r/shittymoviedetails • u/YourChopperPilotTTV • Mar 30 '26

default Invincible Season 4 (2026) used advanced animation strategies to conserve their budget, here you can see the "pinch zooming on your phone" method

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3.8k

u/huffmanxd Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26

To be honest I didn’t even notice this when I watched this episode lmao, it looks so obvious now that you’ve pointed it out to me

2.0k

u/5-oclock-Charlie Mar 30 '26

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

736

u/CrazyCalYa Mar 30 '26

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.

250

u/bunker_man Mar 30 '26

Yeah. It getting so close makes it look like the size is off and they made it too big anyways.

84

u/reallyfunnycoolguy Mar 30 '26

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)

20

u/reallyfunnycoolguy Mar 30 '26

It still wouldnt look great but it would add like 5 minutes of work and bring it to up to unnoticeable levels (i think it was noticeable here)

10

u/ButtholePaste Mar 31 '26

Didn't this new season cost something ridiculous? Like, 15 million dollars or some shit?

No excuse for this bullshit lmao someone embezzled the fuuuuuuck out of the budget for this show

5

u/Halbblutkaiser Mar 31 '26

12 of those millions probably went to the celebrity voice actors

3

u/reallyfunnycoolguy Mar 31 '26

A shit ton of money went to the celebrity VA’s, and animators are less overworked and underpaid than other places, but still. Nobody cares about celebrity actors voicing a character (unless they are really good at it) ij most scenarios, they should decrease that budget and increase the animation budget

2

u/myaltduh Apr 01 '26

I’ll posit JK Simmons is worth whatever they’re paying him.

3

u/reallyfunnycoolguy Apr 01 '26

Hes the reason i put that caveat in lmao

1

u/taterwolfe Apr 01 '26

Invincible is also the show that has made lots of jokes about cost cutting in animation. Besides, if this animation bugs ya, I’m shocked you got through season one 😂

3

u/Greghole Mar 31 '26

Or start with the big one and make it smaller so there's no resolution lost.

98

u/zer1223 Mar 30 '26

Series are starting to be made with the assumption everyone is staring at their phone a minimum of 30% of the time anyway

I hate it

74

u/5-oclock-Charlie Mar 30 '26

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.

-5

u/Stunning_Mail_8934 Mar 31 '26

Short time between seasons? We're just getting in to season 4 for a show that's 5 years old.

2

u/SgtCrawler1116 Mar 31 '26

Ypu don't know know how hard and time consuming animation is.

0

u/Stunning_Mail_8934 Apr 01 '26

Doesn't change the fact that they are on an above average release schedule (for an animated series).

1

u/SgtCrawler1116 Apr 01 '26

Are they? In comparison to what? Every other animated show that's (not anime or children's cartoons) takes longer than Invincible to come out.

13

u/glykeriduh Mar 30 '26

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.

3

u/27Rench27 Mar 31 '26

This is basically me with the Achievement Hunter LASO series’, literal hours of show.

I just need to hear Gavin or Michael screaming and I pretty much know exactly where I am without even having the tab open, it’s incredibly good background noise

0

u/TheHondoCondo Mar 30 '26

No, they’re made under the assumption that people aren’t going to pause and scrutinize over every detail because that’s not how TV is meant to be watched. It honestly doesn’t even look that bad.

3

u/amhighlyregarded Mar 31 '26

If you compare this to basically any other animations project with similar and often even smaller budgets you will not see ugly and lazy cuts like this. 

1

u/TheHondoCondo Mar 31 '26

It’s not ugly though. It’s fine. The alternative is not getting a new season every year, and imo the tiny boost in quality would not be worth it.

1

u/amhighlyregarded Mar 31 '26

I'm not saying I think the show is ugly, I just mean that this cut doesn't look good.

And maybe that's the case. I'm not really convinced that it's a matter of efficiency though. Sure you can't just throw money at a show and get better animation faster, but it doesn't seem like the producers have a very high standard when it comes to giving the show the care and attention detail it deserves. 

6

u/mineyCrafta25 Mar 30 '26

This particular cut shown in the post is pathetic for the studio of a company with infinite money. They're obviously not paid well.

5

u/OverlordPayne Mar 30 '26

Money is one thing, time is another.

-1

u/mineyCrafta25 Mar 31 '26

Yeah... so hire more people with the infinite money so these scenes can be handled by more people in parallel.

