snap, the Wishes are released, and even the bad ones, causing the Kingdom to fall into chaos. And Asha need to use the Master Wishing Star to undo all the Wishes.
I just found this channel from your Insta & love your analysis. I really like the way you describe how the ANIMATION itself is incredible, it’s more about the subconscious associations we have with the art style/the way the final concept was realized-I haven’t heard this argument yet & I agree.
thank you so much for this, ive gotten really tired of the entire discussion of this film being 'disney bad lol' when it actually had a lot of (albeit squandered) potential
All this time I've been like - "There's nothing wrong with the animation, it's very expressive and fluid." The issue is the very flat lighting that recreates a flat 2D look. Except it did not go hard enough. So it's in uncanny valley between true cell-shading and luxe 3D. They should have gone cell-shaded if that's what they wanted.
"Uncanny valley" - spot on! It sits right in the middle, looking as it lacks artistic direction and visually it reads neither 3D nor 2D nor watercolor.
As an animator as well, wish's only sin is being very bland looking in color in a lot of scenes, and the characters being kinda flat (and i mean in texture)
Maybe it would've looked less cheap if they had leaned more into the watercolor aesthetic. They could've mixed 2d and 3d and added brush strokes or something. Similiar to the beginning of Across the Spiderverse.
I had been mulling over this very thing while watching this video. If they wanted to prioritize making a series of references rather than tell a cohesive and self-contained story, then they could has just? not also tryed to tell a cohesive and self-contained story? Fantasia was one of my favourite Disney movies as a child.
Personally, i find the idea of not simulated magic effects it's brillant, it perfectli matches with the feel of traditional animation that also puss in boots and spiderman are triyng to replicate. I don't think that the absence of motion blur it's an issue, also spiderman across the spiderverse didn't have it. I think that the main issue is the lighting: while the other 2 films keep a 2d look, they still have global illumination, the lighting is still realistic. In wish i don't see global illumination or ambient occlusion, the light doesn't bounce, there are no shadows. I know that they want a low contrast, but i think you can keep a low contrast look even if the scene isn't illuminated uniformly. This type of lightning and this pipeline makes the result look like a 3d software preview. There's a scene in the trailer at 0:26 that looks almost like blender's modelling viewport. Having a watercolor look does not imply to remove the illumination. They should have changed the post processing effects, instead of the lighting. Whithout global illumination everything is fake and soulsess
I do agree that saying the animation is bad is an exaggeration. I personally don't even think the randering is bad, or it looks unfinished. it does look odd because it is not even 3D nor 2D. When we see animations like The Bad Guys, Spiderverse, arcane, we can see it is 3D animation, with a coat of paint that looks like tradicional and 2D animation. Wish looks like it was stuck in the middle, and even thought I know the team did their best, it looks like they didn't bother to give an extra spark also, I see what you are trying to do, but saying they took a risk with this movie is not right either. if anything, they hold on everything that worked in the past 10 years and throwed references from the past 100 years. They took more risks in the concept art: a Romance that it was doomed to fail between Asha and Star boy, a villain couple, bringing back 2D animation. Those were risks they thought of making but decided not to. Yes we wanted a original story from Disney, we also wanted the come back of fun and evil villains. but that is not what we got. we got a studio trying to give us what the public wanted but not being able to reach a compromise with what they want. I don't think there is nothing to celebrate, not even as animators fans. at least not from Disney.
Just because it was intentional doesn't mean it wasn't bad or ugly, you can intend to make something that looks ugly, it doesn't stop being ugly because it was the intended objective. I also disagree heavily on the star, cheap marketable plushy is the vibe it gives, the human Star character might've been more interesting for the dialogue, and looked cooler
The animation style is not a problem. The problem with Disney the last several years is style over substance. The movies look great but often have no soul.
Algorithm brought me here, and honestly hearing it from an animator's perspective was very interesting! As you mentioned, the film needed the audience to have any kind of animation knowledge, and I imagine most of the audience does not. I personally would have wanted to see more distinctive styles of animators themselves, such as the Milt Kahl head swaggle, which is unfortunately hard to replicate fram what I've heard. If they wanted to pay homage to their animation legacy I feel like adding distinct and classic Disney animator's trademark styles would have been a better move. This is all coming from someone who has not watched Wish so I don't know if any of that is present. All of this word wall is to say this wan an enjoyable and informative video! Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
maybe instead of just turning off motion blur, they should have also gone hard on the squash and stretch and smear frames. Instead of just having the exact same animation style of tv animation, it would've been its own unique style. or y'know, they could've just made it 2D.
A feeling I get out of this is that Disney isn't exactly "Disney" anymore. Through the last of their 2D productions, "Disney" defined traditional animation: 12 principles, polished drawings, smooth keyframes in service of a fairy tale. There were different periods to that where the processes changed, but Disney style as a kind of standard-setter came up all the time when comparing traditional animation versus limited animation. Fans of limited animation had to make the case for that aesthetic being more than just "cheap", that an approach based primarily around strong storyboarding could be more visually compelling than just showing a lot of frames of motion. However, to this day, there's a large audience that still wants "Disney", traditional Disney, with everything as smooth as possible. And I think current Disney is caught in between knowing they have that audience, but also that the industry is doing other things now and they should try to stay current. And whichever way they take their aesthetic, they'll be damned for it.
I really appreciate how we, as a society, are able to separate the crew, skill, and talent from the execs and are capable of recognizing executive decisions stepping on those creative toes
Hey thank you, I appreciate you checking this out! It’s difficult to have a nuanced conversation about this movie without a brigade of people dunking on this movie. Like yes I know it’s not the best, that’s why I’m trying to analyze what happened. Anyway, thanks for the comment!
@@NoTheRobot Ur welcome! I also love learning about animation (aiming to be a storyboard artist someday). But aside from that I joined the wish bandwagon late and I actually thought the animation was alright. Not bad at all in terms of disney. I think the writing, corperate meddling and the whole environment around the movie ruined a lot of the charm this COULD have. I also love the optimistic addition at the end, it didn't feel like it was added in last minute but it felt like something that nobody's talked about. Sorry if im rambling I just thought this was awesome
@@GuineaPig361 Yes and they should have kept the great ideas and they should have made the 7 dwarfs appear in the movie and make the characters be the characters instead of just being sad excuses for references.
In some scenes it also looks a lot like that cell shaded Prince of Persia Game because of the use of fake outlines and, like you said, the flat colors with almost no dark shadows.
Honestly if I was on charge of this movie I would’ve done this: First: keep the concept story! We were robbed from the Star Boy and Asha, evil couple, disney going back to its roots but keeping it modern. Second: I would keep the animation BUT only for one reason: it would show how Asha is living a fantasy that she is projecting it to be better than what it actually is, and when she realises what the place she lives in. Then the colour scheme would change immediately into much darker tones, the pastels would go much darker than what Asha originally perceived.
The animation was actually fine, after watching the movie I didn’t understand why ppl are calling it AI generated, cuz that’s a stretch. My problem was with the story(I mean, it’s meh), cuz they rly had all the tools to take it in a whole different(better) direction but it just fell flat for me in a way. Overall, it’s not a bad movie. Just.. fine. I do appreciate the animators, always do. I know how hard that job is!
The last section here interests me because of the vid i recently watched about the Lackadaisy miniseries -- which was enthusiastically crowdfunded and not from an existing studio. Turned out great, and the behind-the-scenes details of how they inspired each other into greatness was heartwarming.
I get it supposed to look watercolored, but they should have made really itterated on the look before going into production, because anyone could tell you this does not look as good as it could look. I guess since its 3D the shaders were made during production, and maybe the rendering/shaders department ran into issues and couldn't iterate further?
my brain couldnt quite grasp that it was 3D, because of the- dare i say- flat colors and little shading in the clothes folds, and it hurt me to look at. likely just me, but still
It's kind of ironic because the actual legacy of Disney is to tell good and entertaining stories for the whole family, but they were so wrapped up in their narcissism that they wanted to see who could have the most clever reference instead of having the most important reference a good story that touches the heart
I'm a bit late to the party, but something to keep in mind is that a story is more than just the character arc or art direction. There are a dozen different aspects that all have to mesh together - such as what your theme is going to be, how each character develops over time, the underlying message you're trying to send to the audience with specific scenes, and what kind of characters you want overall (i.e. a relatable villain or a purely evil one). Writing stories is incredibly difficult when you know what you're doing, almost like a concerto in music. Unfortunately, the average person knows when a story is bad, but not why it's bad.
IMO the movie overall really felt rushed. Animation of main characters in itself was great, no doubt, although the absence of motion blur in itself was weird. But as soon as you look at the backgrounds, they are really inanimated : characters in the village dance scene all follow the exact same movements, in an orderly grid, and then just stop moving at all, while the action keeps on going. Lighting is not only plain, it's also glitchy, in quite a noticeable manner ! The environment lacks developement, and we have thus little connection to it. And the story moves waaay too fast, too. Asha's arc feels OK though, she gets what she deserves, and not what she wants at the very beginning.
For all the work that went into the animating the characters and movement, and all the little callbacks - Disney unfortunately keeps sticking to the most uninspired character designs that only get blander with time. The other movies mentioned here experiment with bold, colours, exaggerated and eyecatching styles, while this one looks like Frozen 5
Absolutely gread analysis! Only thing, I feel the 'Watercolour look caused the flat look' is short sighted. Watercolour can be very rich in saturation and contrast and many projects have previously shown there is nothing stopping this from carrying over to 3D. High level art direction or possibly management have decided against it.They also decided against any paper structures, ink splots etc. while committing to a rather high framerate. So, it's not the idea, it is once again the execution that hurt the look there. Knowing what the LookDev team is capable of at the studio, I am sure they were just as disappointed to not go all out as we are.
I feel like the problem when you are making a ton of references to other movies, is you have to be careful that your audiences arent just left thinking, yeah I wish I was watching literally any of those works right now.
i like the nuanced view of the movie. i honestly didn't think it looked that bad when it first came out, especially when people were complaining about the "animation", so hearing that the ANIMATION itself isn't bad makes sense
The more I think about animation, the more I want to get into it. My only block is patience and fear of it being too difficult, but I really REALLY want to get into it.
Lack of motion blur can also make live action look cheap. Some film makers have experimented with films above 24 FPS and unintentionally created that soap opera effect which people associate with bad TV shows.
