Thread by @chromat1cfire

A recent tweet of mine elicited the discussion of whether heavy usage of CG in anime in the future is acceptable or not.

I wanted to take a look at the foreseeable future of anime, so I decided to write this thread.

Let's see if CGI could & should impact anime in the future 🧵

The idea of having CG in anime is fully not welcomed yet by the fans. And it's understandable.
So many years of 2D & suddenly 3D taking the helm not being taken in a positive manner is to be expected.

That's why we keep on seeing negativity towards CG no matter how good they're.

But if we look at the progression of the industry closely, we'll see how the usage of CG has Invaded almost every anime that we watch now. This wasn't a norm back in the late 90s/even in the early-mid 2000s. But everything gets introduced and normalized slowly. Same goes for CG.

Back in the day background, mech and other complex animation in handdrawn format was the norm. But nowadays, a mech anime or an anime with complex designs comes out, we immediately think of having CG in that anime because it's the most expected thing whether we like it or not.

Drawing complex character designs and keeping up the consistency in animation throughout a series is almost an impossible job. It gets even worse when you have to produce a copious amount of work each year. Production committees are rushing the studios to get the job done while-

-giving them next to no room for breathing. Productions like Mob Psycho 100 that gets finished up before they even start airing, are miracles!

Tight schedule resulting in stiff animation, characters going off model way too often, half-assed work airing, going on indefinite-

-hiatus are all happening way too frequently because of tight scheduling and the lack of resources. Teams are often short staffed. Producers, directors looking for KA, 2nd KA on Twitter, and recruiting them to compensate for the lack of time and required staff are signs of the-

-absolute abysmal state the anime industry is in right now. Passion project is hard to be found. It's more of a money making medium than it is about pure entertainment.

That's why so many anime with bad art and animation get the greenlight to air, because if they earn money-

-they could care less about anything else. Sure, studios and the people directly working on the anime never want a single episode to look bad. But since they're not the ones in control of things most of the time, the decision of making good/bad anime doesn't depend on them.

The studios are similarly victims of this abysmal state of industry as the consumers/fans who watch these anime. We can be foolishly optimistic by thinking a change of this state might occur but it's never going to happen. We have to be realistic and take a look at the options-

-that benefits both the people working on anime and the fans.

We can want full 2D, no CG for anything and everything in anime. But it's not going to result in meeting our expectations.

3DCG, VFX and the overall digital works have already become really famous in most 2D anime.

So the more & more usages of CGI and digital compositing isn't going to fade away, it's just going to grow further.

So expecting none of it is foolish. And expecting the state of the industry to improve is not possible either.

It's a growing and demand increasing medium, so -

-expecting CG to fade away or even to be minimal is laughable. It's either we want more anime or we don't and the only way to want it is by accepting 3DCG, and trying to improve it so that it blends well with the traditional 2D style. There's no other logical & realistic option.

Another topic might be of interest to many people related to CG animation is, “CG is also complicated and takes time, so it can't be the proxy of 2D and solution to anything.”

This is a total misconception.

As The Canipa Effect would call out this by a MYTHBUSTER video, I'm-

-going to do the same with a tweet.

Simple answer: YOU'RE TOTALLY WRONG.

Anything good, not just CGI, takes time and good amount effort needs to be put in.
But that doesn't mean it's on the same level of difficulty as 2D animation.
If it was, studios would've never went for it-

-to make things a little easier. It's extremely difficult to draw everything in 2D. Each frame you have to think what to do, and not just that, you also have to execute, there's no special AI to help you out with that. Whereas CGI is a calculated process. AI does exactly what-

-it needs to do, nothing more, nothing less. Vector softwares like Cacani, Opentoonz etc. can do auto in-between really well, resulting in beautiful, butter smooth animation that looks like 2D animation in 1s. Since it's a calculated AI process, it can get some frames wrong.

An animator can go ahead and simply fix those problematic frames.

Studio Ufotable is a perfect example of everything that modern animation is trying to achieve.

Key animators draw the key frames of the characters or effects and digital compositing adds extra sparks, lighting,

-debris etc and Yuichi Terao a genius of a DoP that he is, is able to merge all the stuff together in a cut so well that the final product seems seamless and inhabitants of the same dimension!

Handdrawn animation over 3D animated products material is also done delicately! twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Recent Chainsaw Man adaptation has been also a great example of 2D and 3D blending together really well most of the time.

There's also studio Orange anime like Beaters, Houseki no Kuni and the latest Trigun Stampede that are able to provide 3D animation that seems closest to-

-that of a 2D animation. Thus they're known as 2.5D.

With the improvements in technology, I'm sure there's going to be more of digital work done in 2D anime to support anime to the fullest in future. And I admire it.
I hope you all to change your perspective on CG as well.

I know, being used to 2D and a sudden change to 3D is weird. But if we want to keep enjoying this medium we have to accept what is the most logical and best option.

I believe CG will be so good in the future that it'd be hard to tell which ones are CG and which ones are 2D!

Video references used-

1. The canipa effect:

2. Registry:

3. Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba) episode 19 & Chainsaw Man episode 4

4. Ufotable production material for Fate/Stay Night: Heaven's Feel Presage Flower (movie 1)