The Invincible Animation Problem Revisited

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Hi. I haven't talked about this topic in a while, so I guess right now is a good time to do so. If you've never seen me wear this costume, just know that it chokes the absolute [ __ ] out of me. This is the biggest size I could find, and yet I've had to like, it's lowkey not even zipped all the way up because if I did zip it up, my face will turn red in like 5 seconds. Also, if I try to stand in this, it does try to slice me in half through my butt crack. So, I would not be doing that. So, anyway, a family friend sent me a video that features my face in it.

[00:00:29]in like the first 10 seconds of it and I have seen it, but I will be watching it again and using it to structure my thoughts around this whole thing. This is not some drama response or anything, okay? I am simply using this video as a vehicle to bring up points that I want to talk about. So, shout out to Pangy.

[00:00:46]Hopefully, they don't mind. Um, they did feature my face in this, so I guess can't really complain at that point, right? Check them out and hopefully you'll be a fan of more of their videos.

[00:00:56]Also, this has 364,000 views. God damn. All right. 3 2 1.

[00:01:03]>> Oh my god.

[00:01:06]>> Expose him.

[00:01:07]>> It's me. It's my face. Oh my god.

[00:01:14]>> Invincible's animation has been talked to death in.

[00:01:17]>> Oh my god, it's my face. Okay, let me just first talk about this video. So, this video was, I think, one of, if not the first video to go viral talking about um Invincible's animation issues.

[00:01:31]I know this video up here, it predates mine, but it didn't go viral, therefore, no one had really seen at that point. If you check the timeline on this channel, Lil Quaza's videos, I'm pretty sure it should align with um my video blowing up and their channel blowing up. I'm not trying to take credit for, you know, their video success. I'm sure their videos are really high quality. But I don't know, something about my thumbnail, I guess, just grabbed a lot of people's attention and it really blew up this conversation. And to be honest, I'm quite sick of talking about this topic. But I do have some new thoughts around this. Also, that video, I made that thinking no one was going to [ __ ] watch it. Like maybe like 2,000 people max, and suddenly it has almost a million views now. So, a lot of my thoughts around this have aged a lot um since I made that video because also again at that time there wasn't a lot of discussion around Invincible's animation.

[00:02:26]>> Video after video and most people agree that it's a combination of a lack of budget and a lack of time that causes the episodes to be so visually mediocre.

[00:02:35]But the truth is Amazon could have given Invincible an unlimited budget and it would probably look the exact same as it does now. Why? One man, Robert Kirkman, the creator and showrunner of Invincible. One thing that's become clear to me as I've watched his interviews, though it's harsh to say, is that Kirkman fundamentally does not respect animation as a medium of storytelling in basically every >> Yikes. I'd say that's a bit harsh because if that was true and Kirkman didn't respect animation at all, I don't think he would be using it as the medium for one of his most wellrespected creations ever in his entire successful career.

[00:03:16]>> In basically every respect, he has chosen to treat Invincible as though it were a liveaction TV show.

[00:03:23]>> Let's start with this line from an interview where he talks about making a season every year. is the long breaks between seasons kill a show. Yes.

[00:03:32]>> And when you can release a season every year like it looks like it's going to be going on.

[00:03:36]>> It's almost like we're doing it how TV was done for 60 years. Great. But like >> season 4 will take exactly a year.

[00:03:46]Kirkman claimed in August that they were working on ADR for season 4 and animatics for season 5. So he plans to continue to make 6 and 1/2 hours of animation every year. By contrast, Rick and Morty, another yearly release, does three. And >> my issue with comparing Invincible with a lot of other anime shows is that a lot of other anime shows, they outsource their work to usually Asian animation companies, especially South Korea. South Korea has been a very longstanding country to outsource 2D animation to, especially from America. And the issue is there is a currency conversion exchange that you can't really translate properly because you know first of all they're getting paid dirt and they get overworked to [ __ ] so you can't really translate that in terms of budgeting and I think Invincible is mainly animated in um Canada or the United States. So it's kind of hard to compare especially with like Cartoon Network shows and um Nickelodeon and whatever. But anyways, let's see what they have to say.

[00:04:52]third hours of animation each year. The truth is Kirkman has no idea how animated TV was done for 60 years. If he did, he'd know that the industry standard for episodes is 22 minutes, not 40 like for liveaction shows. His eight episode seasons are closer to 20 episodes based on pure run time. And he doesn't hire enough people for the job either.

