This semester I am taking a class called Animation for the Illustrator. In spite of the name, it is not a class in which illustrators learn to animate. The class is instead focused on learning to think like an animator, and draw accordingly. In order to study how animators think, we will be studying their work. Throughout the semester we will be watching animated movies and completing projects based on them.
The first movie we watched was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. This movie came out in 2023, and it evidently took much inspiration, as most animated movies released in the last five years, from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse. The animation is 3D, but it retains a very sketchy and fluid style that is reminiscent of 2D animation. I would argue that it takes this effect much further than Spider-verse did, and it suits it well. The atmosphere in the movie is lighthearted and grungy, which matches the animation style to a T. The colors feel like they have been splashed on haphazardly and have fallen into place by chance. In reality, this is not the case—they have been carefully applied to make this impression. Throughout the movie the lighting is visibly scribbled in, mimicking the sketchiness of a first draft.
The colors, the lighting, and the imperfect shapes and linework all add to the atmosphere, but the characters bring the world to life. Each one feels so vividly alive, even the side characters which are on screen infrequently. This particular attribute of the movie is what we are looking to imitate in the first project. Aside from writing great dialogue, it is achieved through editing character designs down to their bare bone structure. It is not feasible to animate dozens of details on a character which describe their entire personality, so it is better to choose a few key elements that communicate who the character is without giving it all away. The first few iterations of the character might be chock full of details, but as the character is pared down to their essentials, their personality is discovered. The characters in Mutant Mayhem are an excellent example of this kind of concise character design. They describe the characters without extraneous detail, keeping only what communicates personality and history.
Featured Image: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)