‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ VFX Supervisor Says the Animated Film Is “Like 3,000 Paintings With 1,000 Artists”

It’s unusual to see an animated movie make the visual effects Academy Award shortlist — and even more rare for one to earn a nomination.

But this season, Sony Pictures Animation’s bold Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse became the first animated feature to advance to the final 10 since 2020’s Soul from Pixar.

To date, only 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and 2016’s Kubo and the Two Strings (both stop-motion) have earned VFX Oscar noms, plus Jon Favreau’s 2019 The Lion King (if you are among those who consider that an animated movie). The selection of Across the Spider-Verse underscores the continued blurring of the lines between what is considered animation and what is viewed as visual effects.

Across the Spider-Verse — the sequel to Oscar winner Into the Spider-Verse — again follows Miles Morales, but with an expanded cast of Spideys and distinct stylized worlds as he travels through the multiverse. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller returned as writers and producers and recruited a trio of directors: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson.

“It was a wild experience creating the multiverse in this movie,” says visual effects supervisor Michael Lasker, whose credits also include Into the Spider-Verse and The Mitchells vs. the Machines. “Miles’ world was sort of the baseline … and then we had five other universes to create, all inspired by different artists, all with different techniques. It was a lot of development. It was a lot of collaboration.” 

He reports that the movie has roughly 3,000 individual shots. “And it’s like 3,000 paintings with 1,000 artists, all different types of work, whether they’re animators or texture painters, or artists or developers,” Lasker adds. “It’s really a team that put their work into making this movie.”

He admits that Gwen Stacy’s world was the most challenging. “It was based on watercolor, mixed with comic book art from Jason Latour,” he says. “We had frisket areas that would have no paint that would just be white, because the feeling of Gwen’s world was that it was a mood ring for her emotions. So wherever her focus was, wherever her thoughts were, that’s where the detail would be, then it would fall off to almost nothing, like a blank canvas, and every shot reflected her mood. So the lighting would change, the colors would change.”

Lasker reports that this involved developing new tools, like a line tool that was used not just for Gwen’s world, but for other worlds in the multiverse. With it, he says, “we could dial how sketchy, how architecturally crisp they were. We had to develop new tools to make brushstrokes and watercolor, and we had to light every shot like it was a different painting.

“We couldn’t rely on tried and true lighting principles where you make a light rig and you light the whole sequence. So every shot was different,” he adds. “Then we had to have characters move and perform and cameras moving. First, we paint the painting. Then we move through the painting.”

In addition to Gwen’s home dimension (Earth-65), worlds included Pavitr Prabhakar’s home dimension, Mumbattan (Earth-50101), a hybrid of Manhattan and Mumbai that took inspiration from the Indian Indrajal Comics line of the 1970s; Miguel O’Hara’s home dimension, Nueva York (Earth-928), a pristine New York City of the future; Spider-Punk’s world, based on the early Punk scene in London; and of course Morales’ home dimension (Earth-1610), set in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Also advancing in the VFX Oscar race are The Creator, Godzilla Minus One, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, Napoleon, Poor Things, Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire and Society of the Snow.

Next, all branch members will be invited to participate in a bake-off Jan. 13, during which they will view excerpts and interviews with the artists from each of the shortlisted films, before they vote to nominate five of these films for the VFX Oscar. 

This story first appeared in a January standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.