Thanks to Sony for hosting this event.
There is something truly special about visiting a Hollywood Movie Studio. It is as magical as you’d probably think and I’ll let you in on a bit of uncommon knowledge, once you’re inside, it’s completely TOP SECRET.
So visiting Sony Pictures Animation Studios in celebration of the digital and BLU-RAY release of Spider-Man Into The Spider-Verse was simply AMAZING! We got a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the Academy Award winning film!
VFX with Danny Dimian
We started our journey into the Spider-Verse with Danny Dimian, VFX Supervisor of of Sony Pictures Imageworks. He told us that inspiration came in many forms when deciding the look and feel of the film. They wanted this Spider-Man to have the spirit of a comic book, so they studied comic books focusing on details like colors and the overall look and feel that comic books gives its readers.
They didn’t stop there. The art department took a field trip to NYC to study the streets. They looked at colors and shapes in search of the realism that the streets gave. This allowed them to mix textures and media of still and moving art. Various camera lens in and out of focus with a play on unaligned RGB created the ground breaking look of art over realism which took this film Academy Award winning film to the next level.
Storyboarding with Denise Koyama
Denise Koyama served as the Story Artist on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and her role was to digitalize or convert the images of the characters into digital form for the director. To prepare for it Koyama did something that she’d always done as a child and that was reading and studying Spiderman comics. She shared that she discovered her artistry skills very young as she use to sketch pictures while her sister read stories aloud.
Denise Koyama served as the Story Artist on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and her role was to digitalize or convert the images of the characters into digital form for the director. To prepare for it Koyama did something that she’d always done as a child and that was reading and studying Spiderman comics. She shared that she discovered her artistry skills very young as she use to sketch pictures while her sister read stories aloud.
In fact for the film, she originally sketched out stick figures and drawings on post-its. Denise also used Adobe Photoshop for drawing and uploading much of her work on the Spidy scenes. Some of the post-its were digitized for the archives, which are of course, top secret! At the end she had created many sequences which only last about three minutes in the film and each one consisted of a whopping 1,745 versions and inside those versions were 600-1000 drawings. That’s a lot of sketches!
Character Animation with Joshua Beveridge
Joshua opened his Q & A saying when they started this project, they started with the question “Why does the world need another Spider-Man? His response, because everyone can wear the mask!
He was in charge of the overall look and feel of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. His focus was primarily on the line work. Sony didn’t want to completely mock a comic book nor did they want a simple flat animation film, so they combined the two. Some challenges they faced were making real life characters look real be able to perform in a graphic world. He told that they used twos and half the frame (this is real technical industry talk), but in layman’s terms that means that they overlapped scenes and sped one up and showed only a portion of the other creating the right mixture of movement for a cartoon and reality combined character.
Making it Happen
The screenwriters Chris Miller and directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman of Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse were in unison about this film. They worked for almost four years through adversity by returning to what would be best for Myles. They commented that this often resolved any of the rare issues that arose.
Easter eggs were big in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. If you’re not familiar with the term, an Easter egg is an intentional joke or message hidden within a film. Screenwriter Chris Miller excitedly told us about the play on words and characters hidden in plain sight. I don’t want to spoil them for you but be on the lookout for them especially on the skyscraper scenes.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse comes out on Digital 2/26 and 4K, Blu-ray and DVD on 3/19
Selena Hughes blogs about her families adventures at https://selenahughes.com
