The Secret Weapon That Units Futurama’s Animation Aside From The Simpsons
Within the early days of “The Simpsons,” the present abided by the old style, hand-drawn, ink-and-paint fashion of cel animation that also makes up the majority of animation historical past. That has modified in recent times, however for a very long time, “The Simpsons” was held up because the final bastion of high-quality TV cel animation. At the very least that was the story informed by this writer’s animation professors in school again within the late Nineteen Nineties. In distinction, “Futurama” integrated extra assorted methods, rendering a number of buildings, exteriors, and spacecraft in CGI … however CGI that was coloured and textured to appear to be a 2D drawing. On the time, we known as it 2½-D. The characters, in the meantime, had been nonetheless hand-drawn.
Producer Claudia Katz famous that this hybrid look helped “Futurama” stand aside from each “The Simpsons” and its different animated contemporaries. She stated:
“Along with having nice voice appearing, jokes, and storytelling, we actually needed to ship on the sci-fi components and the one means to try this was with a 2D-3D hybrid animation. […] We love a problem, and it was a fantastic alternative to try to determine that out.”
And determine it out they did. Peter Avanzino, the pinnacle of Tough Draft Studios, famous that the unique mandate was to solely use CGI for spacecraft, however that the showrunners dropped that mandate rapidly. Quickly, CGI was accepted for a lot of issues. He stated:
“We began out simply utilizing it on the ship, however by [episode 2], we had this large reaper machine are available in and truly choose Bender up. […] We had been consistently determining what else we might do with it. Can we use it to shut a door? Can we use it for a crowd?”
Sure, they’ll. And so they did.