[00:05:16]>> The legend. Okay, I think the episode length isn't really an issue. Like, I don't think he needs to succumb to 22-minute episodes. I mean, it's a streaming platform. They can make episodes as long as they want. Yes, it does seem a bit different compared to other anime shows, but if it works better for the series, I don't really see a problem with it. Like, I don't think it's something that drives the animation quality down, especially cuz it's only nine episodes or eight episodes, sorry, in a season compared to a typical 18 to 22. The Legend of Kora, Smiling Friends, and Hasbin Hotel are three shows which either have around the same amount of runtime in minutes or less and have double or more the headcount in their animation department according to IMDb. This is why they can afford.

[00:06:02]>> Yeah, I think that's where the issue lies. The amount of animators they can afford to work on a project. I'm sure Pangy will get into it now, but having full-time employees or contract employees or whatever, that's where a budget for a production really starts to blow up because think about it, you're paying basically a salary for every animator you have on board basically if you're a respect respectable company.

[00:06:27]And that's not cheap. Okay? Say like they're getting paid [ __ ] bare minimum. I don't know. Okay, maybe not bare minimum. Let's say like 60 to 70k.

[00:06:38]Just times that by four and you're already a lot of money in. Okay. And times by four, that's nothing. Times by 160.

[00:06:48][ __ ] hell. You're ballooning that [ __ ] up >> to have backgrounds with depth, composited shading, and fluid movements.

[00:06:55]While Invincible's off-putting PNG slide style is forced upon that scene was particularly bad. And this is fine with Kirkman because he isn't an artist.

[00:07:04]Here's him talking about the limits of animation. So, it has taken a little bit of time to wrap our heads around these limitations because coming from the live action world, unlike animation is like comics, there's no budget. We can do whatever we want. It's not exactly true, which is possibly the reason for some of our delays because we had a big appetite and unrealistic expectations, and those kinds of things take time, but we're getting a better handle on that, and we're not breaking our teams back with unproducible scripts at times. This lack of experience makes it more puzzling why rather than contracting Invincible's animation out to another studio like he did for season 1, he decided to make his own. Judging by the dip in quality for season 2, >> okay, I don't think there's anything wrong with that statement. He's Robert Kirkman is saying that after coming from his only experience in tele or his main experience in television being The Walking Dead, I think it's fair to assume animation will be like, "Oh, thank God we don't have to worry about explosions because they're all just drawings and shit." And he recognizes that he was wrong in that quote and that he he and his team has adjusted. So, it's not really a gotcha moment. Like, if someone learns from their mistakes, I don't really know if you can be like, "Oh, but they said that thing before."

[00:08:17]And also, I tried researching or doing more research into um who animated what season, etc. There's nothing online that clearly outlines which studio animated which season and which episodes. I've tried finding it. Yes, of course, the teaser trailers are animated by a different studio. But in terms of the episodes and the seasons, it's all conflicting information. Nothing [ __ ] makes sense. And nothing by Robert Kirkman or Skybound or Amazon has officially stated this studio animated this entire thing, but not this entire thing. It's all just a mish mash of collaborations, which I feel like is how animation usually works anyways. So, I kind of have doubts that an entire section of whatever is animated by Skybound Entertainment, which I think is what I claimed in my original video, but since then, you know, I've grown my prefrontal cortex a bit, so clearly wasn't prepared. So, what's the issue?

[00:09:16]He was inexperienced, but he'll get the hang of it, right?

[00:09:20]>> Well, let's look into his past. Robert Kirkman is a comic writer best known for The Walking Dead and Invincible. He grew up as a fan of zombie movies and began work on comics in 2000, making Invincible in 2003. His comic adaptations were almost all liveaction and Invincible is his first animation.

[00:09:39]>> Yes, >> this ended up being a huge issue because, as he says, he didn't know much about animation. He isn't an artist, so he's never had to do the drawing for his own comics. Despite this, he has a view of animation and comic art as cart blanch to do whatever he wants in a script. and only after making Invincible season 1 did he realize that this wasn't possible.

[00:10:00]>> It's also worth noting that the celebrity cameos >> I think that's a fair enough point. I don't again I don't really think that's something to hold against him because as um Pangy says after season 1 he does learn and you can't really expect someone to learn something without actually going through something. Also we're like three seasons down the road from season 1. So he's talking about his experience from season 1 and therefore after like just a bit after as well like directly learning from that experience.

[00:10:26]I don't know how much it applies today >> or plague upon invincible's budget in all likelihood. The reason is I believe because Kirkman believes he's making a liveaction TV show where that kind of name recognition matters. Unfortunately, what he ends up getting are a couple of good actors and main roles, but mostly a bunch of background noise that could easily have been filled with industry voice actors for a tenth of the price for most of his side characters. Acting and voice acting are different skills.

