What 6 innovative movies and TV shows looked like behind the scenes

• Recent advancements in technology have allowed animators to push the limits of their work, resulting in more creative and detailed films and TV shows than ever before.
• "Loving Vincent" (2017) was the world's first hand-painted animated feature film.
• Advances in 3D printing allowed "Kubo and the Two Strings" (2016) to create a character that was completely 3D-printed — comprised of over 800 individual parts.
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Following is a transcript of the video.

Narrator: Recent advancements in technology have allowed animators to push the limits of their work, resulting in more creative and detailed films and TV shows than ever before. To find out how six of these stunning and unique animations were created, let's take a look behind the scenes.

Stop-motion-animated movies have been around for over 100 years, but the production house Laika Studios brought this animation style into the 21st century by utilizing 3D printing, a technique that is especially prevalent in their 2016 masterpiece, "Kubo and the Two Strings." Traditionally, stop-motion-animated characters had to be made of a moldable material, such as clay, so that the faces of the characters could be changed. However, by using 3D-printed faces, Laika Studios is able to alter the facial expressions of its characters more quickly and consistently. Each expression is created using 3D-modeling software. The models are then printed with the 3D printer, and magnets are added to the back of the face so they can later be attached to the puppets. There were approximately 48 million different combinations of facial expressions created for the film's main character, Kubo. His face consists of a top and bottom faceplate that combine. The tiny seam between the two pieces was painted out in postproduction. Because there were so many faces, each face had a code on the back of it in order to keep all of them organized. Advanced 3D-printing technology also allowed "Kubo and the Two Strings" to be able to create intricate puppets that would be impossible to create otherwise, such as the character called Moon Beast, who was Laika's first completely 3D-printed character. Moon Beast was made of 881 individual 3D-printed parts: 130 color parts and 751 components for the armatures used in its body and legs.

"Loving Vincent" is the first feature-length animated film in which every frame was hand painted using oil on canvas - approximately 65,000 frames in total. The film was painted in the style of Vincent van Gogh, featuring 94 of the artist's original paintings as the settings for the story. In order to create the film, the production team invented a special animation process. First they filmed actors on a blue stage, with background elements digitally added later. Then one of the 125 highly skilled artists on the team painted over each frame of this live-action footage in the style of Van Gogh. The paintings were then photographed and assembled to complete the animation process. The producers faced several challenges in this ambitious project. First, they had to change the color palette of several of Van Gogh's paintings, because while Van Gogh painted across all four seasons, the film's plot takes place only in the summer. Additionally, Van Gogh experimented with several different styles throughout his life, so characters had to be painted differently based on which Van Gogh painting was being used as the backdrop. When the production team realized they needed to hire more painters to finish the project on time, they discovered that there literally weren't enough trained painters available in Poland, where the film was being made. So they posted a job listing and ended up hiring 45 oil painters from around the world, sifting through 5,000 applications. Given all of these factors, it's no surprise that it took the team about five years to complete the project. The film's director said that they had "without a doubt invented the slowest form of filmmaking ever devised."

It took producers over a year to create just 10 seconds of test animation footage that they were happy with for "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse." The eye-grabbing animation style of the 2018 film looks wildly different from typical animated movies, and it borrows many of its innovative animation techniques from comic books. One of the most noticeable differences involves frame rate. Animated films are typically 24 frames per second, and creating a different image for each frame is known as animating "on ones." "Spider-Verse" broke the mold and animated much of the movie "on twos," meaning that they kept some images on screen for two frames. Each character's pose lasts longer and is much more pronounced. They alternated between on twos and on ones, depending on the nature of the scene. Another defining characteristic of the film is that there isn't any motion blur, a CGI trick that most new films use to soften a movement and make it seem more real. Instead, they used an old-school technique called a smear. This was used a lot in early cartoons to create the sense of motion. If you look at a single frame, you'll notice things like multiple limbs to create the illusion of movement. The producers also decided not to create a traditional depth of field by using lens blurs and instead utilized misprinting, inspired by the common error in comic books when ink is misaligned. When something is in focus, the colors align and are crisper, while the colors of background objects are often offset.

The characters in Netflix's Oscar-nominated film "Klaus" look three dimensional. But unlike most animated movies these days, the characters in "Klaus" aren't all CGI and can't even be considered 3D. The characters were first hand drawn, inked, and painted using digital tablets. Then the artists were able to paint with light, thanks to software created specifically for "Klaus." The second major feature that helped bring the characters to life and added to the 3D illusion was texturing. With another piece of software they used contour, lighting, and motion to add surface qualities to specific parts of a character. For example, the skin could appear smooth while the clothing would be rougher. In the end, the characters appeared much more 3D and immersed in their environment, as opposed to looking like stickers on top of an elaborately painted background. While the majority of the film followed this 2D process, the animators did use 3D models for some characters and objects and combined the two styles seamlessly. Even though these were created using CGI, they were lit the same way as the 2D characters were. Scenes like this chase scene at the end of the film so seamlessly combined 2D and 3D elements that it can be difficult to tell which is which.

While audiences and critics were divided on Disney's 2019 "Lion King" remake, it's undeniable that the animation was a technical triumph, as it's the most photorealistic animated major motion picture to date. One of the first steps in most animation films is pre-visualization, where an extremely low-resolution version of the animation is created in order to perfect character movements and camera angles. However, "The Lion King" took a new approach to this phase, creating simplified animated sequences that could be viewed in virtual reality. The director and production team would then put on VR headsets, which allowed them to actually step foot in the virtual set that they had created. This allowed them more freedom to explore each scene and let them easily set up shots, adjust lighting, and choreograph movements. This digital environment helped them emulate the nature-documentary aesthetic that they were aiming for. The "Lion King" animation team also ran into the unique challenge of having to make the animals not only realistic, but also able to sing and talk. In order to pull this off, they timed the characters' breathing to their dialogue and would make the belly muscles and diaphragm tighten. That way, it felt like the animals were forcing air out of their mouths as they spoke. Each layer of these animals also went through a simulation pass, an additional phase of animation where skin details such as muscle ripples, skin wrinkles, and fur interaction are all added. Striking that balance between staying true to the original film and creating a hyperrealistically animated "Lion King" for a new audience was a particularly tough challenge, and it required 77 million hours of animation rendering.

The 2019 Amazon Prime series "Undone" was created using rotoscoping, the process of drawing animations over live-action video footage. Rotoscoping has been around since the early 1900s, but the rotoscoping process for "Undone" is so much more advanced that it's practically unrecognizable from its predecessors. The producers for "Undone" were originally going to film the series using live action, but they ultimately decided that using rotoscope animation would give the series the surreal feeling that it necessitated, as the story revolves around a young woman who has an unsteady grip on reality. The scenes were initially shot with actors and minimal sets, using grids on set as reference points for the animators. There was no need for green screen because every area of the frames would be painted over during the rotoscoping process. The live action was then rotoscoped, with animators drawing crisp lines over the footage. The rotoscope animation was then sent to Amsterdam, where artists would use oil-based paints to add colors and shadows to the footage. While many of the backgrounds were painted in Amsterdam using oil on canvas, some scenes required backgrounds that were created using 3D-modeling software. To maintain the uniform painted look, the 3D-animation team would send a layout to the painters, who would paint over the image. After the painting was complete, the 3D artists could then use the finished painting as a reference for texturing the 3D environment.

What film do you think we should have included on the list? What animated film would you like us to discuss next? Let us know in the comments.

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