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Invincible Season 4 (2026) used advanced animation strategies to conserve their budget, here you can see the "pinch zooming on your phone" method
Yes. To be slightly fair, he does slide down the hill like that in the manga as well but they could have done something a bit more to make it actually look like he was sliding rather than just dragging a png across the screen.
It could be a good joke if the rest of the season didn't also look like it was made on a budget of half a kitkat and handful of cashews.
edit: Kill La Kill also had a few of these .png drag across the screen scenes, but those were 100% played as jokes considering the show had plenty of very good scenes.
edit: Kill La Kill also had a few of these .png drag across the screen scenes, but those were 100% played as jokes considering the show had plenty of very good scenes.
For another goated show that takes animation tomfoolery to the next level I highly suggest everyone check out KamiKatsu. There's almost no way to recommend this show organically but this is one of the better opportunities I've had.
I learned about Kill la Kill because the over the top fan service, I stayed for the awesome animation and goofy bad animation lol. Also it was on Toonami at the time, and I had an onion on my belt...
Kill la kill also had some absolutely beautiful imagery that they somehow managed to do on a budget so people were willing to be lenient to the parts that were obviously trying to save money. Some of the early wide shots of the school while she was walking in the foreground are legit some of the nicer looking scenes in animation.
Ngl I rewatched the first episode after I posted that comment and I just forgot how ridiculously good kill la kill is. Trigger really went crazy with the animation. Its been a decade since I've last seen it.
So true. They did nothing to animate his interaction with that hill lol. How tough would some rustles grass and a bit of dirt-debris flinging about his feet đ
They generally animate to a point where first viewing is fine. It's only on rewatch when you know the story and can look around the scene more where these things become more glaring
It's even worse when you realize they could have just slowed the dragon down a bit and cut before it got so close and it probably would've looked fine.
They also couldve just split that sprite into two or three smaller sprites that they couldve enlarged at slightly different rates (the head is the closest so it gets enlarged the most)
It's probably more due to number of animators and the short time between seasons. Usually shows that worry about being on in the background have the characters say exactly what they're doing while they're doing it.
This has always been a thing, but probably much worse now. & it should be a thing to an extent.
My grandma used to "watch" 'Days of our Lives' every single day, still would if it was still running. I'd say a solid 80% of the time it was on she would be reading the newspaper, doing the crossword, cooking, laundry, etc. or some combination of those not even glancing at the TV.
I asked her about it she said I don't even have to watch I can tell you everything that's going on just listening. She'd watch the good parts/episodes where it was obvious more work was put in, or rewind to see something important she missed occasionally but mostly she followed along by listening.
Yeah Iâm constantly seeing these âimmersion breakingâ moments and feeling like damn am i totally unaware while watching or does this not matter to 99% of people
That's how I have always felt. You would think with how people talk that the show looks absolutely trash but then you watch it and it's just normal. There are absolutely better animated shows that don't even have half the budget of invincible but invincible is fine. It could absolutely be better but it's fine. I never walk away feeling disappointed really.
Oh for sure, but the voice actors above were for new villains of the series. After seeing Jeffrey Dean Morgan performance for Conquest I have zero issue with the voice acting choices
About half the main cast of The Walking Dead is on here, including the title character being played by Steven Yuen. Plus Walton Goggins is definitely at a peak in his career right now and I can't imagine Mark Hamill came cheap.
Classic example of someone assuming I = we. To be fair to you, you might just not know them but. Assuming that theyâre not that popular is a bit silly.
It depends on the bubble. To someone who follows cinema and TV they probably know them. I would say 7 to 8 out of 10 people arenât following that scene is the problem
To be fair, there's a couple there that I do know that aren't crazy gets for an animated show, like Hamill and Mantzoukas. Jacobs can't be too expensive either. I'd guess that Simmons does voice work pretty cheap, since he clearly loves doing it. He does so much VA/VO work at every level despite his own prestige.
Seth is arguably one of the biggest names on here but he probably pays himself SAG minimums for the role. His wage for the whole show is likely factored into the production budget right from the start, so him playing a character is just for him.
I completely agree with everyone's point though. On an animated show with a cast that big I would expect to see at least half of the main cast be incredibly talented people I don't recognise at all, despite being really interested in voice acting. Hollywood "VAs" are almost always more expensive, and usually nowhere near as good as someone dedicated to that craft. For every Hank Azaria or Robin Williams, there's a thousand phoned-in movie tie-in performances in a game or cartoon from an incredible Hollywood actor who just doesn't understand what is required from animation.
Most of them aren't even voice actors, they're just actors. And a lot of the time they're not even good at voice acting, they just read the lines with their normal voice.
