CGI Anime
 

Do you think that, in the future, the majority of anime will be CGI like American animation?

As of right now, CGI animation is mostly a novelty in Japan. Here are some examples of all-CGI anime and the styles they use:

A.L.I.C.E. - Looks like a regular anime made 3D

Malice@Doll - Same as above, but more anime-ish

Appleseed and Appleseed Ex Machina - Same as above, but not as crude

Aurora - Doesn't look much like an "anime"; kind of on the realistic side

Visitor - Somewhat resembles "Supermarionation"

Vexille - Anime-ish, but more realistic than your average anime

Final Fantasy: Advent Children - Very, very detailed, realistic animation

Run = Dim - Somewhat resembles a video game

Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror - Not very anime-looking; looks more Western/European than Japanese

The Gregory Horror Show - Looks like a blocky video game

Kakurenbo: Hide and Seek - Cel-shaded anime-ish graphics

TO - Detailed, realistic animation

Can you think of any more? Which one(s) are your favorites? ^_^

Where you been 99% of CG movies come from the US just so many of the same movie why do this world need 3 Toy Storys and 5 Shrek films

This.

Creative, colorful, Japanese, but in an ultra-modern kind of way.

The music video's director also directed the recent, highly-rated movie Summer Wars. And while I sadly haven't watched it yet (waiting for R1 release), I believe a similar style of CGI and concept is present in that movie.

...

On the other hand, I find the way in which a number of anime employ CGI to be thoroughly off-putting, especially if they awkwardly coexist with more traditional animation. I put some of that to budget issues, other to a lack of experience, and the rest to creative disinterest. Sometimes integration between them work off excellently, as in the recent Sora no Woto or The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya's videogame episode (and subtly in other places -- to its credit). Other times it looks thoroughly out of place. School Rumble, for example, or Nodame Cantabile when Shinichi was supposed to be playing the piano. And in some pure CGI anime it still doesn't work at all, like in Karas, which I thought was ugly and unnatural.

I don't know why you lump in toy story with shrek? I mean pretty much any pixar movie beats the snot out of most movies, well told, beautifully animated.

CG would be alright, but low budget cg is just ugly, most recent would be ga rei zero where the CG just didn't integrate well. I think once cg cost goes down and when the entire budge isn't squandered on bad CG then you'll see good cg anime but other than feature films I don't think you'll see any series using CG. Also karas really was cheesy cg effects and the story was rather bland as a series.

Uhhh... that's exactly what I said, dear. >.>

Maybe it's my eyes, but I haven't seen CG improve beyond Terminator 2
When I see scenes of Avatar I LMAO thinking how it could be so expensive yet be of the same quality as Final Fantasy - Spirits Within

A lot of backgrounds and vehicles are already CGI in anime.
Will it take over characters themselves, no. It would take away the aspect of anime itself, since with CGI it would look completely different.

Budget wise it would be too expensive as well, though there is a studio who does it's mecha parts in CGI: Souzei no Aquarion, Linebarrels of Iron.
Mecha's are not too expensive to make compared to characters, it would take more time to perfect the expressions and moe-ness of a character and thus it is easier to stick with drawing.

agreed, the amount of time and quality required would run most studios into the ground. a full length series with Advent Children level animation? that would be stupidly awesome and only take about a decade. techniques and technology will need to become much more advanced and fluid before that's possible on any significant scale.

-Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within 2001 - the first photorealistic computer animated feature film, holds the record for the most expensive video game-inspired film ever made, extremely detailed graphics.
-The Animatrix - some parts
-Planzet

Expensive... and it'll never be called as Anime either. Pure CGI is 3D and Anime in general is in 2D..:)

The vast majority of anime are still in 2D despite several years of 3D CG being used and perfectioned.

The chances that 3D will completely replace 2D are very slim unless there will be some kind of technological improvement that will make the former at lot cheaper to produce and a lot better in visual quality.

There is a strong contrast with what happened with videogames, where 3D practically became the standard when it was still absolutely awkward to watch.

That being said I'm really following attentively to the progress that are being made with the cellshading technique. I wish I'll see the day when 3D will be undistinguishable from 2D.

I think the closest thing that we can get to a truly CGI anime is through the use of Live2D.
Pure 3D is just plain expensive. Meanwhile, more elements of producing an anime series is already done using CGI.

not really, Japanese animation companies have different technologies when it comes to these stuff

Anime already makes use of CGI for a lot of things, generally backgrounds. When it's successful, you shouldn't notice that they used it at all.

As for 3D or photorealistic CGI. I hope they don't switch to that ever.

I hope not. There's a certain charm in 2-dimensional characters that feels so wrong when entering the third dimension. I don't mean this in a creepy hikkikomori way. It's just that attempts at moe and other anime-specific traits just don't work in 3D CGI.

What CGI can do well is like some of the stuff you've mentioned. It sometimes adds a layer of realistic depth to something that is more refined and serious in nature. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children did a good job with this. If you haven't seen it already, go see how awesome the concept of "Middle-Eastern camels VS. American Rabbits in a firefight" is through the wonders of Cat Shit One. For the 22 minutes it runs, it's so simple yet lovable.

I agree with papermario.

I think that CGI works reasonably well for a lot of things, and it may indeed be ideal for some things, but I wouldn't want to see old-fashioned 2D go away for good.

Like papermario said, there's a certain charm to 2D characters that is lost when they are translated into 3D. I definitely think that "moe" is part of that charm. I can't even imagine K-On in CGI 3D for example; I think it would really hurt that particular property.

There's no reason why CGI can't one day perfectly emulate 2D animation. Though, much like people who pretend perfectly synthesized music is worse than "real" music (it's too perfect, no soul, blah blah), there will still be people pretending CGI is the work of the devil.

Personally, I've never had a problem with CGI. I'm not too familiar with the costs involved, but I've always presumed it's far more expensive than "2D" (is that even the proper term, as I can't see what dimensionality has to do with any of this), or we'd see more anime done in the style of Square Enix cinematics, which is why I'm confused when people say CGI is the future due to lower production costs...

On what basis do you say that? Can you show me a purely CGI piece of animation that looks more or less like a standard Simpsons episode?


:rolleyes: It has nothing to do with thinking it's "the work of the devil".

I've listened to Hatsune Miku songs before, and the artificiality of it is painfully apparent to me, and I just don't like it compared to songs by real people. I'm not "pretending" anything there - I genuinely do not like the sound of it (whereas I do like many J-Pop songs, so it's not just a matter of me disliking this genre of music). A person's appreciation for art and music is rather subjective, so I'm puzzled why this would be so hard for you to accept.

Based on what I've heard of it, I do not like synthesized music as much as I do music performed by real life people.

I think it's a case of "what's generally agreeable" and "what's personally enjoyable". Although preferences like Hatsune Miku and synthesized music are subjective (and so is CGI preference), there's a truthful fact that you CANNOT replicate 2D with 3D. That's like saying one day cars can perfectly emulate how airplanes move by adding another dimension of movement. At that point it's no longer a car.

I must be missing something, because I can't help but feel that there is a mistaken belief that CGI has to be 3D.

As for my statement on there being no reason why CGI can't one day perfectly emulate "2D" animation, the key part was "one day". It just comes down to perfecting the math.