Why Wish Looks Bad: Animator Explains 

Alright y'all apparently I wasn't clear enough, even though it's the first thing I say in this video: the animation in this movie looks CHEAP. They (Disney leadership) made creative decisions to make it look a certain way, and those decisions were a BAD idea, which made it look CHEAP and BAD. I am NOT defending Disney's choices and saying "well it's actually good and you just don't get it", I'm just trying to not default to dunking on this movie by saying it's "woke" like every other video essay on this movie, and instead look at these creative decisions by the filmmakers objectively. I'm explaining WHY these creative decisions made this movie look like a TV show instead of a feature film by dissecting what "TV animation" even means. Explaining Disney's thought process does NOT mean that I'm defending their decisions, because I go on to explain why these decisions are misguided. And so I'm crystal clear, "misguided" is a synonym for "BAD." I'll do better in the future to be more clear about my feelings of the film I'm discussing, beyond saying it in the first sentence of the video. Also for the last time, Magnifico isn't the good guy.

they should have just committed to 2D animation it would have been stunning and fitting as an actual homage.

The fact that you have to explain so much of Disney's intentions with this movie is a problem. 😢

I think the biggest problem with giving Asha what she wants is with her having no character development. In Moana, Moana did get what she wanted but with a lot of trial and error. She had to learn how to be a leader and fail at her end goal only to realize that she can do it. She lost her grandmother and had to learn that her ancestors are always with her. There's more that can be said but the main point is giving them character development if you want to give them what they want.

My beef with the star is that apparently, it was supposed to be animated in 2D, which would have been perfect as an homage to Disney's history, blending 2D and 3D animations. That plan was scrapped, and the source I read basically said it was because it would've been too hard. So instead, we have just 3D animation, as if Disney is saying that's the only part of its 100 year history worth celebrating.

Another reason why the style looks so wierd is because of the limited shadows. Normally Disney animated films has very detailed shadows and half-shadows with detailed lighting, but here shadows are straight up absent on some part of the characters. Like Asha's hands lack shadows from fingers and many characters have limited shadows on their clothing. I suppose it was made to flatten the picture to make it more story book like but a result looks more like a poorly rendered video game. I get what type of impression the animation team was going for, but it obvious that the were not given enough time and resources. There's a twit from the amimator from the team of Wish, circulating around, where he says that the movie was made during huge layoffs and a lot of corporate pandering was involved. So I blame the upper management. The film also suffers from poor directing, 90% characters are in the central part of the screen, breaking the rule of thirds. In the interview one of the directors, Fawn Veerasunthorn said that "out philosophy was whoever has power, is in the center of the screen" which sounds like a bullshit to me. Song sequence are filmed like a real Broadway song on a scene, making a lot of shots from the top and not utilizing free 3d camera enough. I do understand for what they were going with the Star, but I would rathey they went with the early concept of a starboy shape-shifter. Asha lacks any strong emotional connection with ohter characters so interetion with then Star might've salvaged it. Sight. This film's script is a mess. P.S. People are not saying thar the animation was done by AI, but rather that the script and the texts of the songs were written by it. Allegedly, if you ask ChatGPT to write a Disney movie script about the evil king, magical star and a female protagonist it will create something similar to the script of Wish. And the songs have some wierd lyrics, that are breaking both rhythm and the size. Look it up, it's a big Oof of a song texts.

I really think they redesigned Star purely to make it more marketable and producable as plushies or toys. A shapeshifter would be the perfect representation of pure creative spirit.

one of the issues i have with the drawing style is just how smooth it is. They went for a watercolor look but also didnt push it enough. Just a "safe risk" which ended up making the overall picture look incomplete

This is such a comprehensive deconstruction of the critiques to this movie, while still critiquing it yourself from an educated point of view. I never would have ever considered how the star is an homage to bouncing ball animation and that is honestly brilliant- I still have my gripes with the story but you’ve effectively proven that this movie had a lot of love visually put into it

The animation is well made but I think the biggest issue people, including myself have is the art style. The characters really don’t look that different from characters that were in tangled, frozen, Encanto, Moana, ext. just with cel shading. which would’ve been fine three or four years ago. But in a world where more and more movies are adopting their own unique styles with spiderverse, the bad guys, Mitchells versus the machines, nimona, puss in boots, and mutant Mayham. People have realized they’re kind of tired of the art style Disney usually uses for their 3-D movies. In a world where it seems like everyone is starting to innovate and do something special in the animation industry it just makes Disney look stagnant in comparison

I'm not mad at the artists, I'm mad at who wrote the story. Animators are great, looking at King Magnifico they clearly put a lot of attention to detail. But the story... Horror.