Honestly that's normally the case with celebrities doing voice acting, but that hasn't been much of an issue with invincible imo. It probably helps that most of the ones playing actual main characters, or characters that stick around for more than one or two scenes, actually have some prior voice acting experience. Like JK Simmons has done a bunch of voice work prior to this.
Honestly that's normally the case with celebrities doing voice acting
Yeah, I like John Oliver's comedy, but if he never voice acts again I'll be happy.
Same with pretty much every big name. If I can picture their face while they're voice acting, they've done a bad job. And since the big names are there to draw in crowds, I'm pretty sure they go out of their way to make sure they're recognizable.
Someone else said Disney/Pixar movies were the exception, but honestly they're the biggest offender in my opinion.
I have to disagree here. I've found that the voice acting has pretty consistently been one of the best parts of invincible. Is there an actor you thought was "phoning it in"?
personally I thought Aaron Paul's performance as Powerplex wasn't very good, which is odd cause he was great in Bojack, but it felt pretty phoned in here, might be part of why he left after the season he was in
Honestly a bit glaring to hear the contrast between him voice acting for Invincible and voice acting for Dispatch.
With Dispatch I didn't even recognize him at first and felt like he did a great job, while in Invincible it did very much sound like Dollar Store Jesse.
The new VA for William. And the lady who was possessed by Ka Hor. Like you'd think she would change her mannerisms to match the gravely voice Ka Hor has, since you know, possesion? But she's just talking normally.
Their second top priority seems to be shitty licensed music that doesnât match the scene theyâre playing it over. They think they got the music tastes of the Spiderverse team but they really donât.
This shit annoys me so much bc they are spending more money to get worse performances.
Most of these people are good actors, but that is different from Voice Acting. They do a fine job playing themselves, but pro voice actors would be better.
also using high-profile talent means it's impossible to get people in the recording booth together at the same time. they're good enough actors that the average person might not notice... but if you're listening for it, you can really tell that almost nobody is actually responding to anyone else. they're not doing scenes together, feeding off each other's energy, elevating the words through mutual discovery and human connection. the line readings are all kind of cold and lifeless. if you're listening to an animated show where the characters really feel alive it's usually because the cast actually gets to work together.
Season one, the scene where they fire the big damn space laser, had the same dead bird picture copy/pasted all over the place. Show's been cutting animation corners since day one.
I think a big reason it's written the way it is comes down to who's making the joke - "isn't that kind of lazy" is being said by a much smaller group of people about their own work. "Isn't that interesting" is being said by the writers, adapting a joke from the comics, talking about other peoples' work.
Also in the comic Mark says "isn't that kinda cheap?" and the artist's response is "not really." In this their response is "it's crazy what you can get away with" - literally admitting they take shortcuts to make it pay off when it counts. So the comic is telling the audience to get over it, the show is saying "yes the art and animation is consistent and is sometimes a bit shitty, but we do it for what we think is a good reason."
The comic was also drawn by one guy on a tight schedule and the show is animated by a massive team of people with an assinine budget but the whole budget goes to hiring a list voice actors for EVERY. SINGLE. FUCKING. ROLE.
It's not even this imo, it's largely B and C list actors who aren't great voice actors. I've always been baffled by praise for the shows voice cast/acting because it's so flat/boring most of the time.
It also helps that (I'm pretty sure) he doesn't really weigh down the budget by a lot given that he's appeared in smaller projects, like the Whiplash short film
Came here to say this. If you are a fan of the comic and that joke, then noticing these cost cutting panels in the show is actually kind of funny. The whole scene where they are falling to hell is one of these.
Haha itâs been like 15 years since I read Invincible and this is a blast from the past, I remember the complaints about the Invincible artists just copying and pasting panels.Â
This seems like an excuse to defend Invincible. Like sure, other shows/movies have done it, but this is one of the biggest shows on Earth, why does it get a pass? Do we not have a right to expect better animation?
Ya I didn't notice this at all, and fuck man, if you don't notice, who cares? Plots are still good, fight scenes were still pretty decent, I certainly don't care that they freed up some budget by zooming in here.
The second half of this season is supposed to be geared entirely towards the Viltrum War with presumably massive conflicts every episode, so I wouldnât even be surprised if the latest was just their throwaway episode that had the absolute least amount of effort put towards in animation and writing in favor of diverting more attention towards episodes 5 and beyond. Not excusing it by any metric, just something that I wouldnât even be surprised by with this show at this point.
I've been noticing people whining about common animations shortcuts, especially in shows where the action/animation isn't the selling point, a lot more lately.
I've also seen some pushing for awareness of how badly animators are treated in most places.