[00:10:55]And there are so many great VAS out there like Troy Baker. Keep >> Okay, before they start listing off a bunch of famous voice actors, I 100% agree with this. I've always agree with this. You got so many actors that are just not that well-versed in voice acting doing these voice acting cameos.

[00:11:14]Like, let's face it, they are cameos. It just drags down the quality and the consistency of the show a little. I'm not sure if everyone notices that. I tend to point that out in my discussion videos about Invincible that um the voice acting sometimes isn't great. It literally sounds like someone trying voice acting for the first time when it comes to celebrity voice actors. And you know, to me personally, it does take me out of the show a bit. I do think that um having a main cast like a trio and like just for the important characters, having a celebrity voice actor is fine, especially if they're good at their job.

[00:11:48]Like Steven Yon, I reckon he is um he's like one tier below this level of voice actor. However, he's only voiced this one character in this series. Basically, like he's only well known for voicing Invincible. He doesn't really have or that we've seen of. He doesn't really have the range to apply himself to different um characters. And also, he's not as consistent as a typical voice actor or as like a professional voice actor. There are some lines where it just sounds kind of weird and it's just projected weirdly from him, but he is more consistent than most nonVA actors who are doing VA. I don't know if that made sense. Hopefully that made sense. But yeah, voice acting is a completely different, okay, maybe not completely different, but it is it is a different art from, you know, acting with your entire body and stuff because there's a lot of intricacies you have to do with your vocal cords to make sure you inflict the right emotion through a microphone. That's all you have, a [ __ ] microphone. All right, let's keep watching.

[00:12:53]>> Silverstein, Patrick Padza, Alejandro Saab, and Yuri Loenthal to name a few.

[00:12:58]But Kirkman likely doesn't know these names and he never will because that's just not his fear. Running through a list of smaller things. Invincible using needle drops is something that's way more reminiscent of live. Okay, before we start talking about this, I just want to say something else. We don't really know how much these celebrity voice actors are getting paid. I know we're very quick to be like, "Oh my god, they're eating up the entire budget." We don't really know that. We don't know how much they're being paid. It might be cheaper than like a really S tier voice actor. Have we ever considered that?

[00:13:32]They might just be friends of Robert Kirkman and they're kind of just doing a favor for him and just, you know, popping into the studio and recording some lines. Again, I'm not saying it makes for a better product. I'm just saying as a fandom, we are speculating quite a bit into how much they're paying these actor cameos. Some of these actors may have pre-existing contracts with Amazon and this just counts as, you know, one of four performances they owe Amazon in a project. Literally, we do not know. I know it's fun to speculate and it's easy to be like, "Oh, they're eating up the entire budget." Maybe, but also maybe not. action TV, especially network TV, compared to animated shows.

[00:14:14]The cold open with the two villains is something that would also be in place in a liveaction show, but just doesn't work in this animation where the cinematography just isn't as good.

[00:14:25]>> Yeah, >> the Invincible animation doesn't use much of the 12 principles of >> um in terms of licensed music, I think they do a bit too much. They do a lot of silence. Technically, it's not silent because there is like the licensed music over it, but sometimes they just overkill it a bit. And the animation that is featured, it's not sophisticated enough to keep the visual entertainment sense of the brain entertained. And also, sometimes it's just like a Sorry, this is [ __ ] choking me. Sometimes the needle drops just aren't great. Remember when there was that Billy Isish song in the Invincible War? I was like, "Wow, this just took me out of it so hard." And sometimes there are montages where again it just goes on for way too long. So I I'm in complete agreement with this. Like you can see the vision in the script and the storyboard on how this might have looked really good, but sometimes they just drag on for way too long. And to complement a single piece of audio, you got to carry a bit with the visuals >> animation like squashing and stretching, which is odd considering that even the comic attempts to use some of these.

[00:15:34]There's an interview where he talks about the upcoming show original sub.

[00:15:38]>> Yeah. So like animation principles like easing in and out. The show doesn't really do that much, but again, it's I guess it's about the style of the show.

[00:15:46]Maybe it's intentional. Jesus Christ, I am just holding this collar so I don't get choked. I think it's causing a migraine in my head as well. Anyways, yeah. Um, I think animation principles like that, it could leave a show looking slightly more childish. I don't know if that's the right word, but I agree. That would require more frames, which, you know, would require more time, which is more money. Okay, we're back. Um, I was kind of dying in that this I had a migraine this morning and it just came back while I was filming this video. So, I was like, [ __ ] this. This is not worth it. plot for season 4. Every superhero story has some chapter where they go to hell and they fight the devil. It happens in DC and Marvel comics. It's a big deal. I never got around to doing anything like that in Invincible. I kept getting sidetracked and there was never a good time. So, it's entirely possible that we may be doing something like that in the show. And that scene at the end of that episode is setting that up. Oh my god. And we got to work with Bruce Cample. It's the best.