Honestly I think my only problem I had with this animation was just the design of the characters *still* look like they could be plopped into tangled, frozen, Encanto and Moana. But when you look at a lot of other Disney movies, the character designs are much more unique. 🤷‍♀️

What baffles me is that paperman and feast look better than Wish does? I feel like the issue is they didn't take enough of a risk, I imagine the method they used for this semi-painterly style was simply easier to do than an entire movie in the paperman artstyle or say, Klaus from netflix, so they took the easy way out. Which they have no excuse to be doing if this was meant to be a homage. Cuphead is an incredible homage to 1930s animation, because it took an incredible study of history and an incredible amount of otherwise unnecessary labor, and an incredible amount of dedication-- it was a feat of craftsmanship deserving of respect! And this line of work, animation, it is a CRAFT! The more expertise applied to it, the more it is worth. The positive aspects of the art style they chose for wish, besides perhaps the magic effects, is simply... the bare minimum I expect from someone who learned animation. Yes, I would hope you know how to exaggerate expression, push poses, but if you are supposedly the best animators in the business I need you to WOW me. Like in Roger Rabbit, where they famously showed off by having them bump the lamp so the light would be hard to animate. If you're so good at this-- do something impressive! " Oh, it was too hard" Yes! That's what makes it deserving of respect! Do you want an award or don't you? Try harder! And I don't blame the animators for that, not remotely, I'm sure its purely the higher ups restricting them from really doing anything that takes time-- they should have planned for a 100 year anniversary movie back at the 90 year anniversary frankly, but when I criticize the company I am talking to whoever is responsible for the mistake, whoever it may be.

While in line at the theater, I saw the giant poster/standee for Wish as my first exposure to the film. I joked that they designed the main character to sell old Isabella (Encanto) and Raya dolls that they repurposed.

the biggest issue I had with it is that that "watercolor" look, did not read as watercolor to me. And that's pretty bad considering I paint with the stuff daily. Instead it read as flat cell shading found in games like team fortress two where there is a severe lack of dynamic textures and lightings. If they wanted a watercolor look they should have looked at how the game Gris did its animation.

My problem with the animation style is the backgrounds and characters don’t look seamless at all. It looks like they are two different styles, or were drawn separately. Which is technically true, but that shouldn’t be as obvious. I know there’s no motion blur, but they should have added some sort of seam or clipping layer to make the movie more consistent.

The Dragon Prince and Klaus are GREAT examples of how to create the look Wish was trying to go for, but actually doing it RIGHT.

The lack of interesting textures and lighting made Wish look like an episode of a Disney Junior Princess show. Might as well have been a special of Sofia the First.

I never doubted the animation was done by people- it was mainly the story telling and song writing

I had a popular TikTok about the distinct issues with the songs because I’m a musician and a lot of people were mentioning these myths about the animation in my comments. I’m so glad you took the time to make this nuanced view, it’s exactly what I was trying to explain to people (without the animation background) in my comments and failing to do!!

This was a very insightful perspective of the movie. At first I was like, “ this movie’s animation looks…not bad, but off.” Now I kind of get why I might think that. I still think some things are still too off, like some spots it looks like the characters are on/in a stage play with the backdrop painted behind them. it feels like there is no sense of depth ( like the characters are quite literally going to run back and just smack the flat surface). the characters and backgrounds, to me, don’t mesh well. But in all honestly if the story, characters, and songs were a lot better. I think people would be more open to the experimentation of the animation.