@@NoTheRobot thanks for sharing a great perspective! It encapsulated some of my feelings I had but didn't really understand I had? If that makes sense? I never got the hate for the look, I thought it was interesting and a cool way to try and capture the old style with the new 3D animation approach Disney takes. I have little kids and so we've been watching old and new favourites as a family for a while now, and the visuals capture, imo, the essence of the old and new together really well. There's still some level of awkwardness that I couldn't put my finger on, aside from writing which I really disliked, and I think it is a bit of that preconceived notions bit you identified. All this said I think the fact we're revisiting so many films as a family, the preconceptions as you point out weren't as big a hurdle but just something in the back of my head I couldn't put words to. But knowing that, and rewatching clips, I think it's easier to set that inherent bias aside and look at it with fresh eyes. I think, if the film was written better, and if they had been able to somehow clip the modern expectations of 3D animated film off somehow (in the narrative maybe? I don't know) then it could have helped. I think the idea and the love letter to animation and it's evolution as you point out was good idea, but the execution is definitely lacking. But like you said, taking a chance and failing is better than by the numbers remakes and rehashes. I for one would prefer one of these efforts every couple years on the film roadmap instead of so many live action/animated remakes as often as they are.
i'm really happy with the note you ended on about how this shows their recognition of different styles other than just photo realism styles on the big screen!! yayyy
1:24 "Some of the most talented animators in the world work at Disney" At least when it comes to these animated, non-photorealistic movies, as well as Mickey Mouse Funhouse.
My main issues with the look of the film: 1. The colors look washed-out in a lot of the scenes, almost as if the saturation slider was turned down for normal scenes and turned back up for others. While changes in color saturation are a useful tool for visual storytelling, it makes most of the movie look bland 2. It wouldn't shock me that there are a lot of shots that did not fully finish rendering given the reason you mentioned that "Disney realized the 100th anniversary was coming up and they needed a movie to celebrate it" 3. As part of it possibly being rushed, I understand why 2D animation wasn't used as that would have taken longer than the 3D animation we got. I also have heard that the animators at Disney now don't have the skillset necessary for high-quality 2D animation, but that might just be a rumor. Regardless, it would have been a much better idea to focus on 2D animation for Wish, especially since more than half of Disney's history as an animation company has revolved around 2D animation
Honestly, if they wanted to celibrate the animation while putting the story to the side I don't see why we didn't get a new fantasia. A completely 3D fantasia could have been great imo
I get why the animation and shading are like this, but when I saw a compilation of Disney movies, I thought for a quick second they used incomplete footage when Wish came up 💀
Alright, I am halfway through the video and I already feel that you've somewhat misunderstood why everyone's so upset. Firstly, I get that the hard/soft shadows are an artistic choice, but there is no reason for the characters to be so dull that they blend in with the background. In Snow White, everything, from the backgrounds to the characters, is vibrant and interesting. Here, it just looks like those pre-production renders used for directive decisions. Secondly, if they wanted to avoid motion blur, they should've used at least some amount of smearing, which would help tie it all in with the hand-animated aesthetic. Their short 'Paperman' basically does all the same things you described in the video, yet it was actually loved by many as a very creative and interesting film with a distinct art style.
Idk, I think you're giving Wish too much credit. For one, you can’t possibly convince me the star was like that because it was inspired by the animation ball, rather than because it was easier to animate it that way (vs 2D) and it can be turned into a marketable plushie.
Look, there are movies I look at in awe, I can't even comprehend how did they make them. How much talent, skill and passion could one person have and not turn into a supernova right on the surface of our planet. So much energy they radiate. And some movies are... meh. I could do that. I see structure, I see hard work, I see no magic, just labor. And no, don't you dare tell me every project is just plan and labor. I see the difference very well. Tarzan, Brother Bear, Lion King were absolutely magical. They did the impossible and I'd never get used to such quality. It will always amaze me. Even if they made a thousand movies like these. But the new era cartoons are worse. They have no soul, only labor. Geometry. I can honestly say I'd expect this level from AI. If they told me Wish was made by AI, I'd shrug. Yeah, seems so. High quality, no mistakes, superb graphics... yawn. No soul, no deep emotions, just "some another cartoon". Pass, next. There's a reason why the projects I adore are somehow always dedicated to someone's memory. Cars, The Lion King... The Shawshank Redemption, The Dark Knight... As if for once a studio was given money and told "guys, do your best, no chains, no obligations before the producers, just all-in". No one was bothering the artists, no one demanded to "do like these other cool kids did". It's not about cheap. Wolfwalkers are cheap. Wish is very expensive, just crap. No memorable frames, no characters I'd fall in love with, villains or heroes. I don't care about ultra-HD and RTX and such. I want something real. Like the skills of Glen Keane, Aaron Blaise, Don Bluth or Tony Bancroft. They shine on any medium, in any color and any year - day 0 or 500 years from now. That's what I expect from the best animation studio in the world that's 100 years old and has billions to spare. Yes, for ONCE I'd expect them to go back to traditional animation, no matter how expensive it is. Even if it cost more than all Space-X put together. And it's not, it's 300 people working for 3 years, dammit. It's not as hard as landing on Mars. All they had to do was not burn all the bridges with the animators who sold them the best 30 years of their lives. Wish is a very well deserved disgrace. Just like the villain, Disney is a 100 years old crazy mage who decided to destroy everything it created for no good reason. Fine. Not much I can do but shrug. I had 0 control over it, after all, it's not my conscience that should ache.
This is a really interesting video and interesting to get an animators point of view. Just a side note though; the background music is a lil too loud and its kind of distracting.
I feel that, if they wanted to make a film that feels 2D, but used 3D rendering techniques they should have looked at films like (not kidding) that Tom and Jerry live action film from a few years back. But for whatever reason they didn't take it all the way there and ended up with some strange half-and-half between CG and hand-drawn that doesn't appeal to either's strengths.
As an animator myself... the final product looks incomplete, I wish Disney knew they are Disney and could make a 2D department again or work with other studios rather than keep trying to replicate 2D instead of doing it. I love Spiderverse, Puss and Boots, Bad Guys, etc, but it doesn't look as Disney is trying to do the same thing when it mimics 2D in recent years. And as a story lover, not to be rude, just my opinion, but I personally wouldn't applaud changing a character that could be developed with an original story for a marketable ball for the excuse of the bouncing ball, there are so many more ways to honor animation by how a character behaves and moves, they could have done so much more for this character than making him a ball to honor animation, like I imagine if he had a lot of smears if he moved floting by one side to another (the fact he is a special character could make the excuse to not make him look as the other water color characters if that was the issue), having him smoothly floating with satisfactory follow-throughs remainders of the classical Disney films, giving him that softness, make him a show of the 12 principles of animation, more than any other character, he could have more extreme expressions, etc, he is not a human, he could be more ethereal, his original story sounded very interesting and unique. Honestly, I repeat what I said in my other comment, is quite devastating imagining Disney, of all studios, never doing a 2D film ever again and just accepting 2D animation is dead for them when don't come to shows. I don't blame the animators working in the film.
I really appreciate your perspective on this, I feel like most commentary on this movie is just “The animation is so bad I hate this movie” and there’s little else that differentiates between different videos. Yours is really refreshing in comparison; you point out the flaws but also the good qualities and make sure to recognize the hard work people did put behind it even if it didn’t turn out good in the end
Thank you for actually pouring research into this video instead of pulling everything from assumptions. There's way too much misinformation spread around this film because of people's bias against Disney, instead of looking into the core root of the film's problems which honestly had less to do with Disney's micromanagement but of the creative team's confusion of what exactly the film should be: a tribute to Walt Disney Animation or its own thing? Wasn't just due to the usual disney micromanagement but because of a back and forth confusion with the creative team and producers of what exactly the film should be
Thank you for appreciating this, it’s so easy to dunk on this movie for clout without actually giving any helpful critiques or analyzing this film objectively. It was very hard to remain neutral, but defaulting to “Disney bad” is a very tired argument. I agree though, it was definitely more due to the fact that the team had little direction about what kind of movie they were making
YES DUDE!!!!!!!! I haven't seen Wish yet but that's amazing to see how studios not considering their modern audiences' biases are going to suffer. Context is key yet again! From what I can see here Wish looks gorgeous, it's too bad people are automatically assuming AI, but it's even worse that the characters/story don't hold up traditional filmmaking standards. Even something made on post-it notes can be emotionally captivating if done correctly.
There was definitely a disconnect between the animation style and the aesthetic that they tried to go for. They took a risk, and not all risks pay off, but I would rather see them experiment with the art style then produce yet another photorealistic animation that looks like Frozen.
Bullying a big studio that puts out meh stuff is fun but bullying individuals who have to make what the studio wants is very mean. My biggest gripe with this movie is the writing and why it was made, I think the story is lacking because it wasn't made to tell a story that simply had to exist but was made out of an obligation. There's a reason movies like Treasure Planet are growing popular, it's because people like the story and can tell there was a desire to truly TELL that story. I've seen the deleted storyboards (for Wish) and already it's far more interesting than the final movie because in the 3 minute intervals we are given a LOT.
Honestly the main gripe has nothing to do with the animation (but the way clothes warp like rubber instead of fold bothers me a lot), the writing bugs the hell out of me. i think the way some of the lyrics were written seem very redundant and inhuman. theres no chance in hell disney would ever use ai like that, but the fact that something like 'i let you live here for free; and i don't even charge you rent' was in the final cut is odd. the words sound awkward with no flow, or a flow that sounds clunky, unnatural, and definitely not the standard disney sets for it's music in general. it genuinely sounds like it could be an ai output, and that says something equally interesting and disappointing about this move in general. it makes me wonder what sort of groupthink or corporate overreach happened where this was not only a song in a major release, but the main one i've seen advertised by disney media. I know this isn't your area of expertise, and it certainly isn't mine, but it's been stuck in my mind for a while, wondering exactly what they were thinking with any of this. it feels utterly baffling to me, as someone outside the industry.
It’s not an AI output because ChatGPT was not invented when they wrote the script or the songs. I know this because animated films take up to seven years to make, and everything would’ve had to be written between 2020 and 2021 for their pipeline to be able to start production on this movie. These movies don’t take a year or two to make.
@@NoTheRobot i was agreeing with the fact it's just not possible it was ai written, im just saying it's already damning if theres so many people who think it might be. i fully agree with you here.
The animation was never the problem, the dull and dirty colors are what makes this look cheap. Despite being watercolor, everything looks so flat and dreary, kinda lifeless. I work in a graphic department of a small business, we design, produce and sell wrapping paper and gift cards. Our watercolor designs have so much more light and dark areas and the colors range from pastel to highly saturated with watercolor textures on top of clean, strong colors. We only use these "dreary" colors for simple backgrounds (Pantone 4k tones for example) and add our designs on top of these. Those dull colors can even work very well for children wrapping paper, but the designs still need to be colorful to contrast that unclean look. Long story short, if I didn't knew Disney was going for a watercolor effect, I honestly wouldn't have even seen it because it's way to subtle. It's missing texture and depth.
i can't really agree because although some scenes are expressive and well-animated, if you look closer especially at background characters, certain animations are pretty poorly done and snappy, and i'd argue the animation of shadows & such is part of animation. i mean i've literally seen ads for merge mansion knock offs that have just as good of animation if not better-looking than Wish. saying "but disney good. look at these fee instances where all the money in the world got us some well animated scenes" and "well they were going for a certain look people just think it looks cheap bc it looks like tv" doesn't really cut it. watercolor is an inherently blurry art style, so for one, the lack of smudging or blurring is a set back rather than a good intention. if they were fixated on the animation style of their older films, straight up going for 2d or those 3d styles that replicate 2d would've been far cry a better than "if we take out all the good parts of the animation, but keep the style the same, and makr the coloring slightly more watercolor-like, that'll be good" nah
the problem isn't "wish took risks that didn't pay off" the problem is "wish was unwilling to take risks so they only changed minor details that made it look like dogshit and that didn't pay off"
The lighting isn't the problem. The animations themselves look cheap because a lot of them have that rubbery bounce of an animated television show without the tiny nuances in movement that you'd see in a higher quality movie. The character models don't ever smear or distort the way you'd see in 2d animation, they just look like video game character models rigged for pre-set ranges of motion. Some of the important shots look a bit better but they don't make up for it
As a lover of animation and a artist, this is to me just fast fashion of movies. No detail, heart or soul! Just because you have big name creators still doesn't give it life. It's the love for the project and the hard work to implement detail for what your creating! The og 2D animations were made by people and for people wanting to change the world of movie making and storytelling. And More creative effort put in But 3D doesn't allow that relative experienceness it had back then. We saw what 3D can give us, and it's just copy and paste. We're moving too fast in technology that we're craving what we had back then. It's the lack or wanting to do somthing new, or the inspiration to do it. It's sad that me myself just want to have a small VCR TV and watch the old movies that made me smile then watch anything today. I just crave the warm familiarity from my childhood since the world is just so bleak. This is my opinion and I hope others share it too.
