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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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. 🤷‍♀️

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.

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.

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 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

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.

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.