9 ms·

The Graphic Art of Incredibles 2

274 points by yarapavan 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
exodust 8y ago
Very thorough piece, it's good seeing all the images that form the inspiration. I'd like to see something similar for the original Incredibles. The original Incredibles is one of my favorites. There's a simplicity, pace and elegance to everything that makes it very tight and watchable. I enjoyed Incredibles II but thought it suffered a little from "sequel ramp-up" where everything is required to be "bigger" and "better". Story is displaced by action, and then you end up rating the movie on the action scenes and sequences rather than a unified whole with story, dialog and action in balance. The visuals were excellent but even then, sometimes too much was crammed in, and not easy to take in due to pace of story advancing quickly.
- w1nt3rmu4e 8y ago
  Action? All I remember is the father -- a superhero -- unable to perform basic child rearing tasks and I tuned out. I don't know what Bird's intention was, but I felt it played into current gender politics rather than addressing them. The first movie was a critique of culture, this was -- an attempt to please? I don't get worked up about 'dumb men' stereotypes since I'm not dumb and take an active role in raising my children but I felt the second needlessly betrayed the first film. Elastigirl was a superhero. She and her husband may have had somewhat gender-appropriate powers (brawn vs flexibility?) but she was his equal in fighting bad guys. Her becoming a housewife was the satirical part of the film. So in the second we have a woman who never lived in her husband's shadow -- beyond their assumed identities -- but now the thrust of the story is her outshining her husband? You can argue that his was satire -- since in the story her taking center stage was a plan driven by PR people and expected ratings -- but I really don't think it hit the mark. Instead of backing it up with something appropriate, Bird just gave us, see, isn't being a housewife hard! Again, Mr Incredible is a superhero, I'm sure he can manage. My wife felt the same way. Loved the first one, was disappointed by the gender politics of the second.
  - jl6 8y ago
    Bear in mind both films are set in 1962... I’m a father who shares duties equally with my wife. Between us, we cope. When one of us is away, all hell is prone to break loose. That’s what’s I interpreted Mr Incredible’s struggles as - not incompetence, but being overwhelmed by being the sole parent.
    - mixmastamyk 8y ago
      Indeed, being a single parent is difficult for many reasons but the non obvious one is sleep deprivation, or lack of rest.
      - rbanffy 8y ago
        If it were not for the sleep deprivation and the subsequent memory loss, we'd probably all stop at one kid and go extinct.
    - mschaef 8y ago
      > When one of us is away, all hell is prone to break loose. Of course.... with half the capacity to manage the household, it's only natural that things would get, well, a bit more chaotic.
    - a_e_k 8y ago
      That is absolutely my experience as a parent as well. Usually when there's just one of us like that its because of an abnormal situation which adds stress as well. Just keeping the household running becomes a feat of endurance. And remember, Mr. Incredible is not just acting as the sole parent. He's acting as the sole parent of a baby exhibiting random super powers. If my youngest could phase through walls at will... holly hell! I'm not sure that any solo parent could keep up with that; I don't even think two would be enough.
  - EpicBlackCrayon 8y ago
    I don't necessarily care about the gender politics angle, I think it's just the tale of Bob learning to be a single parent. My problem is with the basics, the basic plot wasn't very well though out. I think Bird really shot himself in the foot by deliberately avoiding a time skip. Then at the end of the movie supers are legal again thanks to one judge's ruling even though we've been told in previous movies that this is a government ban. There were so many little details that just wrapped themselves up nicely with no thought.
hnmonkey 8y ago
This was so much more rich, detailed, and fantastic of a read than I initially expected it to be. I assumed it would just be a short-ish blog post on the style of the movie but it really goes into detail on so many aspects from the behind-the-scenes. And I learned that some places in Palm Springs are like some sort of time capsule oasis time traveling machine back to 50 years ago. It's so cool that these houses haven't been renovated or torn down to be replaced with something more modern in such a long span of time. This must've taken a while to put together and Josh Holtsclaw did a great job with it. Is there a place that captures these types of details for lots of other movies? If not, I think there's an opportunity to collect all of these types of design analysis in one place. I can't imagine the audience would be huge, but I would guess they're passionate and super interested in this type of thing. I didn't think I would be going into this article but I came away wanting more of these types of articles.
- nstart 8y ago
  Many movies do an "art of <movie name>" book. Those are usually the best source of this. To answer the question about articles of this nature. Very rare. This person's entire blog is a treasure trove. He even worked at studio laika! <3
  - a_e_k 8y ago
    I can confirm that exists for this show. I have a copy of "The Art of Incredibles 2" sitting on a shelf right next to me.
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  I don't know if it's what you're looking for (it's definitely more short-form at least) but I loved browsing round this site when I first saw it: http://moviesincolor.com/ http://moviesincolor.com/
  - johncalvinyoung 8y ago
    YES. This is exactly the link I was trying to remember.
fipple 8y ago
Incredible craftsmanship. Even when Pixar makes turds like The Good Dinosaur they are a pleasure for the eyeballs.
- ericcholis 8y ago
  The environments in The Good Dinosaur were stunning....and then the characters were less so. It's like they were designed by two completely different studios.
  - faceplanted 8y ago
    I think The Good Dinosaur was one where the directors and writers got removed and replaced during production. Might have been due to the vision changing.
    - toyg 8y ago
      Inb4 “darned execs”: Pixar did basically the same with Toy Story 2, throwing out 90% of the movie with barely a year to go before release date, and it worked out. Sometimes reworking it is the right thing to do.
  - snowwrestler 8y ago
    Pixar really wants to stay out of the uncanny valley with their characters, so they intentionally design them to look "cartoony"--closer to the classic hand-drawn animation of the past. They want their movies to look like animated movies. "Live action" movies try to make it to the other side of the uncanny valley. Usually the most successful efforts cheat a bit by avoiding human characters. Think Avatar, Gollum, Snoke, Thanoes, etc. They look so real! (If aliens or ring-wracked wretches were real...) Where movies looks weird is when there are elements on both sides of the uncanny valley--in the case of The Good Dinosaur, the backgrounds look real and the characters look like cartoons. This was surprising because Pixar is usually careful to avoid this. The sea in Finding Nemo looked amazing, but it didn't really look 100% real--it looked like a beautiful stylized version of a sea. Same with the environments in The Incredibles, as the top blog here details.
coldcode 8y ago
I appreciate how much work went into this, but what a fun job to have. Compared to that writing code is dull and lifeless.
- gmueckl 8y ago
  Ah yes, the grass is always greener on the other side - what a common fallacy! I'm also prone to thinking this. But the truth is that a job is a job: you are under presssure to perform, no matter what you do. And in the case of designing for a movie, you have to churn out dozens or hundreds of images of a certain type and style and actually creating them can turn into a dull task. Having said that, I find the sheer amount of work that has gone into thendesign of the movie astounding. Having to design every aspect of an imaginary world to that level of detail is hard.
- pcwalton 8y ago
  Lots of people think that, but it's not true. The competition for studio work is extraordinarily intense--labor supply significantly exceeds demand--and compensation reflects that. If you think living in the Bay Area is tough as a programmer, try it when you're making a quarter of an engineer's salary (and Pixar, unlike the major L.A. studios, is not unionized). Though I can't speak to Pixar specifically, generally most such positions are on contract--when the production's done, so is the budget for staffing--so you're bouncing from studio to studio constantly looking for work. Besides, a lot of a production like this is essentially just writing code. I've had multiple industry artist friends tell me that, if they could go back and start over, they would have done computer science as a career and art on the side.