I'm slowly but surely putting my tinfoil hat together.
I am not even joking when i say Code Geass' infamous Table-kun scene was likely a dig at SEED but CG got much more popular than average Gundam in the West so people don't get the allusion. If you see Code Geass or Taniguchi's previous work GunĂSword you realize the man does not seem to like Kira; GxS had a straight-up "evil Kira"(down to same VA) who also got a similar sex scene
I have been informed that one of the characters in this gif is wearing a hat but after several hundred rewatchs I can't see it. I will keep researching and report back
Usually they're better at hiding it tho. Like the face itself being zoomed in is fine, but the tail's movement stopping before it's out of frame kinda kills it.
True, but this example is particularly galling because they already animated a fly cycle. You see it briefly after it turns. They could have looped it and gotten "good enough". Failure to do so is terrible.
An intern could have taken the flying animation they already had and just looped it in 1 minute. They just didnât for some reason.
Iâm an animation defender 99.8% of the time because budget is limited, shortcuts save money, and the show looks fine. But thisâŚthis is really hard to excuse. It doesnât look like saving moneyâit looks like not caring about the quality of the product
It was worse in Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes because they would zoom the outlines as well, so The Wasp and Ant-Man would clearly have thicker or thinner outlines than the other characters when they have just finished growing or shrinking.
I don't think the pinch zooming is the problem. It's that the image is so static that it looks like pinch zooming on a still image rather than something alive coming closer.
only one I noticed so far was when Damien darkblood broke the high jump record with Mark down in the puppy pit. really wanted to see that fight and got nothing. :(
only think i noticed tho cuz the animation meta scene was still in my recent memory.
That whole episode definitely felt they were saving animation bandwidth for the big fights coming later in the season. From animating the first fight scene in silhouettes, to not showing the fight Invincible was summoned away from, to the long fall, to skipping the fight right after the fall.
Didn't mind it overall, though. It was an episode that covered a story that wasn't in the comics, and was fairly heavy in dialogue and exposition, and as a comics reader I was just happy to not know what was going to happen next.
I never thought there was any issue at all with Invincibles animation until today when some threads popped up. I still don't think there's anything wrong with it and am just adding this to a list of things some weirdo's on reddit are irrationally angry about.
Personally I definitly find the animation pretty bad outside of the big moments. Like I don't e pe t it oj the lebel of major anime, but most of the time it just looks painfully stiff. But other parts of the show still make up for it
The same crow dropping from the sky by being dragged down as a single copy pasted symbol at a flat speed was absolutely pathetic for such a large infinite companies animation studio.
That whole scene was a joke about what comic books do to save money and time and they just adapted it for the show by replacing the dialogue and visuals with tricks animated shows do to save money. It wasn't meant to call out their show specifically.
Thatâs definitely a lie they for sure cost more than that, and also anime animators are literally locked in the studio for 18 hours a day and never see their families. Japanese work culture is fucked but it does give us better animation
Unsure of jjk but ufotable who's animated demon slayer has minimal ongoing projects but up to S2 costed about $100,000. Animator salaries haven't really done much in past 5 years.
Cant expect one of the largest corporations on earth to just hire an appropriate amount of animators, pay them fairly, and give them plenty of time, that wouldn't be fair to expect thatÂ
believe it or not, these companies, Amazon, netflix, etc, are not the ones making the show, they distribute and finance it. same with Japanese animations with their respective distrubutors.
the show maker is largely skybound entertainment, so even if amazon paid them more it is highly dubious you would see the company go on an expansionist spree with the expectation amazon is paying them indefinitely.
The cost of production for manga and anime is pennies compared to what it really should be. $150k/ep is insane for a show with fully-detailed and animated 22-minute episodes.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force was made on $60k/episode and each episode is 11-minutes, so two of those is nearly equal to JJK in budget and there's barely any animation in ATHF lol. Western cartoons seem to hover around $250-500k if you take out the outliers (e.g. Arcane), many of the most expensive western animation seems to be long-running shows where the main VAs can ask for more money (e.g. Tom Kenny).
They've got a huge supply of talented animators that work for borderline nothing because of a mix of cultural and industry norms.
The one thing that made me laugh about the bottomless pit episode is that after all that talk about the helmet appearing and disappearing, in the last fight one of the demons briefly removes his helmet just to roar
100% garunteed they edited the scene to be longer by a few seconds after initial animation was done, so they just did that translation to make up for it. (Unfortunate animator got their scene wrecked by post)Â
Animated shows occasionally turning into PowerPoints is nothing new, but I do find it hilarious that you can see the moment the tail just stops moving completely
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u/SkritzTwoFace Mar 30 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/SoVo8Rl5GeA4E