Attending the 2026 Ottawa International Animation Festival (OAIF) felt, at times, like witnessing two different futures of animation being discussed simultaneously. In the festival screenings, opening (and closing) ceremony remarks, conversations between filmmakers, and reactions from audiences, the integration of Generative AI in animation was described as a threat to the medium's future: an antagonist to the values of artistic labour that have historically defined it. Yet only a few streets away at The Animation Conference (TAC), OIAF’s parallel professional event, AI was discussed by studio executives and industry leaders as an unavoidable component of production pipelines.

As discussed in our two most recent blog posts, Hollywood mainstream studio computer-animation post-Spider-Verse has shifted from Pixar’s photorealistic aesthetic towards a more developmental style. Sam Summers argues that Sony’s franchise adapted the comic-book language itself (2019, 190), creating an aesthetic including Ben-Day dots and visible ink lines. The franchise transformed the genre’s “visual currencies” (Holliday 2018, 1) which Spider Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers & Justin K. Thompson, 2023) has only pushed further. Each world has a unique style: Miguel’s futurism, Spot’s minimalism, Gwen’s painterly, Spider-Punk’s collage, and Prabhakar’s is inspired by Indrajal Comics.

This is the second blog post of three discussing the emergence of a new developmental computer-animated style in mainstream studio animation. This week will leave Pixar behind, focusing on the DreamWorks studio as we analyse Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Joel Crawford 2022), the most recent instalment in the Shrek (2001-) franchise, and the second standalone film featuring the character of Puss in Boots. Prior to this film, DreamWorks had primarily produced 3D hyperrealism films; The Last Wish diverges from the studio's usual formula and instead takes on more stylized, “painterly” visuals (Fig.1). While the animation remains computer-generated, the style is distinct from previous films as it was intended to emulate the look and texture of a storybook, using “painterly” rendering to blend softer brush-like textures with expressive, frame-conscious movement (Basset et al. 2013, 156). This shift in style stemmed from the influence of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, with director Joel Crawford noting that although earlier films like Shrek were celebrated for their technical realism, post Spider-Verse audiences expected greater stylistic innovation (Weiss 2024). 

For many decades, mainstream animation has maintained a relatively uniform visual identity. Following the release of Pixar’s 1995 debut film Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995), a dominant visual style emerged within computer-generated filmmaking, as major animation studios began to adopt a shared set of stylistic conventions, resulting in films that appeared similar (Holliday 2018, 1). However, in 2018, mainstream animation experienced a notable shift in both its aesthetic and industrial priorities following the release of Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman, 2018). The film achieved both critical acclaim and box office success, being widely praised for its distinct visual style and its use of animation as a medium to enhance storytelling. Traditionally, mainstream animated films have followed an orthodox form, which is a mode that, despite depicting fantastical or exaggerated events, adheres to conventional narrative structures and realist frameworks (Wells 1998, 51). 

Every Pokémon fan has one card they remember before they remember its value. It might be a battered Charizard from a schoolyard trade, a ghost Pokémon that looked creepier on cardboard than on television, or a small card that stayed at the front of a binder for years at home.

At the 2025 Academy Awards ceremony, the actress Goldie Hawn announced that the winner of the Oscar for Best Animated Film was Flow – a moment where global audience members discovered the film’s creator and director, the Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis. Yet another previous feature of his awaits such attention. The 2019 film Away, Zilbalodis’ the director’s debut feature, laid the foundation upon which Flow is built.

When we watch a movie, what exactly do we feel? The answer to this question is different from person to person. It is very obvious to someone who has studied sociology to analyse the movie using their own thoughts and embodied knowledge. Similarly, as a student in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, when I watch a movie, I always try to interpret it through a theatrical lens and to understand the method followed by the characters. Animated movies are no exception in this case.