Season 1’s animation was never groundbreaking, but they were pretty creative with character movement and fight scenes always felt well choreographed with fairly liberal frame use. After watching episode 4, I feel like it’s pretty safe to say that this season is a step down in animation quality when compared directly to the first.
Characters are often stiff in all scenarios, fight scenes don’t have the intensity or weight they used to, weird pacing artificially lengthens action scenes that I would otherwise just like to watch uninterrupted. There were some glimpses of decent fight choreography when Mark finally started going all out in e4, but it felt like a sparse exception instead of the rule.
Anyway, my question is just: What happened? Is this a result of the strikes? Did the first season not do as well as we thought it did? Were talented people laid off for whatever reason? I hope future seasons are at least on par with S1!
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The way omni man fights in the new mortal kombat is how they should animate it for the show. Watching the trailer for him you could feel the weight of his punches and the speed was perfect
I feel like they spent most of their money in licensing music and hiring high profile voice actors.
Totally agree with this. I really am not a fan of how many high profile celebrities and regular actors they got for voice actors instead of actually good voice actors.
Don’t get me wrong, some odd celebrity choices ended up solid to the point I don’t see the character without that voice (Seth Rogen as Allen), but so many hires just seem like pulling in high profile voice actors instead of actual good ones.
Not saying these hires don’t have talent, but talent on the screen like many of these celebrities and talent in the voice recording booth are two very different things.
Actually putting the budget into the animation pipeline (larger animation team to divide episodes to, more talented industry veterans for high profile fights, etc.) would’ve made this so much more worthwhile.
Episode 4 really felt like they didn’t have the time and/or resources to do what they wanted, so they had to dial the animation back a lot. I only watched it once but some of the big offeders I remember is
- A long sequence of Nolan flying slowly through mostly empty space, barely moving
- A long sequence of Debbie walking through mostly empty cityscape
- A medium sequence of Donald standing in front of a mirror barely moving, including several seconds of staring at a knife (I’m still not clear what he was looking at)
- The scene with Mark and his new stepmom standing in a mostly empty cave barely moving
All of these existed to run down the clock without taxing the animation resources.
I’ve seen a lot of praise for the climactic fight scene because it was “true to the comics” in that it utilized lots of still frames reminiscent of comic panels. I think this was the one instance where they were able to use the constraints they were under somewhat effectively. I would have much prefered an animated fight since I’m watching an animated show, but it at least felt like it worked stylistically as opposed to the rest of the episode which was lots of frustrating filler.
Donald noticed that the point of the blade was bent after stabbing himself. The implication is he’s a cyborg or something
The animation quality in Invincible’s second season has noticeably declined, with stiffer character movements and less impactful fight scenes. While there may be various factors contributing to this, it’s clear that the animation doesn’t live up to the standards set by the first season. Fans can only hope that future episodes will deliver the same level of creativity and choreography as before.
ChatGPT
Stop complaining, guyssss. They’re just honoring the source material
I love you.