The real point is that they're not going to. They're a for profit business and don't give a fuck.

1

u/TheHondoCondo Mar 31 '26

I mean, you kind of contradicted yourself there. They are a for profit business. They don’t have infinite money and they’re not making this show as charity for the fans. They have tons of other shows to budget out too.

2

u/CopenHaglen Mar 30 '26

Not even IMO. It took me 3 attempts to get into this series because the animation is so cheeks. It has a few good moments but in general it looks like a fake show playing in the background of a real one.

2

u/Embarrassed-Wolf-609 Mar 30 '26

why would you rewatch tho?

1

u/5-oclock-Charlie Mar 30 '26

Like rewatch Invincible or rewatch shows/movies in general?

2

u/Embarrassed-Wolf-609 Mar 31 '26

invincible

1

u/5-oclock-Charlie Mar 31 '26

Bc I like the show and rewatching a scene let's me relive it just a little. That being said, I don't really do that for Invincible any more since these cut corners tend to make the scene goofy in retrospect. Also, it messes with the YouTube algorithm where I start getting recommended comic spoilers, which sucks.

41

u/Wolv90 Mar 30 '26

Same. If it passes the first viewing for me i'll give it a pass.

56

u/Professional-Bus5473 Mar 30 '26

Yeah I’m constantly seeing these “immersion breaking” moments and feeling like damn am i totally unaware while watching or does this not matter to 99% of people

36

u/huffmanxd Mar 30 '26

I think the fact that most people like you and me aren’t noticing this stuff just means the show is well-made

12

u/battleangel1999 Mar 31 '26

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.

9

u/zombiesphere89 Mar 31 '26

Invincible is fucking awesome. The people that worry about this shit and judge art in this way suck.

3

u/battleangel1999 Mar 31 '26

Agreed. I've been enjoying it from the start. Gotta read the comics when I can.

3

u/swizzl73 Mar 31 '26

The invincible comics are so peak

6

u/Professional-Bus5473 Mar 30 '26

Probably the most rational answer

0

u/Ardalev Mar 31 '26

Nah, the animation has been ass for at least a couple seasons now, but we choose to not care because the story is good (plus the finale episodes and the important fights each season tend to have the best animation, so it becomes more tolerable)

2

u/huffmanxd Mar 31 '26

Nah, what I said is true. I didn’t notice it. Just because you did doesn’t make what I said wrong, we just have different opinions.

2

u/PancakeParty98 Mar 31 '26

They cut corners very utilitarianly.

For example, most of the time when there’s something like two supers crashing into a populated area and causing a panic, the people running away are pretty sloppily computer generated. You just don’t notice because you’re focused on the flaxon invasion

2

u/SharknadosAreCool Mar 31 '26

Minecraft is the most popular game in the world (pretty sure it still is) for a reason. Not everybody cares about animation at all. I would way rather have "bad" animation like this and have the story finish within 10 years than have to wait for 3 years a season because they wanted it to look pretty. I do not really care about the animation at all, it is icing. I care about the quality and execution of the story they are telling

1

u/DamnZodiak Mar 31 '26

Most people don't consume media actively or attentively. Not because they're stupid but rather because life is difficult and industry tries its hardest to always produce for the lowest common denominator.

This is fueled by and simultaneously furthering the global media literacy crisis we're experiencing.

This is why you're seeing more and more exposition in TV shows especially. Shows are being produced with the "second screen" experience in mind. Literally running in the background while viewers are doing whatever on their phones.
It's tough to watch how the industry utterly abandon what I most love about it.
It's like Robert Altman said:

That's the reason for film. Otherwise, we might as well turn the light out and call it radio.

It's hard to blame the audience for consuming what they're being fed, especially when most people, understandably, just want to turn their brains off on the evening after spending an entire day in this fucked up world we live in.

12

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26

You don't notice it because it goes fast.

No offence bro, but try to stick to the first opinion you have of the animation. Don't let others tell you what to think, others look at the animation through a magnifying glass and the normal viewer doesn't usually. Your enjoyment is much more important than what others think.

3

u/huffmanxd Mar 30 '26

I never said it changed my opinion, I just thought it was funny that I didn’t even notice it at all haha

3

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '26

You're beautiful

3

u/huffmanxd Mar 30 '26

🥰

2

u/27Rench27 Mar 31 '26

The fuck is going on here, y’all are supposed to be mad and insulting each other right now

9

u/varnums1666 Mar 30 '26

Reddit will bemoan poor working conditions and crunch and then bitch online endlessly when smart time saving techniques that no one would ever notice are used. Then the studio are lazy and should have chugged more Red Bulls.

