Frozen before Brozen

DISNEY + TRIVIA

It’s usually only done well in 2D animation when it’s a short/feature film, and it’s rarely captured in 3D animation. In fact, so many 3D animated characters among the various studios look unaffected by gravity. Even Pixar’s upcoming film, Luca— while I’m glad for something more stylized— looks so... inflated? Idk how to explain it ?????

One animation style I adore is Lilo and Stitch. They very consciously push the weighted-ness of everything.

(rather than balloon animals, the shapes are more akin to water balloons, yknow?)

It’s weird to me that so much of 3D animation isn’t able to make their character feel like they have solid mass??? It’s totally doable!!! It’s been done!!!

This gif contains what is probably my favorite background detail of Megamind. Megamind has just ordered Metroman’s death after trapping him in the copper dome. Of course, since it’s Megamind, it doesn’t work, and Metroman just stares at him. We learn later that Metroman faked his death, and used his super speed to wander around the town while having an existential crisis.

He first visits Megamind, having found his real hideout:

and then goes to the park, the library, a diner, etc, and finally, the Metroman museum:

before returning to the dome and faking his death.

Now, what’s really fun about the first gif is that, if you look closely, you can see Metroman fade slightly for two frames right after he rolls his eyes. If you look even more closely, you can see him in one frame standing behind Megamind, and in one frame on the upper deck of the museum. Look at it again. See the flicker?

I’ve slowed it down here to make them more obvious (though at the resolution it’s difficult to see him on the deck):

Screenshots, zoomed in a bit:

There is a bit of a continuity error, though. In the first gif, Metroman uses his superspeed while everyone is waiting for the death ray to work. But in Metroman’s retelling, he leaves while Megamind is yelling “FIRE!” to Minion. You can hear Megamind yell in this video:

So the fun of this detail is a little bit broken by the continuity error. But I think it’s an intentional continuity error, made at the points of drama in both scenes. I mean, look at this dynamic face that Megamind is making here. Pretty cool looking:

Option A: Stan turned on the TV the old fashioned way, sat down, and realized too late what channel the TV was turned to