7:45 I'm going to call out that take: The issue with Wish's visuals is that it didn't push the medium into any specific direction and only went with "generic" while also having almost no original or unique cinematography to help bolster the feeling they are going for. Frozen 2, for instance has some REALLY good cinematography at times and can be quite atmospheric. Wish, on the other hand, has almost ZERO atmosphere or truly creative decisions. Every potentially creative decision seems to be weighed down by some sort of demand to not be "too creative". Saying they tried to combine "Tangled with Fantasia" is a disservice to both movies as both of those had much more distinctive art styles that pushed the medium of animation into a specific and innovative direction. Nobody would take any moment from Wish and compare it favorably to "The Firebird Suite", "The Rite of Spring", or "Night on Bald Mountain". Wish's greatest sin is that is doesn't try to be anything specific and has no identity. Story? Barely there. Characters? No very interesting. Animation? Technically good character animation, but the characters themselves aren't memorable so it doesn't matter if the performance is good. Cinematography? Almost no camera moves (could be intentional) but also no atmosphere. Visual originality (conceptual designs) also not very interesting to look at. It shouldn't take one very long to figure out a myriad of more visually interesting ways for this movie express itself, but it decided to take the quick and simple route for almost all of them.

I fully agree on the animation. The movement is actually very good and the use of squash and stretch is apparent! Sadly it's not just the lighting that makes it appear to be TV animation. They claim they wanted to give it a watercolor look, and in the backgrounds, they mostly succeed! But they don't put as much of that same stylization into the characters, and not to the same degree in every shot. Some shots you can see a slight line and a bit of a gradient. You can see that stylization, though it's subtle. Other times it's not there at all, and the models look matte and unfinished. Watercolors also often have a textured look, thanks to the paper, and that's not really existent in the finished character renders. Additionally, they could have used cell shading to harken back to older animation, but didn't do so. They didn't push the style, and as a result, they got the worst of both worlds.

Better story idea with much better plot twist: Asha wants to release the Wishes so every wish is granted And the Audience is shown how evil the Sorcerer is. But then it's revealed that Asha is the Daughter of the Sorcerer, and it's just in her rebellious phase and the Sorcerer isn't evil at all. 😅 But oh snap, the Wishes are released, and even the bad ones, causing the Kingdom to fall into chaos. And Asha need to use the Master Wishing Star to undo all the Wishes.

It's not that this movie isn't technically competent. It's that it's ONLY technically competent.

While I will be the first to sing the praises of this wave of new, experimental art styles that Spiderverse arguably kicked off, I do also worry that it’ll inadvertently get simplified to ‘make CGI look like 2D’, when there’s so many other places to take CGI than just variations on toon shading. Like, sometimes if you want the 2D look so badly, it’s worth considering just _doing it hand-drawn._ CGI can do photorealistic lighting and surfaces, that’s one of its amazing strengths. And you have movies like Rango, for example, that leaned hard into a very gritty, tactile appearance in a way that felt distinctly un-Pixar and that very few big CG films have tried since. Why not make a CG film that uses photorealistic rendering, but everything is lit and staged like a community theatre production, complete with props clearly made from painted up plywood and backgrounds that are obviously canvas curtains? We could have an animated film rendered to look like a stained glass window come to life, or a Lotte Reniger-esque shadow play! The possibilities are infinite, which is why I don’t want the creativity things like Spiderverse and Arcane have helped unleash to end with the industry sinking into yet another visual rut.

They should have done a Fantasia like movie with each segment representing a different era of their animation/movie styles instead of this

thank u for this 😭 when u see how talented and passionate so many of the disney animators are in works like the frozen 2 behind the scenes documentary, it makes me sad when people just attack stuff they actually know nothing about under the shield of "big corporation bad". i mean, there are individual people who are artists working on the tiny and necessary details of this stuff from start to finish. even if the overall work needed a more compelling story (and disney movie dept overall needs MAJOR and QUICK fixing right now), it still disheartens me to see that sort of misguided / bandwaggony bashing, lol. i sound dramatic but it's a broader trend i swear

I really appreciate what you did in this video, it really takes some guts to explain these details without just going "wish is bad, guys" . And that made the video way more enlightening. I'm glad i came across your channel

thank you so much for this, ive gotten really tired of the entire discussion of this film being 'disney bad lol' when it actually had a lot of (albeit squandered) potential

Disney has a lot of stuff going on in the background, and I feel like they would get a lot more appreciation if they advertised it more. I got a lot of ads for the actual movie and plot, but if it focused more on the 100 Year Celebration, it might’ve been realized why it was good

I just found this channel from your Insta & love your analysis. I really like the way you describe how the ANIMATION itself is incredible, it’s more about the subconscious associations we have with the art style/the way the final concept was realized-I haven’t heard this argument yet & I agree.

