Having worked at Disney with the Oscar-winning animator Glen Keane (whose characters include Aladdin, Beast and Tarzan), Persichetti wanted to borrow ideas from hand-drawn techniques. It’s called “animating on one’s.” The resulting motion is fluid and smooth, but it can look too regular, even stolid.

Usually movements are created by advancing the image - say, a character raising his arm - in each frame, 24 times per second. The artists made a bigger decision to break with the way most computer-animated motion is achieved. But characters of all shapes and sizes seem to have very similar walks and runs and expressions. More powerful computers and sophisticated software have made it possible to produce intricately detailed backgrounds and characters: You can see every leaf on every tree and every stitch in a sweater. Many recent American animated features look homogenized. Scott, in his review for The Times, wrote that “the characters feel liberated by animation, and the audience will, too.”

“Spider-Verse” celebrates its print origins with bold graphics and mainstays of comic-book style, including thought balloons, printed words and wavy lines to indicate a tingling Spidey Sense.

One reason is the fresh animation style that sets it apart from the year’s other releases. It’s one of the animation surprises of the season: both a box office hit and a critical favorite ( certified 97 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) that has been collecting awards, even winning best picture from the Utah Film Critics Association.

“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” follows the adventures of an Afro-Latino teenager, Miles Morales, who has been bitten by a radioactive spider in Brooklyn and joins forces with other Spideys from alternate dimensions.

Trippy pencil animation