WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.399 --> 00:00:09.050 Love, Death, and Robots is an animation anthology on Netflix, a series of independent animations 00:00:09.050 --> 00:00:15.280 that all share at least two but most of the time all three of the themes love, death, 00:00:15.280 --> 00:00:16.280 robots. 00:00:16.280 --> 00:00:21.800 Some of the shorts are extremely graphic, there’s a lot of nudity and violence - I 00:00:21.800 --> 00:00:26.269 don’t think I’ve seen so much on screen peen in my life - and many of the stories 00:00:26.269 --> 00:00:32.880 are so intense you may find it difficult to to binge watch the anthology in one sitting. 00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:38.340 The variety of styles and narratives means my favorite episodes will be different from 00:00:38.340 --> 00:00:42.550 yours and because they are all high quality I don’t think it’s possible to critically 00:00:42.550 --> 00:00:45.890 say which episode is “the best.” 00:00:45.890 --> 00:00:50.040 Each episode is produced by a different animation studio than the one before, ranging from names 00:00:50.040 --> 00:00:56.400 anybody would recognize, like Sony, to Sun Creature Studio, Vitaliy Shushko and Elena 00:00:56.400 --> 00:01:01.420 Volk, who have created fantastic 2D-3D animation available on YouTube. 00:01:01.420 --> 00:01:05.750 There are a couple of studios that do more than one short but you can’t tell because 00:01:05.750 --> 00:01:07.360 they switch art styles. 00:01:07.360 --> 00:01:09.150 And the art! 00:01:09.150 --> 00:01:18.190 Some of the animation in Love, Death, and Robots is just so… stunning. 00:01:18.190 --> 00:01:23.490 There are moments during Beyond the Aquila Rift (NSFW) where you can not tell it is 3D 00:01:23.490 --> 00:01:24.490 animation. 00:01:24.490 --> 00:01:28.920 Part of what makes the Aquila Rift characters so realistic is Unit Image’s 3D scanning 00:01:28.920 --> 00:01:31.770 system, motion capture, and V-Ray rendering. 00:01:31.770 --> 00:01:37.640 But don’t think high tech does everything - it’s a handful of artists creating scans, 00:01:37.640 --> 00:01:43.590 motion capture, and pages of artists to turn that gray matter into a human being with color, 00:01:43.590 --> 00:01:46.750 clothes, hair, animation rig bones, and convincing acting. 00:01:46.750 --> 00:01:50.120 That’s just the characters. 00:01:50.120 --> 00:01:56.460 Unfortunately, besides going through the character designer’s ArtStation portfolios, the best 00:01:56.460 --> 00:02:02.730 making-of material I can find is about the sex scene in this short. 00:02:02.730 --> 00:02:07.840 As much as I’d love to pry into any of these animations to see how they did it, the other 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:13.370 one I’m choosing is Zima Blue for the art style and powerful narrative. 00:02:13.370 --> 00:02:18.599 Zima Blue is adapted from an existing short story - actually by the same author as Beyond 00:02:18.599 --> 00:02:20.019 the Aquila Rift: Alastair Reynolds. 00:02:20.019 --> 00:02:23.900 And the art direction for Zima Blue comes from Robert Valley, who’s worked on Gorillaz 00:02:23.900 --> 00:02:24.900 music videos. 00:02:24.900 --> 00:02:29.849 So you get this really pushed anatomy with heavy black character lines and shading. 00:02:29.849 --> 00:02:35.219 What’s fascinating about the character animation is its mix between hand drawn outline and 00:02:35.219 --> 00:02:38.409 computer tweens to slide pieces around on screen. 00:02:38.409 --> 00:02:43.730 In this shot, you can see the texture staying perfect but Zima’s outline is boiling. 00:02:43.730 --> 00:02:48.751 This happens because the textures are made only once for each angle of each shot, but 00:02:48.751 --> 00:02:51.139 the lines are drawn by hand. 00:02:51.139 --> 00:02:57.800 This isn’t always the case - see his hand here has both an unchanging texture and outline. 00:02:57.800 --> 00:03:01.379 In this case the whole thing is one piece of art tweened. 00:03:01.379 --> 00:03:04.360 Sometimes both mechanics play out at the same time. 00:03:04.360 --> 00:03:09.379 In this short span the jacket’s Q shaped neck piece is pure tween even though the rest 00:03:09.379 --> 00:03:12.049 of the outline is redrawn every time. 00:03:12.049 --> 00:03:16.739 The result is animation that is so smooth I didn’t realize most frames were drawn 00:03:16.739 --> 00:03:18.900 by hand until I analyzed it. 00:03:18.900 --> 00:03:23.480 Zima Blue isn’t purely 2D, and there are quite a few 3D models. 00:03:23.480 --> 00:03:27.219 For example, this turnaround and many of the robots are 3D. 00:03:27.219 --> 00:03:31.769 By texturing and shading them a certain way they blend into the rest of the style nicely. 00:03:31.769 --> 00:03:37.609 It’s the movement itself that usually gives away a 3D model, especially during slow animations 00:03:37.609 --> 00:03:38.609 in 3D space. 00:03:38.609 --> 00:03:40.819 It’s a little too perfect. 00:03:40.819 --> 00:03:46.480 The same way Zima Blue is the same perfect shade of blue each time. 00:03:46.480 --> 00:03:50.620 Have you seen any of the Love, Death, and Robots animations yet? 00:03:50.620 --> 00:04:33.090 Comment below with your favorites and least favorites.