I don't necessarily think it's useful, helpful, or even true to say "2D good, 3D bad". There is good, creative animation to be found in both; and there is soulless copying and pasting to be found in both. Disney itself is notorious for tracing animation in their 2D films in the 60's and 70's (Robin Hood's night party dancing scene was traced from Snow White dancing with the dwarves, for instance). Hand-drawn animation and CGI are just tools, and like all tools they can be used well or they can be used poorly.
The best animated, and best looking show I have seen in YEARS was made for TV. Blue Eye Samurai combines 2D and 3D in such a seamless way that even without the incredible characters and storyline, the animation's beauty could carry the whole show on its own. That's how you do this "look" right.
This movie highlights a major issue I have with 3d animation and that is how much it henges on the final render. Even rough 2d pencil tests can be lively and charming, where a test 3d render of animation can feel stiff even if it's the same movement. The talent of the animation is not separated from the final render. You can see this a lot on things like the 11 second club where many really great 3d entrees don't get as much love as a equal or possibly weaker animation due to the lighting and textures not feeling as pleasing (not all the time obviously, but it happens). This movie has more problems than just this, but I think a lot more can be forgiven if the final render was different.
Alright y'all apparently I wasn't clear enough, even though it's the first thing I say in this video: the animation in this movie looks CHEAP. They (Disney leadership) made creative decisions to make it look a certain way, and those decisions were a BAD idea, which made it look CHEAP and BAD. I am NOT defending Disney's choices and saying "well it's actually good and you just don't get it", I'm just trying to not default to dunking on this movie by saying it's "woke" like every other video essay on this movie, and instead look at these creative decisions by the filmmakers objectively. I'm explaining WHY these creative decisions made this movie look like a TV show instead of a feature film by dissecting what "TV animation" even means. Explaining Disney's thought process does NOT mean that I'm defending their decisions, because I go on to explain why these decisions are misguided. And so I'm crystal clear, "misguided" is a synonym for "BAD." I'll do better in the future to be more clear about my feelings of the film I'm discussing, beyond saying it in the first sentence of the video.
Also for the last time, Magnifico isn't the good guy.
SO many bad (graphical) decisions in this.
* Skin textures (for the humans) looks too flat. (Could'a used some pores.)
* Lighting is so diffuse that this '3-D' movie looks flatter than (some) 2-D (animated) movies. Not one lonely, _distinct_ shadow for miles around.
* Magnifico looks like a _bleached_ , discount Dr Strange. Hair that's substantially lighter than your skin always looks freaky.
It's unfortunately common for a general audience to conflate artistic style, lighting, rendering and texturing as "Animation" when making these sorts of critiques, as opposed to the motion and the acting of the characters.
No? Really?
@@shuttittuppitt9355 I disagree with the statemment about pores. Photorealistic skin is not a style needed for something to look good. Especially when you merge looks into something resembling a 3D model hand painted with a brush. From the short film Saga of Bjorn to SpiderVerse and the new Turtles.
But yes, I agree, then there should be other texture instead - maybe more painterly. Cheers
(at)j.m.w.
The skin's pores don't need to be _exaggerated_ to look realistic. _Real_ skin (at least for young people) has only _slightly_ (visible) pores, but they're noticeable if you're close up. This movie shows us _lots_ of close ups of people's faces, but their skins almost always look (literally) _impossibly_ smooth. A _slight _ evel of texturing for their faces would've (probably) been enough to give their skin a smooth appearance without it looking _impossibly_ smooth.
By the way, I'm not criticizing the character _designs_ for not being realistic, only the overly smooth skin textures
I think the biggest problem with giving Asha what she wants is with her having no character development. In Moana, Moana did get what she wanted but with a lot of trial and error. She had to learn how to be a leader and fail at her end goal only to realize that she can do it. She lost her grandmother and had to learn that her ancestors are always with her. There's more that can be said but the main point is giving them character development if you want to give them what they want.
Usually the rule is they can get what they want but they must lose a part of themselves in the process
@@NoTheRobot yeah. Exactly. I don't feel that Asha lost anything. She wants and she gets. If her parents were the king and queen and they were both evil as originally planned, then it might have worked or if her grandfather died then maybe.
@@fierygamer582 quite frankly I feel like fighting against her own parents is a lot more thematically intriguing, seeing as she's a teenager, and at what point do most teenagers draw the line between loving their parents and obeying them, and recognizing their faults and refusing to stick by them? Asha would have to learn to defy her own parents not because she's in some rebellious phase, but because she feels they genuinely are doing more harm than good and she cannot in good faith stand by their decisions.
@@fierygamer582 I think that them being her parents or secretly her parents because both already seemed to have a very parental bond with her and it would explain a good reason why Magnifico lashes out at her when she starts making suggestions about the wishes that he thinks are going to hurt her and his people and he doesn’t want to lose his family again or his home
Don't compare the Masterpiece of Moana to this 😭
they should have just committed to 2D animation it would have been stunning and fitting as an actual homage.
Yeah I don't get why they didn't put together a team just to do one 2D animated movie since that's where they started. Maybe have it transition into 3D if you really want but a 2D film would have been really special for the 100th anniversary.
Blame Shrek. Since then, 2D movies started to fail. The Princess and the Frog was the last 2D animated movie not based on an existing 2D cartoon.
@@Wiimeiser while it was WINNIE THE POOH was the Last one, for NOW, and I have personally a musical Hand drawn Disney passion project in mind
I feel they should've commited to, well, something.
There's interesting choices but it's just a bit hard to tell what they're going for.
@Wiimeiser
Lilo & Stitch, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron, Spirited Away, SEVERAL Pokemon movies, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie all released after Shrek and are great 2D movies. Shrek also is in and of itself a fantastic movie. What the actual fuck are you talking about?
My beef with the star is that apparently, it was supposed to be animated in 2D, which would have been perfect as an homage to Disney's history, blending 2D and 3D animations. That plan was scrapped, and the source I read basically said it was because it would've been too hard. So instead, we have just 3D animation, as if Disney is saying that's the only part of its 100 year history worth celebrating.
it should be hard!!! that's what makes it stand out, the effort!!! augh disney just doesn't get it anymore.
Two words: Treasure Planet
yeah because Disney doesn't even have a 2D animation department anymore. like the only people currently employed at Disney are 3D animators, not 2D. why, you may ask? Michael Eisner. it's always Michael Eisner
@@THEO00900like Disney literally invented a way to merge 2D and 3D decades ago, but now it’s too hard for them to do? It’s like an admission of defeat
they literally did that with this movie@@SyntheticSpy
one of the issues i have with the drawing style is just how smooth it is. They went for a watercolor look but also didnt push it enough. Just a "safe risk" which ended up making the overall picture look incomplete
Yeah. Like if you want a ‘watercolour illo’ look, just look at The Mitchels Vs The Machines. All the parts of Wish I’ve seen look like they just added an outline and a paper texture instead of the more textural look MvsM has… Wish just isn’t quite brave enough to really push that it seems
It didn't even LOOK like how a watercolor being animated. I'd say it's a strawman argument to even bother reaching for that defense.
@@guyman1570 i think you can definitely see it in the way the background is drawn, though, the faded one-layer watercolour effect with marker lineart. At least it was the first thing I thought about when I saw it
@@sandcrab7984 Some of the backgrounds you mean maybe? It didn't quite got to that point of actually looking like a watercolor
@@guyman1570 yeah that’s fair
Another reason why the style looks so wierd is because of the limited shadows. Normally Disney animated films has very detailed shadows and half-shadows with detailed lighting, but here shadows are straight up absent on some part of the characters. Like Asha's hands lack shadows from fingers and many characters have limited shadows on their clothing. I suppose it was made to flatten the picture to make it more story book like but a result looks more like a poorly rendered video game. I get what type of impression the animation team was going for, but it obvious that the were not given enough time and resources. There's a twit from the amimator from the team of Wish, circulating around, where he says that the movie was made during huge layoffs and a lot of corporate pandering was involved. So I blame the upper management.
The film also suffers from poor directing, 90% characters are in the central part of the screen, breaking the rule of thirds. In the interview one of the directors, Fawn Veerasunthorn said that "out philosophy was whoever has power, is in the center of the screen" which sounds like a bullshit to me. Song sequence are filmed like a real Broadway song on a scene, making a lot of shots from the top and not utilizing free 3d camera enough.
I do understand for what they were going with the Star, but I would rathey they went with the early concept of a starboy shape-shifter. Asha lacks any strong emotional connection with ohter characters so interetion with then Star might've salvaged it. Sight. This film's script is a mess.
P.S. People are not saying thar the animation was done by AI, but rather that the script and the texts of the songs were written by it. Allegedly, if you ask ChatGPT to write a Disney movie script about the evil king, magical star and a female protagonist it will create something similar to the script of Wish. And the songs have some wierd lyrics, that are breaking both rhythm and the size. Look it up, it's a big Oof of a song texts.
Yes that's what I mean about the movie being evenly lit, it reduces the high contrast that you get from the shadows. The movie absolutely had issues with being made during a turnover period, I didn't want to get too far into that during the video but from what I heard they were scrambling to find animators.
As far as Star goes, the directors said that the Star Boy version was too similar to the Genie from Aladdin, which I do agree would have been too on the nose for Disney to go that route. I've seen plenty of people complain about the animation style itself looking AI generated in addition to the script and songs, but also the script was written well before ChatGPT was invented (the directors said Jennifer Lee started writing this in 2018-19).
But your points are valid, it really did start and end with a lack of leadership from Disney execs.
@@NoTheRobotthanks for the answer? Do you think that the crew could've make the current stule work and improve it if they were given enough money and time?
"Whoever has power is in the center of the screen"?
Ouch. Nope. That's a clear indicator she has little understanding of film theory and framing power dynamics. Even in comics, superhero cartoonists have had it down to a science for decades.
