Animation is an opportunity to bend the rules. When a film or show is animated, the artists can make their characters flow, stretch, move with unnatural grace and generally capture movement that’s impossible in live-action cinema. But for a worrying few years, it felt like animation was getting stale.
Every new Disney princess had the same saucer-sized eyes and quirky mannerisms, and characters all had the same silhouettes. Anna and Elsa in “Frozen” are prime examples because they share the same base with different hair and makeup.
However, the state of 3D animation over the last couple of years has begun to inspire optimism. Ever since “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” was released in 2018, I was suddenly excited about the medium again. The film’s inspired blend of 2D and 3D elements brought the comic-book energy of “Spider-Man” to life.
Characters had Ben-Day shading—the pointillism technique you often see in older comics, where clusters of dots create shadows and color—on their faces. Harsh 2D lines were drawn around their noses or eyes so that they looked like comic books come to life. It was something new.
The film wasn’t just animated to appeal to kids or to look flashy and fun, but because animation lent itself perfectly to the roots of the “Spider-Man” franchise: an illustrated comic. Rather than casting a live-action actor who looked like Miles Morales, they pulled him directly from the page to the screen, creating a fresh and interesting take on the modern superhero movie.
This encouraging turn in animation continued into 2021 when Netflix released the first season of the animated series “Arcane.” “Arcane” is a spin on the 2009 multiplayer arena video game “League of Legends.”
The show was created to flesh out the in-game characters and add a gritty, deeper layer to the world that long-time players had come to know and to introduce it to new viewers for the first time.
Spearheaded by French animation studio Fortiche, the series employed a mix of 3D and 2D elements, much like Spider-Verse, to create a visually stunning world and characters. 3D animation relies on what are essentially digitally sculpted models of characters and props. These models, called “rigs,” are then posed like action figures, frame by frame, to create movement on the screen.
To add texture and personality to these rigs, Fortiche’s animators would digitally paint on top of the 3D models like a doll, adding unique smudgy, streaky details to their characters’ faces. Shadows and highlights have visible brushstrokes and characters have painted freckles and moles.
The combination of these distinct 2D elements adds dimension and character to every model, creating incredibly distinctive silhouettes and designs.
Where Spider-Verse employed Ben-Day shading and harsh lines to resemble its comic-book roots, Arcane opted to diverge from its source material, adding texture to the characters and world that can’t be seen in League of Legends’ animation, which is generally very smooth and blemish-free.
The second season of “Arcane” was released in November 2024, boasted a budget of $250 million for its nine-episode run and featured some of the most visually stunning sequences ever seen on screen. Simply put, the animation feels fun again. The colors, perspectives and movement of the show are palpable and unique to an animated format. You couldn’t make a live-action “Arcane” because the animation is fundamental to its identity and style.
The physics of the show, the weight of the objects and the people on screen are simultaneously grounded yet completely fantastical. An excellent fight sequence in Act One of the second season demonstrates this beautifully where series protagonist Vi is fighting her antagonist Jinx. The pair fly through the air to achieve these incredible slow-motion shots of the two leaping towards each other, largely unburdened by gravity. Yet when they fall or take a hit, they fall hard, skid across the ground and crumple when struck. There’s such a grounded realism and weight to it that it immediately pulls the audience back to earth.
This type of sequence can only be convincingly conveyed in animation. CG-ing a live-action actor so that they can make unrealistic jumps and movements always looks inherently disjointed and wrong because, as humans, we can naturally recognize inhuman physics when applied to a real person. We can tell that wouldn’t work in the real world, so it’s incredibly difficult to be taken seriously.
However, an animated character like Vi or Jinx can pull off a beautiful flow of action that’s simultaneously unrealistic and extremely realistic because they are animated. Their exaggerated movements are a key part of their character. Their animation is a core part of who they are. They can’t exist in a live-action setting, because their format is fundamental to their core.
To see this point in action, “Arcane” seasons one and two are available to stream on Netflix. The series continues to demonstrate the hopeful new direction animation is going and the artistic aspect of animation is finally getting the attention it deserves again. The animation industry is being reminded of the unique advantages it has to live-action works and it is capitalizing. To learn more about the animation used in the show, you can check out the docuseries “Arcane: Bridging the Rift,” on YouTube.
Julia Kolman can be reached at [email protected].