All this time I've been like - "There's nothing wrong with the animation, it's very expressive and fluid." The issue is the very flat lighting that recreates a flat 2D look. Except it did not go hard enough. So it's in uncanny valley between true cell-shading and luxe 3D. They should have gone cell-shaded if that's what they wanted.

That was really informative and is way better than 90% of the content on this site covering the animation of wish :)

My general understanding was that most people were accusing the writers of using A.I, not the animation itself, but I do appreciate the explanation as to why the animation looks cheap. It hadn't occurred to be that motion blur helped so much when it comes to TV vs Film animation, so thats good to know

As an animator as well, wish's only sin is being very bland looking in color in a lot of scenes, and the characters being kinda flat (and i mean in texture)

It’s a huge shame that the movie was rushed because it should have been better.

I think Puss in Boots shows how to fix the lack of motion blur... graphical effects can be used to compensate and still maintain motion.

Even with the set being evenly lit, my issue is that there is so little contrast between things in the foreground and background. In many shots, the overall tone of a character that is the focus of the shot is almost exactly the same as assets in the background or in a matte painting. Even if you're going for the "2D watercolor look", artists always created some contrast between foreground and background objects so that characters would "pop" and there was some depth to the scene. Like literally just up the saturation and contrast of tones of the characters and this movie would be so much better visually.

The fact they were going for water color and ended up with the flattest, clay blob animation style baffles me. Like the only thing they took from water colors is that the colors are muted that's it. It takes what should be a loose and imprecise style and turns it into the most sterile thing imaginable.

Personally, i find the idea of not simulated magic effects it's brillant, it perfectli matches with the feel of traditional animation that also puss in boots and spiderman are triyng to replicate. I don't think that the absence of motion blur it's an issue, also spiderman across the spiderverse didn't have it. I think that the main issue is the lighting: while the other 2 films keep a 2d look, they still have global illumination, the lighting is still realistic. In wish i don't see global illumination or ambient occlusion, the light doesn't bounce, there are no shadows. I know that they want a low contrast, but i think you can keep a low contrast look even if the scene isn't illuminated uniformly. This type of lightning and this pipeline makes the result look like a 3d software preview. There's a scene in the trailer at 0:26 that looks almost like blender's modelling viewport. Having a watercolor look does not imply to remove the illumination. They should have changed the post processing effects, instead of the lighting. Whithout global illumination everything is fake and soulsess

I don't think anyone believed the _visuals_ were made by AI, that's just stupid. AI can't be this consistent yet. What people are accusing it of is being _written_ by AI, which I wholeheartedly believe.

The animation style is not a problem. The problem with Disney the last several years is style over substance. The movies look great but often have no soul.

i like the nuanced view of the movie. i honestly didn't think it looked that bad when it first came out, especially when people were complaining about the "animation", so hearing that the ANIMATION itself isn't bad makes sense

i'm really happy with the note you ended on about how this shows their recognition of different styles other than just photo realism styles on the big screen!! yayyy

A feeling I get out of this is that Disney isn't exactly "Disney" anymore. Through the last of their 2D productions, "Disney" defined traditional animation: 12 principles, polished drawings, smooth keyframes in service of a fairy tale. There were different periods to that where the processes changed, but Disney style as a kind of standard-setter came up all the time when comparing traditional animation versus limited animation. Fans of limited animation had to make the case for that aesthetic being more than just "cheap", that an approach based primarily around strong storyboarding could be more visually compelling than just showing a lot of frames of motion. However, to this day, there's a large audience that still wants "Disney", traditional Disney, with everything as smooth as possible. And I think current Disney is caught in between knowing they have that audience, but also that the industry is doing other things now and they should try to stay current. And whichever way they take their aesthetic, they'll be damned for it.

maybe instead of just turning off motion blur, they should have also gone hard on the squash and stretch and smear frames. Instead of just having the exact same animation style of tv animation, it would've been its own unique style. or y'know, they could've just made it 2D.

Idk, I think you're giving Wish too much credit. For one, you can’t possibly convince me the star was like that because it was inspired by the animation ball, rather than because it was easier to animate it that way (vs 2D) and it can be turned into a marketable plushie.

