
There was also the integration of the effects department’s portals and spots and swirls. His body would break down, his portals would bleed and disintegrate, and, as the film goes on, Spot looks less like a dalmatian and more like he has a growing disease. “It wasn’t just a matter of projecting a map of spots onto a white body. “He was deceptively complex,” adds Alan Hawkins, head of character animation on the film. If that gesso isn’t dry, then ink will smear.” If he’s moving fast, the artist is drawing fast. We wanted to see the artist’s hand at work because Spot’s very much a work in progress. So, we wanted to see the blue line pencil sketch. Spot’s world is like this chemical process where the world is breaking down to its core elements.

I used to do scratchboard work when I was in illustration school, and if you left the ink too long on the board, it might start chewing it away. And the ink spots that are mixing in with the gesso are chewing away at each other. “He’s basically an illustration board with gesso on it, but you can still see the construction lines. “The Spot is the undoing of comic book language,” notes O’Keefe. But, put into practice, The Spot is a revolutionary villain, embodying the opposite of everything the Spider-Verse films stand for. He’s less than intimidating at first and, on paper, an even less appealing idea for a villain. And, when confronted by Spider-Man, The Spot stands, chest puffed and proud, until bread loaves start falling out of his abdomen. The Spot appears on the scene early in the film he’s got an out-of-shape figure, no face, and can’t seem to figure out how the portals on his body work as he resorts to secretly scooting an ATM out of a store instead of robbing it. There's your biggest supervillain of the summer, folks!’ It takes a while for everybody to get on board with that idea.” “It’s like, ‘We have a character who’s just going to be a whiteboard with some blue pencil and ink. “You're known for making the most colorful, wildly detail-oriented world, and then comes this character who is the antithesis of the films,” says O’Keefe. One of those unexpected turns was the incorporation of The Spot, whose villain pitch was even a surprise to higher-ups. We’re breaking the canon of what’s expected from these films.”
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“But they are, and that's what this movie achieved. Are these superhero fans really looking for a Master of Fine Arts program over two and a half hours? Is that really what the superhero community is after?’” recalls O’Keefe. “I would turn to Phil sometimes and be like, ‘I'm a little nervous.
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But when the heroes clash on how to handle The Spot – a new villain with a white human figure covered in black portals –Miles finds himself pitted against the other Spiders and must redefine what it means to be a hero so he can save the people he loves most. The story – which still features 3DCG and 2D styles, along with cut-out animation, LEGO stop-motion, among other styles – chronicles how after reuniting with Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld), Brooklyn’s neighborhood Spider-Man Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) catapults across the Multiverse, where he encounters the Spider Society, a team of Spider-People charged with protecting the Multiverse’s very existence. Thompson, with a screenplay by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and David Callaham. Sony’s sequel to their 2018 groundbreaking Golden Globe and Academy Award-winning film is now out in theaters, directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. This film is made up of a thousand little pieces of art made by a thousand different people.” It takes a lot of collaboration but, in the end, it’s about believing that what you’re making is art and having confidence in that. “I'm grateful to have found a place at Sony Pictures where they believe style is part of the storytelling,” says O’Keefe. the Machines, The Bad Guys, and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.Īnd, in the early production stages of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, when production designer Patrick O’Keefe was asked if he and the other animators would be “doing the same thing again,” he answered, “Yeah, we are. Into the Spider-Verse became the new creative bar that that other studios aspired to aim for in films like The Mitchells vs. The film’s walk-into-a-comic art style brought together decades of different illustration styles and “Spider-Man” stories, making the most of 3DCG, 2D, noir, Japanese anime, and more. Requiring more than 170 animators, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was not only the studio’s largest, but equally, most ambitious feature film production ever.


Five years ago, Sony Pictures Animation changed the game of animation forever.