@@wayIessI know, right? I think she said "whoever is in control is dead center of the screen, and when there is an imaginative feeling going on, the camera will start to spin". I'm pretty sure she knows the rule of thirds and all the jazz, but she choose to break all the conventions in a very unimpressive way.
Absolutely, the artists that worked on these movies are some of the best in the world for a reason. But even the most talented artists still need time to perfect their shots
I really think they redesigned Star purely to make it more marketable and producable as plushies or toys. A shapeshifter would be the perfect representation of pure creative spirit.
Maybe have him start out as a bouncing ball in his introduction before making him a tiny shapeshifter man, kinda evoking TinkerBell in terms of size and the vibes, like a tiny fairy star.
Boom! Problem solved. Marketable, fun, and interesting!
Yeah, I agree. Maybe his reasoning is what the animators justified things to themselves with but that is a marketable plushie design if I've ever seen one
@mackenziewoloschuk7375 making him a bouncing ball would also make sense as an animation reference. Learning how to animate a bouncing ball is once of the first things you'll learn when studying animation
I agree
yeah :/ honestly though i think it would have worked very well to have both. i haven’t watched the movie yet so idk really how the character is portrayed but i think he could start out as the marketable star design and then still be a shapeshifter like originally planned, and then go back to the star form when he needs to not be seen or smth
The animation is well made but I think the biggest issue people, including myself have is the art style. The characters really don’t look that different from characters that were in tangled, frozen, Encanto, Moana, ext. just with cel shading. which would’ve been fine three or four years ago. But in a world where more and more movies are adopting their own unique styles with spiderverse, the bad guys, Mitchells versus the machines, nimona, puss in boots, and mutant Mayham. People have realized they’re kind of tired of the art style Disney usually uses for their 3-D movies. In a world where it seems like everyone is starting to innovate and do something special in the animation industry it just makes Disney look stagnant in comparison
The lighting for much of the daytime scenes being flat and even also desaturates the image too much. Older films didn’t suffer as much, and also weirdly had better lighting effects like rim lights, which would’ve made it so much better. No motion blur aside it also lacks a lot of squash and stretch as far as I see.
Nah even 4 years ago In would say "This looks cheap. RWBY did this 10 years ago.
@@keeneyong6580 I noticed the lack of saturation, too! I've been recording clips and cranking up the saturation, and it's like I'm seeing the real intended product. The clothes look much better, and Star is a lot brighter.
It would have been SO great so if Disney went back to their old 2D style (something like Snow White, Tarzan, even Beauty and the Beast). Wish just looks like it was rushed. The art style they used for magic is genuinely so lovely, I don’t understand why they didn’t just fully commit.
And that's where we turn to independent animation content like Lackadaisy and The Amazing Digital Circus
The fact that you have to explain so much of Disney's intentions with this movie is a problem. 😢
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Sentences like these make my Disney Stocks plummet 😢
i don't get it. I want someone to explain but not look like an asshole. So, 😬👍
@@YourLadyNumbYourMentalPain The issue is having to explain so much to a regular person with no knowledge of any of this to begin with. If you have to explain to someone why something is good but have to go so in depth and pull from things they might not know or understand, it becomes harder and harder for the common person to enjoy. Since they would logically need all this knowledge and information to enjoy the thing they're watching. It becomes less about the product they are watching and becomes all about the information most people don't bother to care about. And while you and I might enjoy something like that, to the general public, they'll quickly become bored, confused, annoyed and simply disinterested. And it's very cleae that from the reception of the movie that none of these facts really resonated/captured the audiences attention like disney thought it would. Its not really about someone coming off as a jerk or anything of the sort.
Yeah, this hit me especially with the explanation about the Star. Really cool explanation, but to someone just learning this, it also kinda sounds like an excuse for them going with the simpler, more merchandisable, and (to many reviewers, it seems) less manifestly creative design. I have mixed feelings about this film simply because I'm sure many people worked very hard on it, yet I cannot tell the difference in result between a creative choice and an uninspired one.
While in line at the theater, I saw the giant poster/standee for Wish as my first exposure to the film. I joked that they designed the main character to sell old Isabella (Encanto) and Raya dolls that they repurposed.
@Imbatmn57 Aurora and Cinderella almost did(Aurora wore mostly blue, and while Cinderella's infamous dress was originally white, they changed it to blue to make sure they weren't just selling 6 year old girls a wedding dress), but from what I've heard, the reason Asha has a purple outfit is actually to reference the Fairy Godmother. Which doesn't actually work cuz the Fairy godmother actually wears more blue than purpleish blue like Asha, the claim only works when Asha wears a cloak that is just the Fairy Godmothers.
But yeah, Asha's design, while I love the hair, is clearly reused, I even joked she looked like Isabella to my brother when we saw the standee poster for her lol
@@mackenziewoloschuk7375 Asha has a bigger forehead and a different shaped nose. They don’t look THAT similar.
This is such a comprehensive deconstruction of the critiques to this movie, while still critiquing it yourself from an educated point of view. I never would have ever considered how the star is an homage to bouncing ball animation and that is honestly brilliant- I still have my gripes with the story but you’ve effectively proven that this movie had a lot of love visually put into it
So glad to hear that you enjoyed this! When I heard Chris Buck make the connection to the bouncing ball, everything clicked for me, it’s a brilliant homage. But yeah it’s far from a perfect movie, but to say it is “made by AI” is a disservice to the animation teams that probably put hundreds of hours into this movie.
@NoTheRobot I thought the AI point was not regarted to the art but the storyboard. Yeah people didn't like the watercolor style because it just felt off a bit. I am also glad they tried something new. But I am mostly just not understanding any of the story line... I live ashes design and texture and I just loved the magic from the king animated like they choose to do☆ art is diffrent but amazing but story and Musik sucked sadly dragging the artstyle down as well
@@NoTheRobot i thought the AI part was more about the story because it has sooo many plotholes and inconsistensies.
@@NoTheRobot I'm not sure I would call it a "brilliant" homage, if *not a single person* is able to see it without being told about it first. It's a brilliant *idea,* but very very poorly executed.
I admittedly don't know much about animation, but I do know something about cooking and baking. A chocolate sponge cake can be a brilliant idea, but if everyone thinks it's a mudcake (and points out how much better it would have been as a third type of cake) then obviously I did something wrong along the way.
@@NoTheRobot Personally I think the ball thing is an excuse considering how it does not invoke the animation exercise at all. Thats almost like saying the star is an homage to pokemon because pokeballs are spheres and so is the star. Just because something is a sphere doesn't make it a "reference." Chris Buck is going to say things that protect his team just sayin
Honestly I think my only problem I had with this animation was just the design of the characters *still* look like they could be plopped into tangled, frozen, Encanto and Moana. But when you look at a lot of other Disney movies, the character designs are much more unique.
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Yes they all look the same now and its all about a message rather than a story. All jokes are derived of a non human object or animal behaving in a human way. yawn.
I believe studios have to innovate from times to times. We already have the characters u mentioned so why not to add something new?
I’m not necessarily defending Disney here, but I think it all comes down to the medium they’re using. A lot of the more unique character designs were from when they solely used 2d animation where they had a lot more flexibility with designs than they do with 3d animation. If they keep going for the hyper realistic/cartoony style they have right now that is.
the biggest issue I had with it is that that "watercolor" look, did not read as watercolor to me. And that's pretty bad considering I paint with the stuff daily. Instead it read as flat cell shading found in games like team fortress two where there is a severe lack of dynamic textures and lightings. If they wanted a watercolor look they should have looked at how the game Gris did its animation.
Exactly! Watercolor gradients aren’t that smooth. They’re more, well, watery. It doesn’t look like watercolor. It looks like cheap cel shading.
@@evilsharkey8954 and dragon prince does the same and for me looks better
Thank you! I’m a watercolorist and painting in watercolor is arguably ALL ABOUT light and shadow. The lack of value and shadow makes a watercolor look bad and it makes this movie look bad too. Like Christ, did they ever LOOK at a good watercolor painting before??
I compare it to that Gwen and her dad scene from AtSV, where it has watercolor style. This movie defintely looks different than that. That's me saying as a rather beginner watercolor artist.
Rather they look like those cursed unfinished 3d renders weve seen in behind the scenes.
Gris is gorgeous.
What baffles me is that paperman and feast look better than Wish does? I feel like the issue is they didn't take enough of a risk, I imagine the method they used for this semi-painterly style was simply easier to do than an entire movie in the paperman artstyle or say, Klaus from netflix, so they took the easy way out. Which they have no excuse to be doing if this was meant to be a homage. Cuphead is an incredible homage to 1930s animation, because it took an incredible study of history and an incredible amount of otherwise unnecessary labor, and an incredible amount of dedication-- it was a feat of craftsmanship deserving of respect! And this line of work, animation, it is a CRAFT! The more expertise applied to it, the more it is worth. The positive aspects of the art style they chose for wish, besides perhaps the magic effects, is simply... the bare minimum I expect from someone who learned animation. Yes, I would hope you know how to exaggerate expression, push poses, but if you are supposedly the best animators in the business I need you to WOW me. Like in Roger Rabbit, where they famously showed off by having them bump the lamp so the light would be hard to animate. If you're so good at this-- do something impressive! " Oh, it was too hard" Yes! That's what makes it deserving of respect! Do you want an award or don't you? Try harder! And I don't blame the animators for that, not remotely, I'm sure its purely the higher ups restricting them from really doing anything that takes time-- they should have planned for a 100 year anniversary movie back at the 90 year anniversary frankly, but when I criticize the company I am talking to whoever is responsible for the mistake, whoever it may be.
I also agree, the problem is the pipeline, the visuals
I agree, it's like they just didn't commit to anything in particular.
It's like they're made a 3D animated movie like they've done in the past years and then put a painterly post-processing effect on it.
It's not really "the Pixar look" but then it's also not exactly obviously stylised.
The Dragon Prince and Klaus are GREAT examples of how to create the look Wish was trying to go for, but actually doing it RIGHT.
Dragon Prince is far from perfect but it looks unique. And honestly 3D models on 2D background look theatrical and disappointing.
God Klaus was amazing. But I’m pretty sure it was 2D made to look 3D, which is what wish was going to do before they scrapped it cause it was too hard
Dragon Prince doesn’t look like watercolor. It looks like cel shading, which it is, but it has a more consistent style than Wish.
I am forever upset that 'Klaus' didn't trigger a 2D animation comeback like intended.
@@evilsharkey8954Dragon Prince is probably trying to emulate Japanese animation, where the preferred paint for cel shading and backgrounds was gouache, which is frequently what people say when they talk about watercolor in animation.
I'm not mad at the artists, I'm mad at who wrote the story. Animators are great, looking at King Magnifico they clearly put a lot of attention to detail. But the story... Horror.
Yep. Rosas has lots of accurate history built into it, but it's never embraced.
@GuineaPig361 I find incredibly problematic how the hero is said to be the villain and banished forever for being good. The rest passes mostly unnoticed.