Incredibly refreshing to see someone genuinely analyzing the movie instead of just hopping on the hate bandwagon

Maybe it would've looked less cheap if they had leaned more into the watercolor aesthetic. They could've mixed 2d and 3d and added brush strokes or something. Similiar to the beginning of Across the Spiderverse.

What do you think of the reports coming from Disney animators who have been saying Disney executives interferes with the film’s development?

I do agree that saying the animation is bad is an exaggeration. I personally don't even think the randering is bad, or it looks unfinished. it does look odd because it is not even 3D nor 2D. When we see animations like The Bad Guys, Spiderverse, arcane, we can see it is 3D animation, with a coat of paint that looks like tradicional and 2D animation. Wish looks like it was stuck in the middle, and even thought I know the team did their best, it looks like they didn't bother to give an extra spark also, I see what you are trying to do, but saying they took a risk with this movie is not right either. if anything, they hold on everything that worked in the past 10 years and throwed references from the past 100 years. They took more risks in the concept art: a Romance that it was doomed to fail between Asha and Star boy, a villain couple, bringing back 2D animation. Those were risks they thought of making but decided not to. Yes we wanted a original story from Disney, we also wanted the come back of fun and evil villains. but that is not what we got. we got a studio trying to give us what the public wanted but not being able to reach a compromise with what they want. I don't think there is nothing to celebrate, not even as animators fans. at least not from Disney.

IMO the movie overall really felt rushed. Animation of main characters in itself was great, no doubt, although the absence of motion blur in itself was weird. But as soon as you look at the backgrounds, they are really inanimated : characters in the village dance scene all follow the exact same movements, in an orderly grid, and then just stop moving at all, while the action keeps on going. Lighting is not only plain, it's also glitchy, in quite a noticeable manner ! The environment lacks developement, and we have thus little connection to it. And the story moves waaay too fast, too. Asha's arc feels OK though, she gets what she deserves, and not what she wants at the very beginning.

As an animator, I disagree about the animation being good. Many of the performances were pretty pedestrian. I watched it with some animator friends and we groaned out loud every time a character did a 'W' pose or used a point, some extremely basic acting choices (often seen in TV animation too!). We also caught some suspiciously repetitive beats, even across neighbouring shots! I know the anim team had extremely limited time to complete the show, so i can't blame them for going with these basic choices, that's on the execs. But I can still say the animation performances were generally...pretty subpar for a Disney movie, and supposedly the best animators in the world. all that on top of the horrendous rendering and lighting style choices, poor dialogue, and the unmemorable songs. Thanks for this video though, I think you really gave a good overview of why someone not versed in the industry would be put off by the film!

I get it supposed to look watercolored, but they should have made really itterated on the look before going into production, because anyone could tell you this does not look as good as it could look. I guess since its 3D the shaders were made during production, and maybe the rendering/shaders department ran into issues and couldn't iterate further?

Lack of motion blur can also make live action look cheap. Some film makers have experimented with films above 24 FPS and unintentionally created that soap opera effect which people associate with bad TV shows.

This is a really interesting video and interesting to get an animators point of view. Just a side note though; the background music is a lil too loud and its kind of distracting.

From one (aspiring) animator to another, This was a very great video. I look forward to your VR film!!

Just because it was intentional doesn't mean it wasn't bad or ugly, you can intend to make something that looks ugly, it doesn't stop being ugly because it was the intended objective. I also disagree heavily on the star, cheap marketable plushy is the vibe it gives, the human Star character might've been more interesting for the dialogue, and looked cooler

Absolutely gread analysis! Only thing, I feel the 'Watercolour look caused the flat look' is short sighted. Watercolour can be very rich in saturation and contrast and many projects have previously shown there is nothing stopping this from carrying over to 3D. High level art direction or possibly management have decided against it.They also decided against any paper structures, ink splots etc. while committing to a rather high framerate. So, it's not the idea, it is once again the execution that hurt the look there. Knowing what the LookDev team is capable of at the studio, I am sure they were just as disappointed to not go all out as we are.

In some scenes it also looks a lot like that cell shaded Prince of Persia Game because of the use of fake outlines and, like you said, the flat colors with almost no dark shadows.

