Animating the Spider-Verse

Wired recently interviewed Danny Dimian and Josh Beveridge, who worked as the Visual Effects Supervisor and Head of Character Animation, respectively, on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. In this video, the duo discussed how their teams achieved the movie’s amazing animation and visual styles. Make sure you watch it on the highest resolution possible to fully experience and appreciate all of the details.

There’s so much in this video and it’s all fascinating, from how they captured the printed look of comic books (such that every single frame in the movie is perfectly crisp and clear), to the way they skewed and distorted the New York buildings and landscape for added effect, to the movie’s references to Jack Kirby. (Phil Coffman highlights a few more aspects.)

At the very least, it’s a wonderful “behind the scenes” look at one of 2018’s best movies. But even more than that, it’s a great example of just how powerful, evocative, and imaginative animation can be as a medium, and how it can tell stories and create experiences in ways that would be very difficult (if not impossible) to achieve via live-action.