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Comment by ulrikrasmussen | Hacker News Reader

It is especially bad for animated shows that have made an explicit artistic choice to let (parts of) the animation progress at a lower frame rate. My kids watched "spider-man: across the spider-verse" at a friends place where smoothing was not turned off, and it completely ruined the artistic feel and made the movie feel like a stuttering video game.

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Studio Ghibli movies are among the hardest-hit by smoothing. It's jarring how it'll transition between motion-smoothed pans and motion scenes and natural Ghibli animation.

I found those spiderverse movies really hard to watch because of the low frame rate. I don't think it was artistic, it was cheap.

> I found those spiderverse movies really hard to watch because of the low frame rate. I don't think it was artistic, it was cheap.

It was absolutely an artistic choice - Sony spent more per frame on those movies than any previous animated film & the directors knew exactly what they were doing when they chose to animate some parts on every second (or even third) frame.

This is an artistic choice with a variety of film precedents. Its not exactly the same thing, but if you watch this GDC talk about the way that Arc System Works uses 3d to simulate 2d animation, it gets some of the ideas across:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhGjCzxJV3E

Artists might want to produce a lower framerate just to make something look filmic (eg, 25 frames per second) or hand animated, but it can also be a deliberate stylistic choice for other reasons. Eg, the recentish Mad Max films used subtle undercranking to make action scenes feel more intense, and part of that effect is a more noticeable frames and I think there is a bit of that in the Spiderverse films too.

I mean, it was an artistic choice, and it wasn't cheap at $90m budget. That doesn't mean you're obligated to enjoy the end product by any means, but they were really doing some interesting things! https://medium.com/everythingcg/spider-man-into-the-spider-v...

I think that's a matter of taste, but it definitely doesn't make it easier to watch them when the frame rate randomly switches between low and high all the time :).

That is a fantastic movie, btw

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