Algorithm brought me here, and honestly hearing it from an animator's perspective was very interesting! As you mentioned, the film needed the audience to have any kind of animation knowledge, and I imagine most of the audience does not. I personally would have wanted to see more distinctive styles of animators themselves, such as the Milt Kahl head swaggle, which is unfortunately hard to replicate fram what I've heard. If they wanted to pay homage to their animation legacy I feel like adding distinct and classic Disney animator's trademark styles would have been a better move. This is all coming from someone who has not watched Wish so I don't know if any of that is present. All of this word wall is to say this wan an enjoyable and informative video! Thank you for sharing your knowledge!

Came from the short, and really liked this. Love your video. Keep it up!

oh man! I absolutely love your views on all of this. I'd love to be able to chat with you more about stuff like this, sort of a short-ish interview at some point, as I am extremely passionate about films and am aspiring to make films myself, specifically animated ones. I'd love to hear more about your project and i'll be snooping around for news on it. Thank you for being here and making this stuff, it helps me a lot when it comes to bringing stuff up like this in conversations, and I love your technical take on all of it.

You make a lot of good points! I had noticed the even lighting, but didn't realize that the lack of motion blur was giving everything such a weird feel. Interesting!

I think when it comes down to it, the animation is definitely good, but it didn’t suit the movie or the backgrounds

Thank you! I've never been able to put my finger on WHY i thought the art style looked somewhat 'flat' but you've explained it so well in the association with tv animation!

Great video, appreciate your perspective.

my brain couldnt quite grasp that it was 3D, because of the- dare i say- flat colors and little shading in the clothes folds, and it hurt me to look at. likely just me, but still

i love your balance and positivity!

Honestly I thought the "made by AI" bit mainly applied to the writing. The animation's pretty gorgeous, all things considered.

The last section here interests me because of the vid i recently watched about the Lackadaisy miniseries -- which was enthusiastically crowdfunded and not from an existing studio. Turned out great, and the behind-the-scenes details of how they inspired each other into greatness was heartwarming.

It's kind of ironic because the actual legacy of Disney is to tell good and entertaining stories for the whole family, but they were so wrapped up in their narcissism that they wanted to see who could have the most clever reference instead of having the most important reference a good story that touches the heart

i can't really agree because although some scenes are expressive and well-animated, if you look closer especially at background characters, certain animations are pretty poorly done and snappy, and i'd argue the animation of shadows & such is part of animation. i mean i've literally seen ads for merge mansion knock offs that have just as good of animation if not better-looking than Wish. saying "but disney good. look at these fee instances where all the money in the world got us some well animated scenes" and "well they were going for a certain look people just think it looks cheap bc it looks like tv" doesn't really cut it. watercolor is an inherently blurry art style, so for one, the lack of smudging or blurring is a set back rather than a good intention. if they were fixated on the animation style of their older films, straight up going for 2d or those 3d styles that replicate 2d would've been far cry a better than "if we take out all the good parts of the animation, but keep the style the same, and makr the coloring slightly more watercolor-like, that'll be good" nah

For all the work that went into the animating the characters and movement, and all the little callbacks - Disney unfortunately keeps sticking to the most uninspired character designs that only get blander with time. The other movies mentioned here experiment with bold, colours, exaggerated and eyecatching styles, while this one looks like Frozen 5

I really appreciate your perspective on this, I feel like most commentary on this movie is just “The animation is so bad I hate this movie” and there’s little else that differentiates between different videos. Yours is really refreshing in comparison; you point out the flaws but also the good qualities and make sure to recognize the hard work people did put behind it even if it didn’t turn out good in the end

One of my favorite bits that I noticed when watching this was how with the forest, they managed to capture the style of how they filmed the background in Bambi.