274 points by yarapavan 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Very thorough piece, it's good seeing all the images that form the inspiration. I'd like to see something similar for the original Incredibles. The original Incredibles is one of my favorites. There's a simplicity, pace and elegance to everything that makes it very tight and watchable. I enjoyed Incredibles II but thought it suffered a little from "sequel ramp-up" where everything is required to be "bigger" and "better". Story is displaced by action, and then you end up rating the movie on the action scenes and sequences rather than a unified whole with story, dialog and action in balance. The visuals were excellent but even then, sometimes too much was crammed in, and not easy to take in due to pace of story advancing quickly.

w1nt3rmu4e 8y ago
Action? All I remember is the father -- a superhero -- unable to perform basic child rearing tasks and I tuned out. I don't know what Bird's intention was, but I felt it played into current gender politics rather than addressing them. The first movie was a critique of culture, this was -- an attempt to please? I don't get worked up about 'dumb men' stereotypes since I'm not dumb and take an active role in raising my children but I felt the second needlessly betrayed the first film. Elastigirl was a superhero. She and her husband may have had somewhat gender-appropriate powers (brawn vs flexibility?) but she was his equal in fighting bad guys. Her becoming a housewife was the satirical part of the film. So in the second we have a woman who never lived in her husband's shadow -- beyond their assumed identities -- but now the thrust of the story is her outshining her husband? You can argue that his was satire -- since in the story her taking center stage was a plan driven by PR people and expected ratings -- but I really don't think it hit the mark. Instead of backing it up with something appropriate, Bird just gave us, see, isn't being a housewife hard! Again, Mr Incredible is a superhero, I'm sure he can manage. My wife felt the same way. Loved the first one, was disappointed by the gender politics of the second.
- jl6 8y ago
  Bear in mind both films are set in 1962... I’m a father who shares duties equally with my wife. Between us, we cope. When one of us is away, all hell is prone to break loose. That’s what’s I interpreted Mr Incredible’s struggles as - not incompetence, but being overwhelmed by being the sole parent.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    Indeed, being a single parent is difficult for many reasons but the non obvious one is sleep deprivation, or lack of rest.
    - rbanffy 8y ago
      If it were not for the sleep deprivation and the subsequent memory loss, we'd probably all stop at one kid and go extinct.
  - mschaef 8y ago
    > When one of us is away, all hell is prone to break loose. Of course.... with half the capacity to manage the household, it's only natural that things would get, well, a bit more chaotic.
  - a_e_k 8y ago
    That is absolutely my experience as a parent as well. Usually when there's just one of us like that its because of an abnormal situation which adds stress as well. Just keeping the household running becomes a feat of endurance. And remember, Mr. Incredible is not just acting as the sole parent. He's acting as the sole parent of a baby exhibiting random super powers. If my youngest could phase through walls at will... holly hell! I'm not sure that any solo parent could keep up with that; I don't even think two would be enough.
- EpicBlackCrayon 8y ago
  I don't necessarily care about the gender politics angle, I think it's just the tale of Bob learning to be a single parent. My problem is with the basics, the basic plot wasn't very well though out. I think Bird really shot himself in the foot by deliberately avoiding a time skip. Then at the end of the movie supers are legal again thanks to one judge's ruling even though we've been told in previous movies that this is a government ban. There were so many little details that just wrapped themselves up nicely with no thought.

