The whole world is still spinning the chart-shattering slaps of KPop Demon Hunters , and so are we , but it’s worth dialing the volume down for a moment to relish in the movie’s phosphorescent artwork. Directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans didn’t just deliver a crowd-pleasing confection but a rich visual feast: fight and dance choreography painstakingly timed to musical numbers, heightened visual comedy, and animation that shifts in tempo to capture fluid action and snappy banter alike. And yet, as contemporary as the film may feel, a charmingly primordial animation technique recurs over and over again: the humble “smear frame.”

In animation, smears simulate the blur of a character or object’s motion. In the fraction of an onscreen second, limbs stretch, outlines smudge, and obj

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