r/Invincible Nov 26 '23

ANIMATION DISCOURSE S2 DISCUSSION

So it seems like since the last episode dropped, there’s been a lot of discourse around the animation for Season 2 overall. I’m going to try to give my most level-headed thoughts on this. As a passionate fan of the comic, after seeing how they adapted the fight on Thraxa, in my opinion the fight lacked and underdelivered on the sheer visceral gore and ferocity in the comic. This is one of the first few times I think that the show paled in comparison to the comic in terms of the scale, spectacle and amount of detail that was put into the comic. The issue is less about the blood and gore being shown in the episode, it’s more about the level of detail of the gore, battle damage and destruction. I think there’s nothing wrong in constructively levying criticism to a property I’ve immensely loved and only want to see thrive and constantly improve. In season 1 a lot of the focal moments like Guardians massacre, Machine head fight, Omni Man/Invincible showdown and by extension the Atom Eve special episode were massively improved and the elevated in grandiosity, scope and brutality, which is what I was expecting for the Thraxa fight but unfortunately its came off a bit weaker for me than the source material. Now overall I do think that S2 has stepped up the animation in terms of the character models, lighting and lack of CG models in the background, but it hasn’t made the animation really count where it matters most like in S1.

I think a lot of the fans that have concerns about how certain moments will be adapted in terms of the animation are valid. The comics only get crazier in blood, gore and spectacle from the Thraxa arc and if this animation we got for Thraxa is emblematic of how future moments will get translated, I think it’s alright to be mildly concerned. Now is it possible that they repurposed most of the budget towards the second half and namely the finale, where we’ll see the animation shine and pop off, sure. Until then I can only judge off of what we have so far. What do you guys think?

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u/TechnicallyNerd Nov 26 '23

The problem is a lack of budget imo. Given the gap between season 1 and season 2, I refuse to believe a shortage of time is the issue, and I doubt story boarding is the problem given the source material. And the studio behind the animation, Maven Image Platform has done great work before in other media (as an example: The Chinatown alley fight in Batman The Long Halloween Part One looks better than 90% of the fights in Invincible). They've also done great work in Invincible as well, but it's inconsistent and almost jarring when the animation goes from mediocre to "wow, that looks awesome" then back to mediocre. The "hammer" scene from season 1 is a great example of this. That explosion effect is spectacular, one of the coolest explosions I've ever seen in an animated series. But it's immediately followed by some of the most laughably bad animation in the series, as we see the sky rain copy-pasted bird.png. This isn't a skill issue on the animators part, this is a "I need this done as cheaply as possible" on Amazon's part. Because Amazon, and western media companies as a whole, have very little respect for adult targeted animation outside of comedies.