[00:16:45]>> Notice his two loves here. superhero comics, which are his trade and doing the tropes within them. This is something you'll especially notice in the comics, but Kirkman wanting to have his own version of a lot of different superhero tropes is notable throughout Invincible. He's got to have the sidekick, the alien episode, the time travel episode, the Chinese episode, ex Oh, the Chinese episode is crazy. Yeah, got to have the sidekick, the love interest, the Chinese episode. What even what what does that even mean? I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with this. I mean, Invincible is a love letter to superhero comics, so I don't really see this as a bad thing. What do you have to say about it?

[00:17:33]>> And his second love is working with famous actors. In this interview, he gushes over Bruce Cample and earlier Clancy Brown. This is where his mind is at, comics and actors. He's a fanboy and honestly, who could blame him? But these priorities don't make for the best show that Invincible could be cuz he is not focused on the right things. It's also worth noting that Invincible really has no stylization to it. It doesn't have any >> Okay, wait, what? Wait, hold on. This makes no sense to me. So, they managed to get Bruce Campbell in which like say what you want, too expensive, blah blah blah blah. But I don't think there's any anything wrong with him being excited to work with him. And I don't think getting inspiration from the comic like the superhero comic genre is a bad thing and goes against his um responsibilities to Invincible as an animation series. Also mentioning Clancy Brown, it's kind of weird because he is an actual voice actor. He's been a professional voice actor for a very long time. So he is one of those exception voice actors like JK Simmons that um I don't really think deserves to be put with everyone else. I feel like this video is kind of just ragging on Robert Kirkman for things where it's not really that bad. And also, there was nothing really inherently wrong with that quote.

[00:18:49]>> It doesn't have any unique movements, camera angles, style shifts, playing with lighting, or anything. Obviously, this is because of the lack of staff, but again, it comes down to bad leadership. Even a goofy show like Smiling Friends still has Ourike sequences where they do unique things with the camera. If Kirkman wanted to focus on these things, he has the ability to negotiate with Amazon for it.

[00:19:13]He just doesn't. And since I haven't talked >> that's that's an assumption, we don't know if Robert Kirkman has actually tried getting more money for the show because think about it. From Amazon's perspective, this show is already doing really well with the current budget. So, it kind of makes sense for them financially as to not give them any more money or give them very little money each season because the show's popularity is growing. I believe it's like how Instagram doesn't pay creators, right? Because from Instagram's pers perspective, they don't have to pay creators because creators are going to post reals anyways. So, if Amazon doesn't have to pay Invincible more money, why would they do so? Yeah. And I am in complete agreement that there is no unique style to Invincible as a series, which is, you know, it's it's a bad thing. Of course, this was um released slightly before the back half of season 4, so you know, we do get some flashy moments towards the end there.

[00:20:14]But yeah, if that could happen more often, which as Pena says would require more money and more time, that would be great somehow >> about it. the budget. We don't know what it is. A Dexerto article claims that Invincible costs 750K an episode in comparison to The Boys 15 mil an episode. People like to point towards Family Guys.

[00:20:37]>> Okay. I don't think that's right. I don't think that's right. 750,000 an episode. I think that's way too low, especially for a [ __ ] 1 hour show or basically 1 hour. So this deadline article in reference from that other article says with a budget less than four times that of the boys and barely any marketing. So I don't know where this 20 times mark came from cuz that would be way too low. But I don't think we are um comparing the right stats here. 750,000 is not a lot. People like to point towards Family Guy's 2 million per episode figure as an industry standard, but that's likely bloated by its longunning cast and the Full House Orchestra contracted to make the OST.

[00:21:23]But even if Invincible's budget was functionally unlimited, it wouldn't change the unreasonable time frame and the episodes being twice as long as they should be. And knowing Kirkman's priorities now, it's pretty clear he'd rather bring on A-list actors like Leonardo DiCaprio or Samuel Jackson. But while I have my gripes with Invincible, it's not all doom and gloom. Watching season 4's trailer, we can see a couple.

[00:21:46]>> Again, we're just ass We're assuming here. We don't know like the struggle he's been through to get stuff out on a yearly basis. You know that one interview clip where he's like, I wish fans would just appreciate the fact that we get a season out every year cuz everyone just complains instead.

[00:22:02]>> No. Hey, good job guys. You guys got it together. You guys putting seasons out at a good clip. That's great. No, it's just complain, complain, complain to crickets.

