Ok I might be totally wrong here but Pixar’s animated character designs just seem shockingly recycled lately. Inside Out, Soul, and now Elemental all feature largely monochrome, vaguely bulbous/geometric cutesy figures that all have that shimmery effect (which I read was incredibly expensive to develop and maybe why it’s being used constantly) and are abstractions of some kind or another (emotions, elements, souls). Am I the only one who finds them weirdly similar and (with the exception of their first use in Inside Out) kind of dull?
Agreed. When I first saw the adds for Soul, I assumed it was going to be a lazy cash grab banking in on Inside Out's success, because the art style was near identical. Only ended up watching because a friend talked me into it-- and it was a great movie!
Honestly, I think it would have done better if Pixar had put more effort in to distinguish it visually from Inside Out.