now idk how commonly discussed this is. but in my viewing, how to train your dragons 3 was one of hardest movies to watch in a long time. and thats all to be blamed on this

this dragon actually made me pause a dozen times just to check if im not going insane. it is like if someone made misogyny into a character design. from old timey ‘perfect women ideals’ to some current ones, they are all here:

• smooth white skin thats translucent
• all the features are smoothed out, horns, tails, wings, any texture of any kind
• body details are gone in order to make the body/skin and even the eyes appear smooth
• she talks with what i can only imagine is intentional ‘stereotypical smooth feminine’ voice
• the way she’s animated itself is that, more smooth and more delicate movements

I know describing it like this sounds stupid. but i had to take days long breaks in viewing the movie bc i thought i was being crazy, “it cant be that bad”. but it is, i cant unsee it, and i feel horrible that this movie has this. they could’ve changed the dragon and it would’ve not been this bigotry.mp4 movie for me. but it is

I think the point being missed a lot here is that the art style was thematically relevant to the Shrek franchise. Atleast to me. It was stylized realism, where the humans were clearly stylized but also detailed in a way to make them be allegoric to the real world. And with that the main cast was also textured and modelled in stylized realism manner.

The goal to me was clear, thematically it was to say the main cast looks out of place from the realistic world around them. The main cast’s stylization was also relevant to their unconvential looks (and other things too but we focusing on that), the exaggurated chin on shrek, the messy but slightly tied down hair on Fiona. You can argue that wasn’t to make them unconvential, just a choice fitting for that era of Shrek, and it doesn’t work now when Shrek cast is part of the world and accepted just fine. But I don’t see the point of these characters coming on the big screen together without the core theme of the original run, maybe it will surprise me and use the new character models in thematically relevant ways. Maybe the thick and perfect hair of Fiona will have a reason, maybe the button noses used instead of triangular ones will server a purpose. I dont know.

Oh wait art style. The previous rant was regarding the character models. The art style has a similar issue, the shading specifically makes things look not-realistic. In a way that thematically ruins (for me) the idea of Shrek, being a wildly different person in a realistic world. The art style is great in isolation (to me), but for something like Shrek it looks wrong. If they did this art style for a new set of characters I wouldn’t even mind, but this ruins the themes. And I don’t trust Dreamworks (especially after Kung Fu Panda 4) to build a new theme that uses this art style and character design changes for the themes.

Now to end, Fiona’s hair covering most of the face, her nose being buttoned up, her lips smoothed out, her neck being shrunk, all combine to make her look more conventially attractive. The cast isn’t thin, but their facial features have been beautified and hence made more convential. I dont have an answer on how to change them otherwise for the new art style, the issue is with Shrek, it’s hard to do the new dreamworks art styles. Maybe a better artist can think of a way to keep the realism while making the art style work, the hair shader at least shouldn’t be this clean and untextured.