hnmonkey 8y ago

This was so much more rich, detailed, and fantastic of a read than I initially expected it to be. I assumed it would just be a short-ish blog post on the style of the movie but it really goes into detail on so many aspects from the behind-the-scenes. And I learned that some places in Palm Springs are like some sort of time capsule oasis time traveling machine back to 50 years ago. It's so cool that these houses haven't been renovated or torn down to be replaced with something more modern in such a long span of time. This must've taken a while to put together and Josh Holtsclaw did a great job with it. Is there a place that captures these types of details for lots of other movies? If not, I think there's an opportunity to collect all of these types of design analysis in one place. I can't imagine the audience would be huge, but I would guess they're passionate and super interested in this type of thing. I didn't think I would be going into this article but I came away wanting more of these types of articles.

nstart 8y ago
Many movies do an "art of <movie name>" book. Those are usually the best source of this. To answer the question about articles of this nature. Very rare. This person's entire blog is a treasure trove. He even worked at studio laika! <3
- a_e_k 8y ago
  I can confirm that exists for this show. I have a copy of "The Art of Incredibles 2" sitting on a shelf right next to me.
beaconstudios 8y ago
I don't know if it's what you're looking for (it's definitely more short-form at least) but I loved browsing round this site when I first saw it: http://moviesincolor.com/ http://moviesincolor.com/
- johncalvinyoung 8y ago
  YES. This is exactly the link I was trying to remember.

fipple 8y ago

Incredible craftsmanship. Even when Pixar makes turds like The Good Dinosaur they are a pleasure for the eyeballs.

ericcholis 8y ago
The environments in The Good Dinosaur were stunning....and then the characters were less so. It's like they were designed by two completely different studios.
- faceplanted 8y ago
  I think The Good Dinosaur was one where the directors and writers got removed and replaced during production. Might have been due to the vision changing.
  - toyg 8y ago
    Inb4 “darned execs”: Pixar did basically the same with Toy Story 2, throwing out 90% of the movie with barely a year to go before release date, and it worked out. Sometimes reworking it is the right thing to do.
- snowwrestler 8y ago
  Pixar really wants to stay out of the uncanny valley with their characters, so they intentionally design them to look "cartoony"--closer to the classic hand-drawn animation of the past. They want their movies to look like animated movies. "Live action" movies try to make it to the other side of the uncanny valley. Usually the most successful efforts cheat a bit by avoiding human characters. Think Avatar, Gollum, Snoke, Thanoes, etc. They look so real! (If aliens or ring-wracked wretches were real...) Where movies looks weird is when there are elements on both sides of the uncanny valley--in the case of The Good Dinosaur, the backgrounds look real and the characters look like cartoons. This was surprising because Pixar is usually careful to avoid this. The sea in Finding Nemo looked amazing, but it didn't really look 100% real--it looked like a beautiful stylized version of a sea. Same with the environments in The Incredibles, as the top blog here details.

coldcode 8y ago

I appreciate how much work went into this, but what a fun job to have. Compared to that writing code is dull and lifeless.

gmueckl 8y ago
Ah yes, the grass is always greener on the other side - what a common fallacy! I'm also prone to thinking this. But the truth is that a job is a job: you are under presssure to perform, no matter what you do. And in the case of designing for a movie, you have to churn out dozens or hundreds of images of a certain type and style and actually creating them can turn into a dull task. Having said that, I find the sheer amount of work that has gone into thendesign of the movie astounding. Having to design every aspect of an imaginary world to that level of detail is hard.
pcwalton 8y ago
Lots of people think that, but it's not true. The competition for studio work is extraordinarily intense--labor supply significantly exceeds demand--and compensation reflects that. If you think living in the Bay Area is tough as a programmer, try it when you're making a quarter of an engineer's salary (and Pixar, unlike the major L.A. studios, is not unionized). Though I can't speak to Pixar specifically, generally most such positions are on contract--when the production's done, so is the budget for staffing--so you're bouncing from studio to studio constantly looking for work. Besides, a lot of a production like this is essentially just writing code. I've had multiple industry artist friends tell me that, if they could go back and start over, they would have done computer science as a career and art on the side.