It's like the story was written by AI 😂
@@gurennsan It wasn’t.
The lack of interesting textures and lighting made Wish look like an episode of a Disney Junior Princess show. Might as well have been a special of Sofia the First.
omg you are so right.... i can't unsee it now, it's definitely looks like something from sofia 💀💀
Honestly I would have rather been watching Sofia the First; at least that show is /entertaining/.
Omg I came here from watching the Short to say this! It took me about halfway through the movie to get past the art style. I'm not an animator, so I didn't have the words to articulate it other than "it felt like I was watching a kid's channel or a tv special".
This video (and many of the comments) explain it so well.
That's an insult to Sofia the first!
This is EXACTLY what I was thinking when I watched it! Especially the scene where we are introduced to all her friends in the palace kitchen.
My problem with the animation style is the backgrounds and characters don’t look seamless at all. It looks like they are two different styles, or were drawn separately. Which is technically true, but that shouldn’t be as obvious.
I know there’s no motion blur, but they should have added some sort of seam or clipping layer to make the movie more consistent.
I think that was the goal to look storybook like but agree that I dislike it
Actually, THE BACKGROUNDS were one of the technical higlights, and if you think about, it can technically work by adding hand drawn animated characters, makes sense?
@@laurens3857 it doesn't even look like a storybook. It just looks weirdly flat and further serves to make everything look cheap.
It looks like the background was made with watercolor while the characters were just CGI with cell-shading, then stuck together like paper dolls lol
The backgrounds in wish feel so flat and uninspired. Theres no little details to make the environments look lived in or natural unless specifically interacted with by the characters. The colors and values match the characters too much leading to the image feeling flat overall with neither being too detailed or flat whereas old films had flat cell shades characters on top of very detailed backgrounds so both stood out against each other. With having everything have the same slight-watercolor-overlay texture, it feels uncanny and flat.
I had a popular TikTok about the distinct issues with the songs because I’m a musician and a lot of people were mentioning these myths about the animation in my comments. I’m so glad you took the time to make this nuanced view, it’s exactly what I was trying to explain to people (without the animation background) in my comments and failing to do!!
I saw your video!! And yes I did see some people say in your comments that the movie looks like it was made by AI. I feel like some of the people discussing myths about the songwriting in these comments would do well to watch your video too 😆
@@NoTheRobot 😭 i felt really badly because apparently one of the songwriters saw my video and commented on it
Ahh yeah that’ll happen haha I had a video go viral about working on the Flash and how the bad CGI is from systemic issues and I’m pretty sure the filmmakers saw that too. That’s just the nature of posting our opinions on the internet, at the end of the day it’s still public and anyone can see it, including the people we spoke about.
Please post it on your channel here, too. I think it could add some interesting context to the discourse surrounding this movie.
I never doubted the animation was done by people- it was mainly the story telling and song writing
Those were also done by people. Let’s not get into the habit of calling things we don’t like “AI generated.”
@@NoTheRobotbut what if it was done by people using AI? Many people seem to believe that the lyrics of many of the songs seems off because of the lyrics that seem so nonsense that AI was involved when writing the overall song.
@@huynguyen3953 People have been writing bad stories and crappy songs for thousands of years.
@@huynguyen3953 The writer of one of the songs explained it was written as a love song and then repurposed for the movie in a completely different context by disney, so that explains a lot of these songs feeling out of place: they literally are.
It doesn't make them bad song, but they're just not right for the scenes/story
@@huynguyen3953If I remember right, they had people who were well-trained in pop music and not musical theater do the music for this movie.
Pop music has its place, but this decision was like choosing a square peg for a round hole. And the fact that musical theater is Disney's bread and butter makes this decision even more baffling
This was a very insightful perspective of the movie. At first I was like, “ this movie’s animation looks…not bad, but off.” Now I kind of get why I might think that. I still think some things are still too off, like some spots it looks like the characters are on/in a stage play with the backdrop painted behind them. it feels like there is no sense of depth ( like the characters are quite literally going to run back and just smack the flat surface). the characters and backgrounds, to me, don’t mesh well.
But in all honestly if the story, characters, and songs were a lot better. I think people would be more open to the experimentation of the animation.
I think you're right on the money. The thought of "let's make the backgrounds look like the old 2D watercolor backgrounds from 100 years ago" is honestly a great idea. But in executing it perfectly, it ends up making the background... look like a flat piece of 2D artwork. Like they succeeded in creating this effect so well that it kinda works against them when meshed with 3D characters. I'm happy they're finally open to the idea of trying new things tho, they took a risk and it didn't pay off but I'd rather have that then the same old Frozen aesthetic yet again.
I fully agree on the animation. The movement is actually very good and the use of squash and stretch is apparent!
Sadly it's not just the lighting that makes it appear to be TV animation. They claim they wanted to give it a watercolor look, and in the backgrounds, they mostly succeed! But they don't put as much of that same stylization into the characters, and not to the same degree in every shot. Some shots you can see a slight line and a bit of a gradient. You can see that stylization, though it's subtle. Other times it's not there at all, and the models look matte and unfinished. Watercolors also often have a textured look, thanks to the paper, and that's not really existent in the finished character renders. Additionally, they could have used cell shading to harken back to older animation, but didn't do so. They didn't push the style, and as a result, they got the worst of both worlds.
you just pointed out the issue i had with the whole 'watercolor style' thing!!! there's no TEXTURE!!! watercolor is a medium that doesn't work on anything but paper, and paper has texture! even if you're putting watercolor on smooth stuff like printer paper, any artist will tell you that the paper still warps, rises and dips, which causes the paint to collect in some areas and slide off others. it's this lack of control that makes watercolor so unique and beautiful and gives it that 'watercolor' look. i wouldn't have had any clue at all that they were attempting to imitate watercolors because it's all just smooth and even, not even a still png texture overlay. it's so crazy to me that they call this watercolor, and people are calling it watercolor when it doesn't even look like it, even to an artist who uses watercolors.
I really appreciate what you did in this video, it really takes some guts to explain these details without just going "wish is bad, guys" . And that made the video way more enlightening. I'm glad i came across your channel
So glad you appreciated that! It’s so easy to take cheap shots at this movie without being analytical about WHY this movie is the way it is. I didn’t want to be snarky and cynical like everyone else about this movie, so I’m happy that my objectivity came across. Thanks for the kind words! 😁✌️
My general understanding was that most people were accusing the writers of using A.I, not the animation itself, but I do appreciate the explanation as to why the animation looks cheap. It hadn't occurred to be that motion blur helped so much when it comes to TV vs Film animation, so thats good to know
thank u for this 😭 when u see how talented and passionate so many of the disney animators are in works like the frozen 2 behind the scenes documentary, it makes me sad when people just attack stuff they actually know nothing about under the shield of "big corporation bad". i mean, there are individual people who are artists working on the tiny and necessary details of this stuff from start to finish. even if the overall work needed a more compelling story (and disney movie dept overall needs MAJOR and QUICK fixing right now), it still disheartens me to see that sort of misguided / bandwaggony bashing, lol. i sound dramatic but it's a broader trend i swear
I don't think anyone believed the _visuals_ were made by AI, that's just stupid. AI can't be this consistent yet. What people are accusing it of is being _written_ by AI, which I wholeheartedly believe.
Exactly. I haven't heard anyone saying that the animation is AI, so I'm not sure where he got that from.
No reason to involve A.I., human beings are fully capable of writing generic crap.
Claiming that Wish was written by AI does a complete disservice to the actual human beings who did in fact write it, and is entirely in bad faith.
@@gamestation2690 If humans did write it, they suck.
The script started to be written way before language models like ChatGPT became popular
Even with the set being evenly lit, my issue is that there is so little contrast between things in the foreground and background. In many shots, the overall tone of a character that is the focus of the shot is almost exactly the same as assets in the background or in a matte painting. Even if you're going for the "2D watercolor look", artists always created some contrast between foreground and background objects so that characters would "pop" and there was some depth to the scene. Like literally just up the saturation and contrast of tones of the characters and this movie would be so much better visually.
Disney (as a studio) invented the multiplane camera, they KNEW how to make different layers in background and characters since Bambi (who has absolutelly beautiful background art and lighting technique).
This one just looks flat and every space feels claustrophobic.
The fact they were going for water color and ended up with the flattest, clay blob animation style baffles me. Like the only thing they took from water colors is that the colors are muted that's it. It takes what should be a loose and imprecise style and turns it into the most sterile thing imaginable.
While I will be the first to sing the praises of this wave of new, experimental art styles that Spiderverse arguably kicked off, I do also worry that it’ll inadvertently get simplified to ‘make CGI look like 2D’, when there’s so many other places to take CGI than just variations on toon shading. Like, sometimes if you want the 2D look so badly, it’s worth considering just _doing it hand-drawn._
CGI can do photorealistic lighting and surfaces, that’s one of its amazing strengths. And you have movies like Rango, for example, that leaned hard into a very gritty, tactile appearance in a way that felt distinctly un-Pixar and that very few big CG films have tried since. Why not make a CG film that uses photorealistic rendering, but everything is lit and staged like a community theatre production, complete with props clearly made from painted up plywood and backgrounds that are obviously canvas curtains? We could have an animated film rendered to look like a stained glass window come to life, or a Lotte Reniger-esque shadow play! The possibilities are infinite, which is why I don’t want the creativity things like Spiderverse and Arcane have helped unleash to end with the industry sinking into yet another visual rut.
I disagree so much with this-but it’s not really with you personally. It’s just I’m an indie game developer and I’m so excited with the possibility of making a game that looks exactly like 2D art. 2D art is my favorite style. And it’s awesome that we can more easily bring 2D art to life using new tools.
Artists still design the characters. It’s just we can bring them to life in a new way.
I don’t think 2D artists will ever be replaced. Their toolset will probably just expand. And they’ll be working in tandem with others such as modelers.
But-basically even in the indie gaming sphere there is so much resistance to using the new tools. I find that lack of creative innovation to be disappointing.
You shouldn’t look at it as “big companies will someday make this copy paste and boring”-well, you’re right, but you know what companies literally will do that with anything.
Even in 2D art. For example Disney is notorious for reusing 2D art from prior movies and tracing over it for their new 2D movies. (Example: Snow White dancing with dwarves and that was traced over in Robin Hood for dancing night party scene)
But, there will always be people who do make creative art.
And new tools open the door for MORE creatives to make beautiful projects.
You’re going to get more artistic works, not less. Because it’s more accessible.
@@Pangie12 Thanks for replying! I really appreciate hearing your perspective, and I actually completely agree with you. I hope that it didn’t come off like I at all dislike CG styled like 2D art. Quite the opposite, I’m hugely enthusiastic about that approach and all the wonderful stuff that can be done with it. As both a 2D and 3D animator I was practically squeaking with delight in my cinema chair throughout both Spiderverse movies, getting to see things visually realised in ways I’d either always hoped someone would try, or had straight up never anticipated could be done.
