How Spider-Man Into the Spider-verse animators made Hobie stand out

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse saw the introduction of even more new Spider-People to the Marvel/Sony universe.

Chief amongst them was Hobie, aka Spider-Punk, voiceed by Daniel Kaluuya. He stands out compared to the other Spider-People not only in attitude and accent, but also animation style.

In order to capture Hobie's anarchist and chaotic personality, head of character animation Alan Hawkins used multiple frame rates across the character's design, which took place at Sony Pictures Imageworks.

He told The Credits: "The jacket he wears is on 4s, but his body is sometimes on 3s, and his guitar is even lower."

These numbers refer to the individual drawings for each second of animation on a 24 frame per second timeline. Being on 1's means there are 24 individual drawings per second of animation (one drawing per one second) which creates a naturally fluid style. Animation on 2’s has 12 drawings (one drawing for every two seconds) , 3’s and 4’s and so on. The lower the number, as is the case of Hobie, the slower the animation appears.

Animating on two different frame rates meant that his jacket and his guitar and his body all moved at different speeds, creating a visual representation of his personality.