alt Hacker NewsThe showcase of frames at the end really broke something through for me. It's easy to simply sit in a theater or on your couch and watch the movie as a movie. But while the theater screen is large, you don't get to pause it. So nearly all of the incredible detail gets blurred in a way that makes it easy to be immersed in the movement and story, but also forget the art of visuals. Seeing those specific frames laid out, each one of those would be an incredible art piece on their own! They would all be extremely difficult to create for an individual and take so so much time. I always wondered what those 1000+ people in the credits were actually doing, now i know! I never realized the incredibly depth and thought and time and art that goes into every frame of an animated movie.
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For me it's also the style of animation.
For some reason, if I don't think about it, instinctually I would always describe Overwatch (to take a gaming example) and Zootopia as "simple" graphics. My mind recalls big swathes of primary colours in relatively flat yet cheerful lighting, rounded/smoothed shapes, relatively little complex texturing or surface detail.
It's when I pause overwatch that I start realizing 1. how much detail there is, and 2. How quickly and flawlessly it's rendered on relatively slow computers. And then I start truly appreciating the relentless optimizing work to make it "seem simple and fast" :).
Same thing with Zootopia - I've enjoyed the movies (doesn't hurt that I have two young kids), but they would not come to mind if I were asked to name breakthrough or particularly well animated movies. Yet the detail and work is clearly there once you pause and examine :)
I recently put together a system that trained a model to identify "background worthy frames" of TV shows. Animated shows scored often quite highly with a many frames being valid, I suppose an essayist would be able to explain why.
Makes you wonder why the need for the incredible detail if we are just fine with blurry details.
There's an old, semi-retired YouTube video essay channel called "Every Frame a Painting". I disagreed with several of its essays, enjoyed many of them, but the biggest takeaway/agreement I got from that channel was that core spirit in the title itself. It is something I still find very useful reminder when thinking about films and/or criticizing them. The medium of a movie (or a TV show) is 12 or 24 (or more rarely 60) frames per second. We don't always reflect on how everyone of them in (even a "bad" movie) is essentially a painting. Art was involved to get that shot, that frame of the shot. Often art by lots of people, very few of them are the people you see on that screen, yet their fingerprints and hard work still shows through. "Every frame a painting" is a good sentiment to remember, I think. Especially for animation, but for any movie.