Animation’s new wave has creators ‘fighting the computer’ to make things weird

American animated films that are computer generated have followed the same visual guidelines for more than two decades. While their character designs aren’t necessarily hyper-realistic, everything else usually is, from the characters’ expressions and movements to the textures and effects, and especially the backgrounds and scenery. The bar for a good animated film used to be how “real” it looked.

But DreamWorks’ new film The Bad GuysThis style embraces a more sophisticated look in regards to how the characters move and what spaces they exist within. When asked why, The Bad GuysPierre Perifel attempts to communicate the CG’s ethos in a way that is different from other CG directors.

“Because I find [that style] … ‘boring’ is probably excessive, but I want to see something different,” Perifel tells Polygon. ”Frankly, I’m not the only one. I’m not the first one also to do a movie that’s slightly different [stylistically]. But I think there’s been very few right now, at least in the Hollywood industry, like Hollywood-feature big-studio types of films. You can see the trend is shifting a little bit.”

After having worked as an animator for a variety of DreamWorks programs, such as Kung-Fu Panda 2 Rise of the GuardiansPerifel’s feature directororial debut is with The Bad GuysBased on the graphic novel series by Aaron Babley, A group of criminals are led by Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), who is a charming and charismatic animal lover. After an ambitious heist, they’re finally apprehended. To avoid jail time, Mr. Wolf convinces his gang to undergo rehabilitation — or at least pretend to, so they can actually plot their biggest heist yet.

Animated movies like Sony’s The Machines Vs. the Mitchells Spider-Man: Into the SpiderVerse, or Pixar’s It’s time to turn red Luca) are pointing out a trend towards stylized animation rather than detailed CG textures or settings that has dominated the industry over the last two decades. The Bad Guys continues the swing, as one of DreamWorks’ most aesthetically different films since the 2D sequences in Kung-Fu Panda. The film’s backgrounds are more painterly, the character movements more exaggerated, and the specific effects and action sequences lean more on the look of a classic hand-drawn film than a computer-rendered one.

“I think CG has been proving recently with Planet of the Apes [2019’s] The Lion King and Marvel movies that we can do hyper-realism really, really, really well,” explains Perifel. “And I think it’s not the goal anymore. It isn’t enough to be unrealistic. So now it kind of leaves open the door… How can we stylize that movie? We have many options. What kind of looks can we experiment with, and try to educate the audience a little bit toward those new visuals that we haven’t really seen before? So I think it’s a little bit of that desire to go explore and show we can do different things in animation than just realistic Disney-style rendering.”

However, it is more difficult than photorealism to create a cartoony appearance. Like other animators who’ve found they have to struggle against existing computer algorithms to get the specific visual aesthetic they want, Perifel and his crew had to try something new.

“When you want to make something stylized, you’re basically fighting the computer,” he says. “Because the computer will want to give you something perfect. A cube edge would have a straight line. And it’s rare that you would see any really real straight line [in the world]. You will always have imperfections in architecture. We had to make the caricature to show that we could capture it and bring it out. We had to break every edge.”

Everyone working across the modelling, animation, lighting and texture teams. The Bad Guys had to basically unlearn what they’ve been trained to do. The effects team had to move away from the particle-simulation renders of smoke and dust, in favor of hand-drawn effects 20 years ago. Perifel said that animation that heavily references videos was not what he wanted for character movement and animation.

“I wanted more stylized, pushed, pose-to-pose animation, influenced by Miyazaki Lupin and Ernest & Celestine,” he explains. Perifel is an anime enthusiast. “In the US, that anime wave is coming big now, but we had it like 30 years ago in Italy, Spain, and France. That was how we grew as children. This was something that stuck with me and inspired me to want to experience a little more of it. Dragon BallWhat it would look like in American style. [My influences are]A bit of Lupin, some Miyazaki definitely, Cowboy Bebop, Dragon Ball Z.”

DreamWorks image

Much of Perifel’s influence looks back to his childhood media obsessions. He decided to become an animator after watching a documentary about French animation university Gobelins, l’école de l’image and its partnership with DreamWorks while a senior in high school. Around the same time, Disney’s TarzanThe film had already been shown in theatres. Glen Keane was promoting the movie by giving a pencil trial. Perifel was inspired by Tarzan’s appearance on paper. He grew up reading a lot French comics and graphic novels, which Perifel says helped to create the unique visual style. The Bad Guys.

Perifel continues to seek inspiration from all corners. A lot of his tastes are shaped by animated French European movies — films like I Lost My Body and Marona’s Fantastic TaleFilms with a large budget in America tend to have more artistic diversity than American movies. However, he points out that short films can also be a source of inspiration.

“Whether it’s student short films or regular short films, people try things,” he explains. “Even if it’s something that’s very pushed, and something I would not do, at least it is refreshing.”

The Bad GuysOn April 22, the film will be released in theatres.