[00:22:10]>> Yeah, that's a fair enough point. I don't think anyone rags on Invincible animators for doing a shitty job. I think it's more about how we just want more budget, which would lead to more employees, which would lead to more effort and manpower being put into these episodes in animation. And somewhere in this video, they did mention that Invincible doesn't have a huge animation crew. I hypothesized that the number of animators working on the episode would change depending on what episode it is.

[00:22:41]So I looked at episode 4 of season 4 versus episode 5. Two very different standards of animation in those episodes. One of them the most stagnant episode in the entire series in terms of animation and the other one of the best and well animated episodes. But upon looking at the credits, there wasn't that much of a difference. It was like two people that were different. So, I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's different. I didn't see any credit changes for the animation studio. They don't really list them in the credits. So, yeah. Like I said before, we don't really know what's going on behind the scenes. And I'm sure Robert Kirkman gets a very annoyed at the fact that people just speculate. But until we get an explanation, that's all we can do. And yes, I am going to address that one YouTube comment by a guy who was on the VFX/compositing team of Invincible season 2 and 3.

[00:23:33]Again, we don't know if this is an authentic comment, like this is actually from a guy who worked on the theme, but from the sounds of it, it sounds pretty real. Trust me when I tell you, there are a lot of sequences where we would have wanted to take the final look to this level, but with most episodes having upwards of 200 plus effect shots, this just isn't feasible given the delivery timelines. Also, the team was comprised of about four people, including the editor. Maybe if we had 10 plus compositors all taking shots, then maybe. But with such a small team, it wasn't possible. Also, you have to consider the overall tonal look of the show is up to the art director who has final say over how much or how little compositing/ lighting is done to each shot because then you veer into potential inconsistencies with Robert Kirkman's overall aesthetic vision for Invincible. So when I was checking the credits for season 4 episodes, yeah, the FX team was usually around four to five people. But I think a lot of people have misconstrued this comment to say that there are only four animators on the entire show, which is not true. Animators encompass a lot of things like character designers and um background painters and background designers and storyboard artists and stuff. So definitely not true. But the effects team specifically, yeah, according to the credits, that sounds about right. I don't know, maybe Robert Kirkman just likes this style, this aesthetic style. But it's not just about the style and just the flat look of it.

[00:24:50]It's about the movement as well. I think a poignant example of the animation movement not lining up with what could have been is when Debbie crashes out on Nolan in season 4. I think it was a mistake releasing Sandra O's behindthe-scenes recording footage because my god, you really see the difference in emotion. You miss me. You miss me.

[00:25:14]You know what? I missed you. You miss me. You miss me.

[00:25:21]You know what? I missed you. I loved you. We had everything and now it's all gone. I loved you. We had everything and now it's all gone.

[00:25:36]>> I even mentioned this in my discussion video how the animation just wasn't really living up to the emotions of the lines being delivered by Sandra O. And when he compared them side to side, the emotions aren't even lined up. Animated Debbie is not having the same emotional crunch as VA Debbie. So, it's not even just about fight scenes and stuff. It's just moments like that where you're just kind of misdelivering on the tone of the scene, which is a shame because Sandra O [ __ ] hell, she killed it. So, what am I trying to say with all this? First of all, yes, I would love Amazon to increase the budget and for it to go directly into hiring more animators.

[00:26:17]However, at the moment, we're not really giving a reason as to why they should.

[00:26:21]Obviously, that is coming from a very pessimistic capitalistic standpoint, but you know, it's reality. You think Amazon gives a [ __ ] I also don't think it's unfair, like many people say on the internet, to complain about the animation. Just be grateful for what we have. I've mentioned this before, but this show is on a streaming service that people pay for. This is not some [ __ ] delivery that comes to our door every year for free. I don't know what that analogy was, but the point is, if we're paying for a streaming service, we expect quality. And I think there is, you know, some right to complain about that quality. Oh, and also, we don't really know how the pay is for these celebrity voice actors. Sure, the quality of the show will be better if they actually got professional voice actors to do a bunch of these characters, but we don't know if that's actually affecting the budget in the way that we think. Is it likely?

[00:27:12]Yeah. But I don't know if it's going to make that much of a difference because it seems like he's just calling in favors from people that he knows. Again, I'm speculating. You are speculating. We are all speculating. Shout out to Pangy uh for their video, Invincible Doesn't Respect Animation. I will link it in the description below if you want to watch it for yourself. # the Chinese episode.

[00:27:34]And also, if it wasn't clear enough, please do not send hate to this person because they made some good points in this video. And I honestly don't really know why I was even featured in this