There are several reasons, but I think the main ones are
The level of detail of the backgrounds
First of all, I do actually really enjoy the stylization of characters, especially in Soul!!! But it still looks so wrong to me. Since technology has improved so much in the last 20 years, we can achieve a much higher level of photorealism when making 3D animation. Except, putting a cartoony character in a hyper-realistic setting makes it glaringly obvious how fake-looking the character is. Compare Soul to Toy Story 2:
I’m gonna say, I prefer the way Toy Story 2 looks. The characters -including the toys- in Toy Story 2 were always the most defined, textured, and realistic things in the shot, since the backgrounds were.. kinda simple. They felt tangible, because your brain already accepted that it was watching a cartoon. Everything already looked fake. Soul in comparison seems too fuzzy and out of focus. The character is out-competed by his background, because he’s far less realistic than it.
You can really see the difference between Toy Story 2 vs Toy Story 4:
And then the next reason is the lighting. It’s the same issue; the lighting is too good. It’s become really easy to create naturalistic lighting, which, cool, it can look really pretty, but it’s also... unnecessary? Into the Spider-Verse was supposed to look like a comic book, so they emphasized contrast and deep blacks and bold colors to make it look like a comic book.
Woody doesn’t need sub-surface scattering! He’s a cartoon toy! Plastic! Why did you make him look so squishy!
Anyway. Pixar has had this issue for a while. Ratatouille is the last movie I can think of where the characters and worlds really blend together well. The Good Dinosaur is an example of a bad offender of this. It doesn’t help that a lot of studios try to mimic Pixar, so most studios have this issue. It’s just so........ bland.
theartofmadeline
jbbartram-illu
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
janainaart
