CGI in anime

Ah.. the age old battle of CGI vs traditional animation ( 2D ) has proven to be endless. While in the West, 2D animation has somewhat been lost in favor of more realistic CGI , propelled by the giants like Pixar , Disney and Dreamworks, traditional animation is still the choice of style in the East, mainly in Japanese anime, with the works of Miyazaki and the recent Your name, being examples of the beauty of traditional hand-drawn animation that oozes artistry. However , with the ever growing market, studios in Japan are under pressure to produce more shows at a lower cost, hence finding method on how to do it by turning to CGI. Since then ,Japanese animators has start to experiment more with CGI not just as a method of reducing cost , but as style of animation , bring some refreshment to the anime genre.

 

HOWEVER , as the examples above have shown, CGI anime has a very distinct feature that separate it from the rest, that is , more than often , it tries to imitate a very 2D style, hence , making it look distinctively anime, whether that is a good thing or not , we'll get to that. 

In the west , Pixar really set the standard for what CGI animation should look like with Toy story , and from then on, the other Western animated feature all follows that same standard, improving on the minor details,like making texture more realistic among other thing. In anime though, they didn't really have that.There was no "Toy stories" to create a template for what anime CGI should look like, hence, animators were left to explore with what style would fit in , and what did they have already available to them ? It is the popularity of 2D anime that was booming all over, hence, many chose it 

to be there style of choice. This choice was very much a double-edge blade however. As most CGI anime sequence that follow this style had to balance between the characteristics of CGI AND 2D anime, which often led to a clumsy and awkward mess of the two, such as, trying to lowering the frame rate to the standard 12 for 2D animation so the CGI model would "look" more anime, which doesnt work as 3D models really is intended for smooth movement and expression. On top of that , many of the quirks that anime has , such as the emotive signals , or the exaggerated expression , really would work well for a 3D model. Trying to do this , leave the characters falling into what has been dubbed as the uncanny valley of animation. These would include series like Ajin and Beserker , the latter trying to slap a 2D aesthetic to a realistic 3D model, making the character seems to age differently depending on how the light hit the model.

This is bad..

 That is to say however , if done right , CGI would really create a wonderful aesthetic to the animation, with 2D animation used properly as tools to SUPPORT the CGI and not as the object to mimic. In Tokyo Mirage Session, a combination of SIMPLE character design , coloring and lighting (simple clean shades ) create a very convincing 2D skin for the 3D models, and in turn , make it some of the best 2D-looking CGI to date. Another example would be the short "Cassette girl" , where the fast-pace CGI action scenes are supported by the expressiveness of the character which was helped by having that 2D skin on top. Another source actually would be from the west , in the form of the short :"Paperman" by Disney , where they literally painted 2D lines on top of the CG model, (more in my blog on Paperman and the future of 2D animation). In the case of studio Ufotable , the roles is reverse where CGI elements are used to enhanced 2D animation through the proper use of VFS, lighting and coloring , creating what I consider is to be the best in business to day in terms of 2D animation, with works like the Fate series being a prime example

You wouldn't think that it is 3D from this !

Simplicity in design 

Paperman

So in general , although there is always going to be the conflict between what is better , CGI or hand-drawn, it cannot be argued that if done right , CGI create some of the most spectacular visual in animation on a much cheaper cost than traditional animation . On top of that , many animator have chose it to be a form of experimentationand expression rather than just cost-contronl, hence preserving that aspects of creative artistry and craftsmanship that hand-drawn animation has. So, although I'm still very much a traditionalist at heart , I'm excited about the future where CGI and 2D can go in terms of cooperating with each other to create something that is new and refreshing .