Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
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44 KEYFRAME F E AT U R E BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD For many CG artists, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was a pivotal moment. "In some ways, it was a validation of something artists had been saying for decades," says Jason Mayer, Head of Effects at DreamWorks. "Why can't we make the movies look like the artwork?" For years, this desire was held back by the industry's pursuit of visuals that were as realistic as possible. But Spider-Verse proved that a stylized, hand-crafted look could take technology and use it to elevate the artistry of animation storytelling. At DreamWorks, this sparked a creative renaissance. Artists began exploring how to bring the energy of illustration, comics, and traditional 2D animation into their CG pipeline. "The Boss Baby: Family Business (2021) had stylized fantasy flashbacks, [but] to do an entire movie that way—that looks like the hand of the artist is visible in almost every frame—that's where it blew me away," Mayer says. Films like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022), The Bad Guys (2022), and The Wild Robot (2024) explored highly stylized worlds where light, texture, and motion were less about real-world mimicry and more about imagination and stories. But, as with each leap, it required overcoming technical challenges. "There are laws of physics that describe how light moves and interacts with surfaces," says Budsberg. Renderers and shaders were based on physics in the real world, but for The Last Wish, fairy tale characters required more painterly details. This meant making things like hair and fur resemble something out of a storybook, and so the team needed to develop filters that allowed the artist's hand to come through. "We called them painterly filters—to kind of abstract a lot of the image in a way that was akin to how a 2D illustrator might do it … [Essentially], we spent a lot of effort breaking the physicality of the renderer." The Bad Guys, in turn, was based on a graphic novel—not an artform to include every blade of grass or strand of Mr. Wolf's fur. The film's Head of Effects, Steve Wood, says: "The FX for Bad Guys were very stylized and had a deep rooting in 2D FX … My team were all amazing FX animators with a keen eye for motion. However, I also knew many were new to the 2d FX design stylings of the Bad Guys universe." He explains that he guided them with a "design first philosophy" and "once an artist had a working design, I knew the motion evolution would be easier." The goal overall was to incorporate 2D FX where it made sense; the 3D elements needed to fit the style, as well, all the while ensuring that the audience was unable to discern what techniques were used for any given shot. For The Wild Robot, the island that serves as the film's setting is a painter's rendering, down to the tools that allowed animators to draw plants in 3D rather than build them. And among the wild animals on this island, the sleek robot Roz doesn't fit… until she does. "She's this precise machine thing in this very loose painterly world," says Budsberg. To achieve this they developed new materials that would respond to light and allow for feathered transparency. "You're revealing texture through light, the brush, transparency of assets," he says. "[We] used all the tricks that we had from Bad Guys and Puss in Boots and pushed them even further… The compositing tools [on The Wild Robot] were the culmination of these three shows—learned advancements across many years." In the end, animation's CG journey has been about so much more than advancing technology. It's been about embracing innovations while staying true to the heart of the medium. Looking back to his early days as an Animator on movies like The Prince of Egypt, Jakob Jensen recalls how when he got into the industry, his dream was to have a career drawing—using pencils—"like the old guys I admired. Then suddenly came CG, and I must admit I fought it." Most recently serving as Head of Character Animation on The Wild Robot, he says that over the years he recalibrated his view on why he loves the craft, realizing that only the tools have changed and ultimately, animation will always be about creating memorable characters and performances. DreamWorks' Puss in Boots retreated from animation's photorealistic style to craft imagery more suited to an old-fashioned storybook. Images courtesy of DreamWorks Animation