The concern in my comment was not “oh no, I hope they don’t make more CG movies, tv and video games inspired by 2D art”. It was “I hope that we also explore even further than that”. Like, let’s make sure we don’t make this a dichotomy between two predefined looks, when instead we could be looking at each film and asking ourselves ‘what style would be the best way to bring this specific story to life?’. That could be something fairly subtle and familiar, or maybe every character in the film is twisted out of colourful neon tunes like signage in downtown Tokyo. Whatever suits that project.
I think one of my worst fears is for the narrative around this to get flattened into some kind of ‘the chad Spiderverse-style vs the virgin Pixar-style’ thing. Which sounds like a silly thing to worry about, but I’ve watched ‘Calarts style’ become an insult people throw at cartoons they don’t like. Comment sections on movie clips continue to trot out this ‘practical effects vs visual effects’ argy-bargy that can get genuinely venomous and divorced from the reality of actual filmmaking. Teenage artists are relentlessly bullying each other on Tumblr and TikTok over which colour palette or way of drawing noses is cringe this week. People can get……. weird… about art styles.
Maybe I’m too preemptive here. Almost certainly, actually. So I definitely understand your reaction to my first comment. I guess my ‘potential-for-petty-tribalism-to-spoil-a-wonderful-thing’ senses have gotten dialled up pretty high after all that I’ve been through and seen 😅. I can’t wait to see where indie developers like you take 2D-esque graphics in the future! I dabble in making games / real-time graphics myself, and the potential is there for so many cool, unique styles to make their way onto screens. So good luck with it, and stay curious!
@@joa1401 Oh no, as I hopefully said a little bit--I knew you had nuance and this comment of mine was mainly speaking from others I recently worked with. There's essentially good and bad with everything. 2D models can be done with little creative innovation or with lots. I'm more of mindset that 2D art will always be there and I think it in some ways might grow as an industry. I know that might sound surprising, but essentially modelers will need 2D artists to create the original design of the characters. That includes designing all the facial expressions, clothes, etc. It's a lot of concept art. And they will likely be involved in some games/movies directly going over the models--2D artists could learn how to do that.
There's a lot of independents like me who are now hiring artists for the very first time in our lives because it's worthwhile for us to do so.
I did hire one artist for my project so far. And they're designing all my characters. Which, BTW, I never would have been able to hire an artist before--there's no way because I wouldn't be able to afford to.
But now, independents are hiring artists--there's more work available for artists.
And even in my project the demand for 2D art is growing. My plans have shifted to requesting more and more art from the artist--which I am paying for.
For example, originally planned for just one outfit for characters but now I need two outfits, etc.
I think 2D artists are going to get a boom in demand as more people make games/films in that style now that it's a feasible possibility.
7:45 I'm going to call out that take: The issue with Wish's visuals is that it didn't push the medium into any specific direction and only went with "generic" while also having almost no original or unique cinematography to help bolster the feeling they are going for. Frozen 2, for instance has some REALLY good cinematography at times and can be quite atmospheric. Wish, on the other hand, has almost ZERO atmosphere or truly creative decisions. Every potentially creative decision seems to be weighed down by some sort of demand to not be "too creative".
Saying they tried to combine "Tangled with Fantasia" is a disservice to both movies as both of those had much more distinctive art styles that pushed the medium of animation into a specific and innovative direction. Nobody would take any moment from Wish and compare it favorably to "The Firebird Suite", "The Rite of Spring", or "Night on Bald Mountain".
Wish's greatest sin is that is doesn't try to be anything specific and has no identity. Story? Barely there. Characters? No very interesting. Animation? Technically good character animation, but the characters themselves aren't memorable so it doesn't matter if the performance is good. Cinematography? Almost no camera moves (could be intentional) but also no atmosphere. Visual originality (conceptual designs) also not very interesting to look at. It shouldn't take one very long to figure out a myriad of more visually interesting ways for this movie express itself, but it decided to take the quick and simple route for almost all of them.
As an animator, I disagree about the animation being good. Many of the performances were pretty pedestrian. I watched it with some animator friends and we groaned out loud every time a character did a 'W' pose or used a point, some extremely basic acting choices (often seen in TV animation too!). We also caught some suspiciously repetitive beats, even across neighbouring shots! I know the anim team had extremely limited time to complete the show, so i can't blame them for going with these basic choices, that's on the execs. But I can still say the animation performances were generally...pretty subpar for a Disney movie, and supposedly the best animators in the world.
all that on top of the horrendous rendering and lighting style choices, poor dialogue, and the unmemorable songs. Thanks for this video though, I think you really gave a good overview of why someone not versed in the industry would be put off by the film!
Disney has a lot of stuff going on in the background, and I feel like they would get a lot more appreciation if they advertised it more.
I got a lot of ads for the actual movie and plot, but if it focused more on the 100 Year Celebration, it might’ve been realized why it was good
Respect bro didn’t say first
@@SafouaneMarrakh Thank you
Yeah, it was really jarring seeing the movie and realizing that it was more about celebrating 100 years of Disney than it was about telling a solid fairytale story. There are so many details in this movie, and it’s clear that the crew works really hard on it. I think if they were upfront about this movie being more like Fantasia than Tangled, it might’ve done a little better.
@@NoTheRobot Even the Wish logo uses the Fantasia logo font.
I didn't even notice that haha
Better story idea with much better plot twist:
Asha wants to release the Wishes so every wish is granted
And the Audience is shown how evil the Sorcerer is.
But then it's revealed that Asha is the Daughter of the Sorcerer, and it's just in her rebellious phase and the Sorcerer isn't evil at all. 😅
But oh snap, the Wishes are released, and even the bad ones, causing the Kingdom to fall into chaos.
And Asha need to use the Master Wishing Star to undo all the Wishes.
I have not seen Wish but I would definitely watch your version lol
this is actually a really funny story, wish it was real
Gives Bruce Almighty vibes 😂
I just found this channel from your Insta & love your analysis. I really like the way you describe how the ANIMATION itself is incredible, it’s more about the subconscious associations we have with the art style/the way the final concept was realized-I haven’t heard this argument yet & I agree.
Hey thank you for making your way over here! I appreciate the kind words and I’m glad you agree😁
thank you so much for this, ive gotten really tired of the entire discussion of this film being 'disney bad lol' when it actually had a lot of (albeit squandered) potential
Squandered potential and Disney being bad aren't mutually exclusive. If anything, Disney is bad BECAUSE it squanders so much potential.
All this time I've been like - "There's nothing wrong with the animation, it's very expressive and fluid."
The issue is the very flat lighting that recreates a flat 2D look. Except it did not go hard enough. So it's in uncanny valley between true cell-shading and luxe 3D.
They should have gone cell-shaded if that's what they wanted.
"Uncanny valley" - spot on! It sits right in the middle, looking as it lacks artistic direction and visually it reads neither 3D nor 2D nor watercolor.
I think Puss in Boots shows how to fix the lack of motion blur... graphical effects can be used to compensate and still maintain motion.
As an animator as well, wish's only sin is being very bland looking in color in a lot of scenes, and the characters being kinda flat (and i mean in texture)
Maybe it would've looked less cheap if they had leaned more into the watercolor aesthetic. They could've mixed 2d and 3d and added brush strokes or something. Similiar to the beginning of Across the Spiderverse.
They should have done a Fantasia like movie with each segment representing a different era of their animation/movie styles instead of this
And in the advertisements, used the same "Now coming to home video" voice that they used to have in the VHS trailers.
I had been mulling over this very thing while watching this video. If they wanted to prioritize making a series of references rather than tell a cohesive and self-contained story, then they could has just? not also tryed to tell a cohesive and self-contained story? Fantasia was one of my favourite Disney movies as a child.
It's not that this movie isn't technically competent. It's that it's ONLY technically competent.
Which is the standard for anything coming out of Hollywood for the last twenty years.
Personally, i find the idea of not simulated magic effects it's brillant, it perfectli matches with the feel of traditional animation that also puss in boots and spiderman are triyng to replicate.
I don't think that the absence of motion blur it's an issue, also spiderman across the spiderverse didn't have it.
I think that the main issue is the lighting: while the other 2 films keep a 2d look, they still have global illumination, the lighting is still realistic. In wish i don't see global illumination or ambient occlusion, the light doesn't bounce, there are no shadows. I know that they want a low contrast, but i think you can keep a low contrast look even if the scene isn't illuminated uniformly.
This type of lightning and this pipeline makes the result look like a 3d software preview. There's a scene in the trailer at 0:26 that looks almost like blender's modelling viewport.
Having a watercolor look does not imply to remove the illumination. They should have changed the post processing effects, instead of the lighting. Whithout global illumination everything is fake and soulsess
I do agree that saying the animation is bad is an exaggeration. I personally don't even think the randering is bad, or it looks unfinished. it does look odd because it is not even 3D nor 2D. When we see animations like The Bad Guys, Spiderverse, arcane, we can see it is 3D animation, with a coat of paint that looks like tradicional and 2D animation. Wish looks like it was stuck in the middle, and even thought I know the team did their best, it looks like they didn't bother to give an extra spark
also, I see what you are trying to do, but saying they took a risk with this movie is not right either. if anything, they hold on everything that worked in the past 10 years and throwed references from the past 100 years. They took more risks in the concept art: a Romance that it was doomed to fail between Asha and Star boy, a villain couple, bringing back 2D animation. Those were risks they thought of making but decided not to.
Yes we wanted a original story from Disney, we also wanted the come back of fun and evil villains. but that is not what we got. we got a studio trying to give us what the public wanted but not being able to reach a compromise with what they want.
I don't think there is nothing to celebrate, not even as animators fans. at least not from Disney.
Just because it was intentional doesn't mean it wasn't bad or ugly, you can intend to make something that looks ugly, it doesn't stop being ugly because it was the intended objective.
I also disagree heavily on the star, cheap marketable plushy is the vibe it gives, the human Star character might've been more interesting for the dialogue, and looked cooler
The animation style is not a problem. The problem with Disney the last several years is style over substance. The movies look great but often have no soul.
That’s my main problem with this! I can’t watch animation that’s useless aesthetically as long as the characters and story actually resonate. No soul!
But Wish does look fake and theatrical due to 3D models on 2D backgrounds and Little Mermaid does reach uncanny valley
Algorithm brought me here, and honestly hearing it from an animator's perspective was very interesting! As you mentioned, the film needed the audience to have any kind of animation knowledge, and I imagine most of the audience does not. I personally would have wanted to see more distinctive styles of animators themselves, such as the Milt Kahl head swaggle, which is unfortunately hard to replicate fram what I've heard. If they wanted to pay homage to their animation legacy I feel like adding distinct and classic Disney animator's trademark styles would have been a better move. This is all coming from someone who has not watched Wish so I don't know if any of that is present.
All of this word wall is to say this wan an enjoyable and informative video! Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
maybe instead of just turning off motion blur, they should have also gone hard on the squash and stretch and smear frames. Instead of just having the exact same animation style of tv animation, it would've been its own unique style. or y'know, they could've just made it 2D.