As an animator myself... the final product looks incomplete, I wish Disney knew they are Disney and could make a 2D department again or work with other studios rather than keep trying to replicate 2D instead of doing it. I love Spiderverse, Puss and Boots, Bad Guys, etc, but it doesn't look as Disney is trying to do the same thing when it mimics 2D in recent years. And as a story lover, not to be rude, just my opinion, but I personally wouldn't applaud changing a character that could be developed with an original story for a marketable ball for the excuse of the bouncing ball, there are so many more ways to honor animation by how a character behaves and moves, they could have done so much more for this character than making him a ball to honor animation, like I imagine if he had a lot of smears if he moved floting by one side to another (the fact he is a special character could make the excuse to not make him look as the other water color characters if that was the issue), having him smoothly floating with satisfactory follow-throughs remainders of the classical Disney films, giving him that softness, make him a show of the 12 principles of animation, more than any other character, he could have more extreme expressions, etc, he is not a human, he could be more ethereal, his original story sounded very interesting and unique. Honestly, I repeat what I said in my other comment, is quite devastating imagining Disney, of all studios, never doing a 2D film ever again and just accepting 2D animation is dead for them when don't come to shows. I don't blame the animators working in the film.

Excellent explanation, Thankyou. While I do want movies to experiment with different styles it doesn't mean they are immune from criticism when it fails to impress

As a lover of animation and a artist, this is to me just fast fashion of movies. No detail, heart or soul! Just because you have big name creators still doesn't give it life. It's the love for the project and the hard work to implement detail for what your creating! The og 2D animations were made by people and for people wanting to change the world of movie making and storytelling. And More creative effort put in But 3D doesn't allow that relative experienceness it had back then. We saw what 3D can give us, and it's just copy and paste. We're moving too fast in technology that we're craving what we had back then. It's the lack or wanting to do somthing new, or the inspiration to do it. It's sad that me myself just want to have a small VCR TV and watch the old movies that made me smile then watch anything today. I just crave the warm familiarity from my childhood since the world is just so bleak. This is my opinion and I hope others share it too.

This is a super interesting video! I had thought that something looked a little weird about the clips I'd seen, but since I couldn't really put my finger on it I assumed I was just being influenced by the negative hype. But something about the characters' movements just seems almost robotic.

The more I think about animation, the more I want to get into it. My only block is patience and fear of it being too difficult, but I really REALLY want to get into it.

thank you so much for this video! As someone who's trying to dip their toes in animation, it's really interesting to hear a professional's opinion on movies like Wish.

Thank you for actually pouring research into this video instead of pulling everything from assumptions. There's way too much misinformation spread around this film because of people's bias against Disney, instead of looking into the core root of the film's problems which honestly had less to do with Disney's micromanagement but of the creative team's confusion of what exactly the film should be: a tribute to Walt Disney Animation or its own thing? Wasn't just due to the usual disney micromanagement but because of a back and forth confusion with the creative team and producers of what exactly the film should be

Honestly the main gripe has nothing to do with the animation (but the way clothes warp like rubber instead of fold bothers me a lot), the writing bugs the hell out of me. i think the way some of the lyrics were written seem very redundant and inhuman. theres no chance in hell disney would ever use ai like that, but the fact that something like 'i let you live here for free; and i don't even charge you rent' was in the final cut is odd. the words sound awkward with no flow, or a flow that sounds clunky, unnatural, and definitely not the standard disney sets for it's music in general. it genuinely sounds like it could be an ai output, and that says something equally interesting and disappointing about this move in general. it makes me wonder what sort of groupthink or corporate overreach happened where this was not only a song in a major release, but the main one i've seen advertised by disney media. I know this isn't your area of expertise, and it certainly isn't mine, but it's been stuck in my mind for a while, wondering exactly what they were thinking with any of this. it feels utterly baffling to me, as someone outside the industry.

My main issues with the look of the film: 1. The colors look washed-out in a lot of the scenes, almost as if the saturation slider was turned down for normal scenes and turned back up for others. While changes in color saturation are a useful tool for visual storytelling, it makes most of the movie look bland 2. It wouldn't shock me that there are a lot of shots that did not fully finish rendering given the reason you mentioned that "Disney realized the 100th anniversary was coming up and they needed a movie to celebrate it" 3. As part of it possibly being rushed, I understand why 2D animation wasn't used as that would have taken longer than the 3D animation we got. I also have heard that the animators at Disney now don't have the skillset necessary for high-quality 2D animation, but that might just be a rumor. Regardless, it would have been a much better idea to focus on 2D animation for Wish, especially since more than half of Disney's history as an animation company has revolved around 2D animation

YES DUDE!!!!!!!! I haven't seen Wish yet but that's amazing to see how studios not considering their modern audiences' biases are going to suffer. Context is key yet again! From what I can see here Wish looks gorgeous, it's too bad people are automatically assuming AI, but it's even worse that the characters/story don't hold up traditional filmmaking standards. Even something made on post-it notes can be emotionally captivating if done correctly.

couldn't concentrate on the video, your plant is just too gorgeous!

