2-D Wrap?

[largento]

I came across this Marvel Studios animated film the other day on Netflix Streaming called "Iron Man & Captain America: Heroes United." As expected, it was terrible, but interestingly enough, it was produced in only 7 months by a studio in LA called Brain Zoo Studios.

 

Although it appears to be 3D cgi, the producers claim it is a process called "2-D Wrap" or "2.5-D" :

 

So they invented a technique called a "2-D wrap," taking traditional animation, feeding it into the computer and wrapping it around the characters to give texture and weight to backgrounds and strongly emphasize facial expressions.

 

 

 

I went looking for info on the process because the lip-synching and facial expressions are jarringly non-fluid. It appears that they have essentially taken a Flash animation process to the lip synching. faces (possibly) hole heads are seemingly swapped out frame by frame (I'm guessing at a low frame rate) rather than moving the geometry.

 

Of course, they do this with stop motion, too, but in both Flash and stop motion, the rest of the movement is similarly choppy. This just calls attention to it.

 

Looks like the whole film is up on YouTube. Here's a link to a bit with Red Skull talking to see the effect.

 

I suppose given the limitations of time and budget, it's probably a decent solution. I just wonder why it couldn't be done as poses, allowing for the computer to interpolate inbetweens.

 

[pixelplucker]

Definitely don't want to take away the lunch money and perks from the executives, who cares how it looks right?