A feeling I get out of this is that Disney isn't exactly "Disney" anymore. Through the last of their 2D productions, "Disney" defined traditional animation: 12 principles, polished drawings, smooth keyframes in service of a fairy tale. There were different periods to that where the processes changed, but Disney style as a kind of standard-setter came up all the time when comparing traditional animation versus limited animation. Fans of limited animation had to make the case for that aesthetic being more than just "cheap", that an approach based primarily around strong storyboarding could be more visually compelling than just showing a lot of frames of motion.
However, to this day, there's a large audience that still wants "Disney", traditional Disney, with everything as smooth as possible. And I think current Disney is caught in between knowing they have that audience, but also that the industry is doing other things now and they should try to stay current. And whichever way they take their aesthetic, they'll be damned for it.
I really appreciate how we, as a society, are able to separate the crew, skill, and talent from the execs and are capable of recognizing executive decisions stepping on those creative toes
That was really informative and is way better than 90% of the content on this site covering the animation of wish :)
Hey thank you, I appreciate you checking this out! It’s difficult to have a nuanced conversation about this movie without a brigade of people dunking on this movie. Like yes I know it’s not the best, that’s why I’m trying to analyze what happened. Anyway, thanks for the comment!
@@NoTheRobot Ur welcome! I also love learning about animation (aiming to be a storyboard artist someday).
But aside from that I joined the wish bandwagon late and I actually thought the animation was alright. Not bad at all in terms of disney. I think the writing, corperate meddling and the whole environment around the movie ruined a lot of the charm this COULD have. I also love the optimistic addition at the end, it didn't feel like it was added in last minute but it felt like something that nobody's talked about. Sorry if im rambling I just thought this was awesome
Incredibly refreshing to see someone genuinely analyzing the movie instead of just hopping on the hate bandwagon
It’s a huge shame that the movie was rushed because it should have been better.
It needed another year of production; it should've been released in 2024.
@@GuineaPig361 Yes and they should have kept the great ideas and they should have made the 7 dwarfs appear in the movie and make the characters be the characters instead of just being sad excuses for references.
@@GuineaPig361 It doesn’t feel like an anniversary movie at all.
What do you think of the reports coming from Disney animators who have been saying Disney executives interferes with the film’s development?
Considering the film is written by a Disney exec, I believe it
Cool to see a discussion on why the movie is how it is instead of just ranting on why they don't like it. Great video!
In some scenes it also looks a lot like that cell shaded Prince of Persia Game because of the use of fake outlines and, like you said, the flat colors with almost no dark shadows.
Honestly if I was on charge of this movie I would’ve done this:
First: keep the concept story! We were robbed from the Star Boy and Asha, evil couple, disney going back to its roots but keeping it modern.
Second: I would keep the animation BUT only for one reason: it would show how Asha is living a fantasy that she is projecting it to be better than what it actually is, and when she realises what the place she lives in. Then the colour scheme would change immediately into much darker tones, the pastels would go much darker than what Asha originally perceived.
@@thebakalord We were not robbed. Don’t be silly.
The animation was actually fine, after watching the movie I didn’t understand why ppl are calling it AI generated, cuz that’s a stretch. My problem was with the story(I mean, it’s meh), cuz they rly had all the tools to take it in a whole different(better) direction but it just fell flat for me in a way. Overall, it’s not a bad movie. Just.. fine. I do appreciate the animators, always do. I know how hard that job is!
The last section here interests me because of the vid i recently watched about the Lackadaisy miniseries -- which was enthusiastically crowdfunded and not from an existing studio. Turned out great, and the behind-the-scenes details of how they inspired each other into greatness was heartwarming.
I get it supposed to look watercolored, but they should have made really itterated on the look before going into production, because anyone could tell you this does not look as good as it could look. I guess since its 3D the shaders were made during production, and maybe the rendering/shaders department ran into issues and couldn't iterate further?
my brain couldnt quite grasp that it was 3D, because of the- dare i say- flat colors and little shading in the clothes folds, and it hurt me to look at. likely just me, but still
It's kind of ironic because the actual legacy of Disney is to tell good and entertaining stories for the whole family, but they were so wrapped up in their narcissism that they wanted to see who could have the most clever reference instead of having the most important reference a good story that touches the heart
I'm a bit late to the party, but something to keep in mind is that a story is more than just the character arc or art direction. There are a dozen different aspects that all have to mesh together - such as what your theme is going to be, how each character develops over time, the underlying message you're trying to send to the audience with specific scenes, and what kind of characters you want overall (i.e. a relatable villain or a purely evil one).
Writing stories is incredibly difficult when you know what you're doing, almost like a concerto in music. Unfortunately, the average person knows when a story is bad, but not why it's bad.
IMO the movie overall really felt rushed. Animation of main characters in itself was great, no doubt, although the absence of motion blur in itself was weird. But as soon as you look at the backgrounds, they are really inanimated : characters in the village dance scene all follow the exact same movements, in an orderly grid, and then just stop moving at all, while the action keeps on going.
Lighting is not only plain, it's also glitchy, in quite a noticeable manner !
The environment lacks developement, and we have thus little connection to it.
And the story moves waaay too fast, too.
Asha's arc feels OK though, she gets what she deserves, and not what she wants at the very beginning.
For all the work that went into the animating the characters and movement, and all the little callbacks - Disney unfortunately keeps sticking to the most uninspired character designs that only get blander with time. The other movies mentioned here experiment with bold, colours, exaggerated and eyecatching styles, while this one looks like Frozen 5
Absolutely gread analysis! Only thing, I feel the 'Watercolour look caused the flat look' is short sighted. Watercolour can be very rich in saturation and contrast and many projects have previously shown there is nothing stopping this from carrying over to 3D. High level art direction or possibly management have decided against it.They also decided against any paper structures, ink splots etc. while committing to a rather high framerate. So, it's not the idea, it is once again the execution that hurt the look there. Knowing what the LookDev team is capable of at the studio, I am sure they were just as disappointed to not go all out as we are.
I feel like the problem when you are making a ton of references to other movies, is you have to be careful that your audiences arent just left thinking, yeah I wish I was watching literally any of those works right now.
i like the nuanced view of the movie. i honestly didn't think it looked that bad when it first came out, especially when people were complaining about the "animation", so hearing that the ANIMATION itself isn't bad makes sense
The more I think about animation, the more I want to get into it. My only block is patience and fear of it being too difficult, but I really REALLY want to get into it.
Lack of motion blur can also make live action look cheap. Some film makers have experimented with films above 24 FPS and unintentionally created that soap opera effect which people associate with bad TV shows.
Why does lack of motion blur work with hand drawn animation, then?
I think what hurt the movie was the the character and their growth throughout the story along with the music, specifically the songs.
Came from the short, and really liked this. Love your video. Keep it up!
Thanks for making your way over here!😁✌️
@@NoTheRobot thanks for sharing a great perspective! It encapsulated some of my feelings I had but didn't really understand I had? If that makes sense? I never got the hate for the look, I thought it was interesting and a cool way to try and capture the old style with the new 3D animation approach Disney takes. I have little kids and so we've been watching old and new favourites as a family for a while now, and the visuals capture, imo, the essence of the old and new together really well.
There's still some level of awkwardness that I couldn't put my finger on, aside from writing which I really disliked, and I think it is a bit of that preconceived notions bit you identified.
All this said I think the fact we're revisiting so many films as a family, the preconceptions as you point out weren't as big a hurdle but just something in the back of my head I couldn't put words to. But knowing that, and rewatching clips, I think it's easier to set that inherent bias aside and look at it with fresh eyes.
I think, if the film was written better, and if they had been able to somehow clip the modern expectations of 3D animated film off somehow (in the narrative maybe? I don't know) then it could have helped.
I think the idea and the love letter to animation and it's evolution as you point out was good idea, but the execution is definitely lacking. But like you said, taking a chance and failing is better than by the numbers remakes and rehashes. I for one would prefer one of these efforts every couple years on the film roadmap instead of so many live action/animated remakes as often as they are.
@@NoTheRobotdefinitely do more shorts. They drive people to channels like you wouldn't believe.
1:59
Nah man, they kept the character a star because its more merchandiseble that way.
i'm really happy with the note you ended on about how this shows their recognition of different styles other than just photo realism styles on the big screen!! yayyy
Always trying to look on the bright side😊
1:24 "Some of the most talented animators in the world work at Disney"
At least when it comes to these animated, non-photorealistic movies, as well as Mickey Mouse Funhouse.
My main issues with the look of the film:
1. The colors look washed-out in a lot of the scenes, almost as if the saturation slider was turned down for normal scenes and turned back up for others. While changes in color saturation are a useful tool for visual storytelling, it makes most of the movie look bland
2. It wouldn't shock me that there are a lot of shots that did not fully finish rendering given the reason you mentioned that "Disney realized the 100th anniversary was coming up and they needed a movie to celebrate it"
3. As part of it possibly being rushed, I understand why 2D animation wasn't used as that would have taken longer than the 3D animation we got. I also have heard that the animators at Disney now don't have the skillset necessary for high-quality 2D animation, but that might just be a rumor. Regardless, it would have been a much better idea to focus on 2D animation for Wish, especially since more than half of Disney's history as an animation company has revolved around 2D animation
Honestly, if they wanted to celibrate the animation while putting the story to the side I don't see why we didn't get a new fantasia. A completely 3D fantasia could have been great imo
I get why the animation and shading are like this, but when I saw a compilation of Disney movies, I thought for a quick second they used incomplete footage when Wish came up 💀
Alright, I am halfway through the video and I already feel that you've somewhat misunderstood why everyone's so upset. Firstly, I get that the hard/soft shadows are an artistic choice, but there is no reason for the characters to be so dull that they blend in with the background. In Snow White, everything, from the backgrounds to the characters, is vibrant and interesting. Here, it just looks like those pre-production renders used for directive decisions. Secondly, if they wanted to avoid motion blur, they should've used at least some amount of smearing, which would help tie it all in with the hand-animated aesthetic. Their short 'Paperman' basically does all the same things you described in the video, yet it was actually loved by many as a very creative and interesting film with a distinct art style.
Idk, I think you're giving Wish too much credit.
For one, you can’t possibly convince me the star was like that because it was inspired by the animation ball, rather than because it was easier to animate it that way (vs 2D) and it can be turned into a marketable plushie.
The filmmakers themselves said Star was inspired by the animation ball. It’s in the documentary.
Look, there are movies I look at in awe, I can't even comprehend how did they make them. How much talent, skill and passion could one person have and not turn into a supernova right on the surface of our planet. So much energy they radiate. And some movies are... meh. I could do that. I see structure, I see hard work, I see no magic, just labor. And no, don't you dare tell me every project is just plan and labor. I see the difference very well. Tarzan, Brother Bear, Lion King were absolutely magical. They did the impossible and I'd never get used to such quality. It will always amaze me. Even if they made a thousand movies like these. But the new era cartoons are worse. They have no soul, only labor. Geometry. I can honestly say I'd expect this level from AI. If they told me Wish was made by AI, I'd shrug. Yeah, seems so. High quality, no mistakes, superb graphics... yawn. No soul, no deep emotions, just "some another cartoon". Pass, next.
