A new wave of animators are ‘fighting the computer’ to make wilder, weirder movies

polygon.com:

For two decades now, American computer-generated animated films have more or less followed a similar visual template. While their character designs aren’t necessarily hyper-realistic, everything else usually is, from the characters’ expressions and movements to the textures and effects, and especially the backgrounds and scenery. The bar for a good animated film used to be how “real” it looked.

But DreamWorks’ new film The Bad Guys embraces a more stylized look, especially when it comes to the spaces the characters exist in and the way they move. When asked why The Bad Guys departs from the usual CG hallmarks, director Pierre Perifel struggles to put it diplomatically.

“Because I find [that style] … ‘boring’ is probably excessive, but I want to see something different,” Perifel tells Polygon. ”Frankly, I’m not the only one. I’m not the first one also to do a movie that’s slightly different [stylistically]. But I think there’s been very few right now, at least in the Hollywood industry, like Hollywood-feature big-studio types of films. You can see the trend is shifting a little bit.”

After working as an animator on a number of DreamWorks projects, like Kung-Fu Panda 2 and Rise of the Guardians, Perifel makes his feature directorial debut with The Bad Guys, based on a series of graphic novels by Aaron Babley. The movie follows a group of animal criminals, all stereotypically dangerous animals, led by the charming Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell). After an ambitious heist, they’re finally apprehended. To avoid jail time, Mr. Wolf convinces his gang to undergo rehabilitation — or at least pretend to, so they can actually plot their biggest heist yet.

Animated movies like Sony’s The Mitchells vs. the Machines and Spider-Man: Into the