SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE Animator Shares Video of Her Acting Out Scenes for Reference
For those of you who are big fans of Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, I’ve got something here that you’re going to appreciate. Emma Shih was an animator on the film, and to help her perfectly capture the movements and facial expressions of the characters, she shot video references of herself.
She took those references and implemented those movements and expressions into the shots that she worked on in the film. The video shows side-by-side shots of the animator acting out the scenes to Jake Johnson, Shameik Moore, and Hailee Steinfeld‘s voices, next to the animated shots for the film.
When I first started college I was studying animation. That’s what I initially wanted to do was be an animator. It was in those classes that I learned you had to be somewhat of a decent actor to be an animator. I remember shooting reference videos for myself for some of the projects I worked on. That being said, Shih actually comes off as being a talented actor in these videos.
You can easily see her influence in the scenes she worked on. Director Peter Ramsay commented on the video with the comment, “Look at our geniuses.” Shih also showed her gratitude to the rest of the creative team on the film, saying, “Also, wanted to point out that the animation was made possible by the [Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse] production team, I was inspired by many many talented people around me, they all gave me a lot of feedback to help me make this animation better.”