Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse redraws the limits of animation

The Future. Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse both caught a lot of business this past weekend and upped the bar for every animated movie moving forward. Brought to life by some of the best artists in the industry, Across the Spider-Verse may demonstrate the unique allure of original human creativity in the midst of a generative-AI revolution.

Pen slingers
The sequel to 2018’s Academy Award-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse shows what the collective imagination of 1,000 human artists can pull off.

• For the first movie, the team built a new tech that could mix 2D, 3D, hand-drawn, and computer-generated animation, which allowed all the styles to bleed into one another.
• The sequel pushes that capability, giving each Spider-Man (hundreds of them, thanks to the multiverse) their own unique visual style.
• And six completely different animation styles were used across the film’s many timelines.

These wildly ambitious feats were only made possible by animators across the various teams working together so that all the parts felt like a cohesive whole — overseen by directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson.

Expect another Academy Award for Spider-Man in this timeline.