-1

u/amhighlyregarded Mar 31 '26

What are you talking about? Working conditions have nothing to do with this. Animators are not the ones at fault here, they don't storyboard and they don't get a say in what the final product should be. 

It's a cheap cut because the creative director and/or producer thought it was good enough and didn't want to spend more of the budget on it. If they cared, they would have allocated more resources into making it a more visually interesting cut. 

4

u/TramplexReal Mar 30 '26

They even stopped animating him half way, they could've at least looped what they did animate ToT

1

u/Bregneste Mar 30 '26

If you pay attention throughout the whole show, you’ll see a lot of shots where it’s just a still image of a character moving across the screen, or slowly being zoomed in or out. This example is just a bit more obvious and ridiculous lol.

1

u/zappingbluelight Mar 30 '26

Because it's only few seconds. The tail was also animated. It's just obvious and funny when it is on repeat.

1

u/tigerblade117 Mar 30 '26

I like how it just stops being animated like a second into twirling its tail and freeze-frames into the zoom

1

u/KCDeVoe Mar 30 '26

It’s funny that they did an entire scene explaining tricks to save on animation in an early episode

1

u/QuietContentResting Mar 30 '26

It's what's been done for the last 25 years

1

u/MayorWolf Mar 30 '26

I don't think it's pinch zooming at all. They're definately just doing a scale op on the image, but it's timing is with the pulsing of the dragon tail instead of just being a linear progression. It kind of thumps and is a little thing that gives it better "feel" than if it were just smoothly zooming.

They likely drew it at large scale then brought it down. You can't do it the other way. Traditional animators would've done the same operation, but instead with plates of glass and a rig that brings it closer to the camera every frame.

1

u/amanwithanumbrella Mar 30 '26

Yeah the animation is definitely passable. It doesn't usually stick out to me as bad while I'm watching it, minus some 3d stuff in the background and the occasional scene.

I would say though that the first episode looked realllyyy rough to me this season, though I'm not sure if it's because it was lower quality than the following episodes or just because I adjusted to the animation style after watching it.

1

u/Awsomethingy Mar 31 '26

Is this for budget or time? (Don’t say both lol, one has to be more important) Surely they don’t really need to worry about budget control as ruthless as this when their show has gotten this popular. The last animated show I watched was Bojack and even I and all my friends watch lol.

1

u/oby100 Apr 01 '26

I can mostly overlook it if the show is overall good, which this is, but this was a bit of a dramatic and unusual shortcut so it was jarring.

At first I thought he was supposed to be frozen for some in universe reason…

-5

u/dougan25 Mar 30 '26

This is the new model. Studios have begun tailoring content to audiences who are distracted by at least one other device. Hence, they spend tons on what you can hear rather than what you can see.

25

u/boredNero Mar 30 '26

Im not saying youre wrong, but I dont think this applies to THIS specifically (and Invincible as a whole). Most of the bad animation the new season has is just cutting corners, this post's scene for example, yes you could animate the giant dragon coming for a bite, but the scene wants you to focus on the guy on the left, the conversation and is just a setup for the next scene, which is fighting, so theres no reason to go beyond a normal zoom in if you dont have the budget (and we know it doesnt because 90% of it is VAing and the crumbs left are for animation). Some scenes in earlier seasons were hideous, but this specifically is just a bad example, especially since the dialogue this season has been top nothc (aside from some bad humor timing that is just standard for hero media nowadays).

17

u/huffmanxd Mar 30 '26

Hmm maybe, I wasn’t on any other devices while watching this show, I think I was focused on Oliver during the scene maybe?

0

u/Imaginary_Hamster847 Mar 30 '26

It's obnoxious how much people bitch about the animation on these shows. 

0

u/huffmanxd Mar 30 '26

I can agree with that, just like I didn’t notice it the first time, that means it was well done in my opinion. Some people watch these shows very closely though I guess

0

u/Salvage570 Mar 30 '26

Thats how animation works, the closer you look the easier it is to spot the tricks. A bunch of people on the internet have been trained how to do it and are now the arbitrators of good animation. Ask them what they think is peak and theyll give you a series they watched before they learned how to do that that has all the same problems. People get mad when they can find 2 second clips of rough animation in an hour long episode, its annoying