Aaron Ehasz: When we first envisioned the show, we talked with Bardel Entertainment, which had done a film called The Prophet. They’re very careful about that. While the visuals themselves were stunning, the choice to give the 2D animation a stop-motion feel came off as rigid. The Dragon Prince season 2 changed animation styles in response to fans, Hogwarts Legacy is tainted by J.K. Rowling’s transphobic views, Displaced No Man’s Sky fans are now using a galactic Zillow. So a lot of it was about achieving a style that would feel artful and hand-animated. It’s really fine-tuned for season 2,” Harrod told Polygon in a phone interview. This interview has been edited for concision and clarity. Can we make them exceed the expectations that were set?”. We still wanted the same stylistic approach. The other thing is line weight. We really tried in season 2 to make the show look as good as it possibly could. In motion, however, The Dragon Prince does a unique thing with its animation frames that make the characters have sudden, almost stop-motionesque movement. The Dragon Prince creators confirmed for Polygon that the second season animation adjusts the controversial frame rate to provide a sleeker and more traditional look to the show. And then you do have people responding to some of the frame rate decisions. The Dragon Prince season 2 premieres in February with one major change: a smoothed-out animation style. What happens when your home goes from yay to nay? I did go to animation school, but I’m not an animation expert! The animation can be distracting at first; while you can get used to it, watching the show is an exercise in uncanniness. We wanted to give people a reason to enjoy the credits. Are they similarly using physical models to set up the choreography here? I think we took some of the notes to heart and said we can fix some of the things that people may not have liked as much.”. It’s reminiscent of how Avatar: The Last Airbender’s fight sequences were choreographed in terms of martial arts. How is it technically different from last season? And it’s easier to set up shots in a way that allows us to get to those results faster. Netflix’s animated series The Dragon Prince, co-created by Avatar: The Last Airbender head writer Aaron Ehasz and Uncharted series game developer and director Justin Richmond, just dropped its second season, and it’s a powerful step forward for the fantasy series. Who decides what those are going to be? It contains a integrated creative tool DragonBones Pro, Flash Pro plugin for animation export and lots of runtime libraries for game engines and platforms. “It’s interesting because you look at it and you have a lot of people responding to the character designs, and the backgrounds, and the beautiful world, the cinematic storyboarding that our great director Giancarlo Volpe and his team has brought out. While we’ll have more from that conversation in the coming weeks, one of the first things we discussed was the series’ reception. The dragon attack sequence feels visually different from a lot of the other character movement. newsletter. Does it feel like they’re in this space together? They’re artful in how they move characters about. There was a learning curve there. We’re really happy with season 2, and hopefully if we get another season, we’ll be even better at that. How to get that sense of surprise, how to still make it funny. There were a lot of steps involved. You can pause the show nearly anywhere and it’ll still look fantastic, almost as if someone carefully posed every single frame of the animation. “It’s definitely something that, in the future, if-slash-when we’re making more episodes, we’re not gonna be able to vastly change how we make it, but we’re definitely gonna have an eye toward specific shots and scenes[:] Can we make them more fluid? JR: We’re happy with it. JR: You know, hopefully. The fantasy series drew high praise for its world-building details, diverse and engaging cast of characters, and exciting plot worthy of its Avatar pedigree. Made by the people behind the critically lauded Avatar: The Last Airbender and the Uncharted video games, one of the show’s standout qualities are the visuals. Futurama and Avatar: The Last Airbender writer Aaron Ehasz and game developer Justin Richmond discuss the animation in their Netflix show The Dragon Prince… 1. So we animated to key frames and removed frames to give the movements weight and impact and punch and edge. So I think they put a lot of extra love into those sequences. At one point, there was a whole additional piece of that sequence that ended up getting cut for time. We were like, “We’re starting to lose some of the drama of the sequence.” I think the directors really love to spend time on making it feel real, like, “What would it be to be in a town that’s literally getting fired on by a dragon?” Nothing but respect for the guys at Bardel. The first season of Netflix’s new animated fantasy show The Dragon Prince has been generally well received by the public, but one aspect of the show seems to have bugged nearly everyone: the animation. In motion, however, The Dragon Prince does a unique thing with its animation frames that make the characters have sudden, almost stop-motionesque movement. They spend a lot of time choreographing that stuff. They do amazing visionary work on Dragon Prince. A lot more of the shots are on twos, but some effects may be on ones for extra fluidity. JR: He gave it away. On The Dragon Prince, we wanted to push that even more to leverage the strengths of a CG and 3D pipeline. While they can’t completely change how the show is made, he says they’d like to smooth things out a little bit more.