There's a reason why the projects I adore are somehow always dedicated to someone's memory. Cars, The Lion King... The Shawshank Redemption, The Dark Knight... As if for once a studio was given money and told "guys, do your best, no chains, no obligations before the producers, just all-in". No one was bothering the artists, no one demanded to "do like these other cool kids did".
It's not about cheap. Wolfwalkers are cheap. Wish is very expensive, just crap. No memorable frames, no characters I'd fall in love with, villains or heroes. I don't care about ultra-HD and RTX and such. I want something real. Like the skills of Glen Keane, Aaron Blaise, Don Bluth or Tony Bancroft. They shine on any medium, in any color and any year - day 0 or 500 years from now. That's what I expect from the best animation studio in the world that's 100 years old and has billions to spare. Yes, for ONCE I'd expect them to go back to traditional animation, no matter how expensive it is. Even if it cost more than all Space-X put together. And it's not, it's 300 people working for 3 years, dammit. It's not as hard as landing on Mars. All they had to do was not burn all the bridges with the animators who sold them the best 30 years of their lives.
Wish is a very well deserved disgrace. Just like the villain, Disney is a 100 years old crazy mage who decided to destroy everything it created for no good reason. Fine. Not much I can do but shrug. I had 0 control over it, after all, it's not my conscience that should ache.
This is a really interesting video and interesting to get an animators point of view. Just a side note though; the background music is a lil too loud and its kind of distracting.
Good to know, I’ll make sure to lower it going forward. Thank you for the feedback!
@@NoTheRobot thank you 😊
I feel that, if they wanted to make a film that feels 2D, but used 3D rendering techniques they should have looked at films like (not kidding) that Tom and Jerry live action film from a few years back. But for whatever reason they didn't take it all the way there and ended up with some strange half-and-half between CG and hand-drawn that doesn't appeal to either's strengths.
As an animator myself... the final product looks incomplete, I wish Disney knew they are Disney and could make a 2D department again or work with other studios rather than keep trying to replicate 2D instead of doing it. I love Spiderverse, Puss and Boots, Bad Guys, etc, but it doesn't look as Disney is trying to do the same thing when it mimics 2D in recent years. And as a story lover, not to be rude, just my opinion, but I personally wouldn't applaud changing a character that could be developed with an original story for a marketable ball for the excuse of the bouncing ball, there are so many more ways to honor animation by how a character behaves and moves, they could have done so much more for this character than making him a ball to honor animation, like I imagine if he had a lot of smears if he moved floting by one side to another (the fact he is a special character could make the excuse to not make him look as the other water color characters if that was the issue), having him smoothly floating with satisfactory follow-throughs remainders of the classical Disney films, giving him that softness, make him a show of the 12 principles of animation, more than any other character, he could have more extreme expressions, etc, he is not a human, he could be more ethereal, his original story sounded very interesting and unique. Honestly, I repeat what I said in my other comment, is quite devastating imagining Disney, of all studios, never doing a 2D film ever again and just accepting 2D animation is dead for them when don't come to shows. I don't blame the animators working in the film.
VR movies actually look and sound so cool, I really hope you can bring this idea into fruition
Thanks! It’s gonna take a while but I’m hoping it will be worth it😁
I really appreciate your perspective on this, I feel like most commentary on this movie is just “The animation is so bad I hate this movie” and there’s little else that differentiates between different videos. Yours is really refreshing in comparison; you point out the flaws but also the good qualities and make sure to recognize the hard work people did put behind it even if it didn’t turn out good in the end
Thank you! It’s so cheap and clickbaity to just make a whole video dunking on Disney for a misfire, that’s not what I’m interested in doing.
Most people attack the writing way more than the art, and with good reason.
People mainly hate the movie because the writing is bad. The below average animation just makes it worse.
Thank you for actually pouring research into this video instead of pulling everything from assumptions. There's way too much misinformation spread around this film because of people's bias against Disney, instead of looking into the core root of the film's problems which honestly had less to do with Disney's micromanagement but of the creative team's confusion of what exactly the film should be: a tribute to Walt Disney Animation or its own thing?
Wasn't just due to the usual disney micromanagement but because of a back and forth confusion with the creative team and producers of what exactly the film should be
Thank you for appreciating this, it’s so easy to dunk on this movie for clout without actually giving any helpful critiques or analyzing this film objectively. It was very hard to remain neutral, but defaulting to “Disney bad” is a very tired argument. I agree though, it was definitely more due to the fact that the team had little direction about what kind of movie they were making
I think it could've been better if Asha was the one who turned evil and the king would have to save her.
YES DUDE!!!!!!!! I haven't seen Wish yet but that's amazing to see how studios not considering their modern audiences' biases are going to suffer. Context is key yet again! From what I can see here Wish looks gorgeous, it's too bad people are automatically assuming AI, but it's even worse that the characters/story don't hold up traditional filmmaking standards. Even something made on post-it notes can be emotionally captivating if done correctly.
I think when it comes down to it, the animation is definitely good, but it didn’t suit the movie or the backgrounds
There was definitely a disconnect between the animation style and the aesthetic that they tried to go for. They took a risk, and not all risks pay off, but I would rather see them experiment with the art style then produce yet another photorealistic animation that looks like Frozen.
Bullying a big studio that puts out meh stuff is fun but bullying individuals who have to make what the studio wants is very mean. My biggest gripe with this movie is the writing and why it was made, I think the story is lacking because it wasn't made to tell a story that simply had to exist but was made out of an obligation.
There's a reason movies like Treasure Planet are growing popular, it's because people like the story and can tell there was a desire to truly TELL that story. I've seen the deleted storyboards (for Wish) and already it's far more interesting than the final movie because in the 3 minute intervals we are given a LOT.
Honestly the main gripe has nothing to do with the animation (but the way clothes warp like rubber instead of fold bothers me a lot), the writing bugs the hell out of me.
i think the way some of the lyrics were written seem very redundant and inhuman. theres no chance in hell disney would ever use ai like that, but the fact that something like 'i let you live here for free; and i don't even charge you rent' was in the final cut is odd. the words sound awkward with no flow, or a flow that sounds clunky, unnatural, and definitely not the standard disney sets for it's music in general.
it genuinely sounds like it could be an ai output, and that says something equally interesting and disappointing about this move in general. it makes me wonder what sort of groupthink or corporate overreach happened where this was not only a song in a major release, but the main one i've seen advertised by disney media.
I know this isn't your area of expertise, and it certainly isn't mine, but it's been stuck in my mind for a while, wondering exactly what they were thinking with any of this. it feels utterly baffling to me, as someone outside the industry.
It’s not an AI output because ChatGPT was not invented when they wrote the script or the songs. I know this because animated films take up to seven years to make, and everything would’ve had to be written between 2020 and 2021 for their pipeline to be able to start production on this movie. These movies don’t take a year or two to make.
@@NoTheRobot i was agreeing with the fact it's just not possible it was ai written, im just saying it's already damning if theres so many people who think it might be. i fully agree with you here.
The animation was never the problem, the dull and dirty colors are what makes this look cheap. Despite being watercolor, everything looks so flat and dreary, kinda lifeless. I work in a graphic department of a small business, we design, produce and sell wrapping paper and gift cards. Our watercolor designs have so much more light and dark areas and the colors range from pastel to highly saturated with watercolor textures on top of clean, strong colors. We only use these "dreary" colors for simple backgrounds (Pantone 4k tones for example) and add our designs on top of these. Those dull colors can even work very well for children wrapping paper, but the designs still need to be colorful to contrast that unclean look.
Long story short, if I didn't knew Disney was going for a watercolor effect, I honestly wouldn't have even seen it because it's way to subtle. It's missing texture and depth.
i can't really agree because although some scenes are expressive and well-animated, if you look closer especially at background characters, certain animations are pretty poorly done and snappy, and i'd argue the animation of shadows & such is part of animation. i mean i've literally seen ads for merge mansion knock offs that have just as good of animation if not better-looking than Wish. saying "but disney good. look at these fee instances where all the money in the world got us some well animated scenes" and "well they were going for a certain look people just think it looks cheap bc it looks like tv" doesn't really cut it. watercolor is an inherently blurry art style, so for one, the lack of smudging or blurring is a set back rather than a good intention. if they were fixated on the animation style of their older films, straight up going for 2d or those 3d styles that replicate 2d would've been far cry a better than "if we take out all the good parts of the animation, but keep the style the same, and makr the coloring slightly more watercolor-like, that'll be good" nah
the problem isn't "wish took risks that didn't pay off" the problem is "wish was unwilling to take risks so they only changed minor details that made it look like dogshit and that didn't pay off"
The lighting isn't the problem. The animations themselves look cheap because a lot of them have that rubbery bounce of an animated television show without the tiny nuances in movement that you'd see in a higher quality movie. The character models don't ever smear or distort the way you'd see in 2d animation, they just look like video game character models rigged for pre-set ranges of motion. Some of the important shots look a bit better but they don't make up for it
I think it’s not just that it looks like tv animation but it also looks very video-gamey.
Reminds me of Valorant.
I appreciate the review that both praises the achievements of the artists and calls out the points of what didn’t work with Wish.
As a lover of animation and a artist, this is to me just fast fashion of movies. No detail, heart or soul! Just because you have big name creators still doesn't give it life. It's the love for the project and the hard work to implement detail for what your creating! The og 2D animations were made by people and for people wanting to change the world of movie making and storytelling. And More creative effort put in But 3D doesn't allow that relative experienceness it had back then. We saw what 3D can give us, and it's just copy and paste. We're moving too fast in technology that we're craving what we had back then. It's the lack or wanting to do somthing new, or the inspiration to do it. It's sad that me myself just want to have a small VCR TV and watch the old movies that made me smile then watch anything today. I just crave the warm familiarity from my childhood since the world is just so bleak. This is my opinion and I hope others share it too.
I don't necessarily think it's useful, helpful, or even true to say "2D good, 3D bad". There is good, creative animation to be found in both; and there is soulless copying and pasting to be found in both. Disney itself is notorious for tracing animation in their 2D films in the 60's and 70's (Robin Hood's night party dancing scene was traced from Snow White dancing with the dwarves, for instance). Hand-drawn animation and CGI are just tools, and like all tools they can be used well or they can be used poorly.
The best animated, and best looking show I have seen in YEARS was made for TV. Blue Eye Samurai combines 2D and 3D in such a seamless way that even without the incredible characters and storyline, the animation's beauty could carry the whole show on its own. That's how you do this "look" right.
Just watched this on TT and had to come find the YT video.
Thanks for adding another view to this video too! 🙏
This movie highlights a major issue I have with 3d animation and that is how much it henges on the final render. Even rough 2d pencil tests can be lively and charming, where a test 3d render of animation can feel stiff even if it's the same movement. The talent of the animation is not separated from the final render. You can see this a lot on things like the 11 second club where many really great 3d entrees don't get as much love as a equal or possibly weaker animation due to the lighting and textures not feeling as pleasing (not all the time obviously, but it happens). This movie has more problems than just this, but I think a lot more can be forgiven if the final render was different.