I think the main issue with Wish is definitely its writing, and the animation is a more tangible thing to target for people that hasn't seen the film. The animation itself, on a technical level, is pretty good. Agree with a lot of what you said though I think there are ways to make the animation seem less cheap while keeping the watercolor story book aesthetic. The main thing is more smear frames in place of motion blur. It'd help sell cartoonier movement without banking on photorealistic techniques that'd ruin the illusion. I also think the backgrounds could have had more contrast to them since watercolor paintings can have a lot of depth but Wish's backgrounds look more like billboards. Even on the character models you could do a stylistic shading method kind of like Arcane did with its combination of cell shading and painted shadows. Maybe some sort of shading engine to simulated color bleed or pigment layering that you see in a lot of watercolor paintings instead of the fairly flat and subtle shadows they used. But yeah, this doesn't fix the film. The plot is still confusing, Magnifico was full of wasted potential, the magic is unexplored, the songs range from passably catchy to downright bad, and the thing felt both bloated and boring. I think people saying the script or songwriting feels like AI is more an issue of it feeling very jumbled and manufactured, feeling kind of stitched together, likely due to executive interference. Did they use AI? Maybe, I don't know, I wasn't in the writer's room. The animation though, that's not AI. It's a bunch of talented people caught in the crossfire of poor management and chaotic deadlines that ended with a murky vision of something that could have been really fun and interesting. But that's just me.

I love the popular consensus, of how a movie that takes absolutely no risks and end up flopping.

"but the team realized that the star is marketable"

Just watched this on TT and had to come find the YT video.

Fantastic video, you hit the nail on the head 👏👏👏

Disnet used to have beautiful animation, and excellent writers and songs. So many of brilliant minds behind Disney are dead, or gone. I love 2-D animation, and I'm really enjoying that other artists are getting their work out there

If they wanted to celebrate 100th anniversary why not make an actual movie about mickey for once, like a comedy movie about mickey, donald, and goofy. It would have been a good chance to actually make a decent project with their main characters for once.

As an animator, I can agree with your points and also say that the issue isn't the animation or the "look" of the film on their own. It's simply a failure to implement their vision. In your motion blur example, the art and animation directors' ultimate choice should have been to include the blur, for instance. It removes an obvious distraction at the sacrifice of giving supposed hommage to snow white. 2D animation has been using blur or smears for the majority of it's history so it's just the oddest decision. The blur is part of the animation and sells the movement. From that point, the animation isn't the greatest as it's not as convincing given the rest of the film's style. It's very concerning if no one on the team could see that the end look gives off 'unintentionally cheap' instead of 'simple' or any other intentional descriptor. When creating films and trying to communicate a specific vision, choices and sacrifices are necessary. Often times, the right choices are counterintuitive at first, but end up emphasizing the initial vision, or creating a distraction free environment for that vision to get distilled. This film, visually, seems to suffer from some key bad decisions that definitely detract from the animation (movement) itself. You're right that they tried something original, they just failed at it for various reasons, where other animation studios did not, regardless of the style used.

I think the problem with the look of the movie is that they didn’t commit ENOUGH to the watercolor storybook style. Because the shape design of all the people and environments looks exactly like all the other main Disney Animations in the last 15 years, the flat lighting doesn’t read as “watercolor” it reads as “Disney movie with cheap animation”. There is no reason a watercolor style needs to look cheap if they actually pushed the uniqueness of the designs.

I love how positive this whole video is! :D

Thank you for the unique perspective. In watching the previews I was wondering why it seemed they didn’t put any animated effort into a movie they were trying so hard to promote, especially for Disneys 100th. I’ve not seen it yet, though I’ve heard many (mostly negative) critiques (and as these critiques relate mostly to plot line and how the characters handle themselves/development… I now only want to see it to decide for myself rather than be excited to see a Disney film.).

I don’t think people blame the animators for not pouring their soul on this project, I think everyone rightfully blame the awfully bad art direction. Making it in a style that is used to cut costs is effectively a cost-cutting decision.