Cel (Hand Painted) or Digital Animation?

Which do you prefer Cel Animation or Digital Animation?

  • Cel Animation (Hand Painted)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Digital Animation

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Mainly Cel Animation (Hand Painted) with Digital Enhancements

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Not Fussed

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    0
  • Poll closed .
Dan

Dan

Stand User
Well found out what the 2 differences were (cheers Rui & Sy) and I just wondered what you guys prefered.

Personally I am a big fan of Cel Animation (hand painted). Although don't get me wrong Digital has its advantages.

A mainly Cel animated feature with digital enhancements is the way I really like it. If that is what Ghost In The Shell (original movie) did use.


Well I've never posted a poll before so I hope I get it right.
 
not fussed, they both look good when done right. Digital Animation in theory allows for more fluid animation, but the difference isn't that amazing.

however on the cost and time side, digital wins.
 
Cell animation is just like music on vinyl, despite it's imperfections it's just all warm and cozy like. I also feel that cell animation has more credence as an art form.
 
I think digital has just about got to the stage now where it's not hideous even for cheaper productions - there were quite a few years of extremely dodgy TV series out there before they got it right. Done well, it can look brilliant.

Cel animation just has a nostalgic feel as it's what I fell in love with in the beginning. And knowing some animators have slavishly drawn and coloured every image and background is strangely endearing :)

R
 
Copied from what I said in the Appleseed news topic...
The thing being is that in the case of these Appleseed movies they don't seem to be going for lifelike at all and more like that they want to replace the hand drawn aspect.

To me that would be a great shame because although CG can work when meshed in well when mixed with the hand drawn animation it seems to lack a certain individual flair. Something was already somewhat lost from the switch from hand painted cels to digital colouring and although it does have it's advantages like a crisper, cleaner and more steady image there seemed something more clinical about it and the small errors in the animation that were once quite charming now just seem something wasn't checked on the computer.
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harkins said:
Cell animation is just like music on vinyl, despite it's imperfections it's just all warm and cozy like. I also feel that cell animation has more credence as an art form.
Click to expand...

Its like you knew what I was thinking, but put it into words :D
 
It's too hard to choose one or the other.

In thinking for the future though, cell animation means limitless resolution upgrades, as in no loss of detail when turned into HD, or potentially UltraHD. So on that aspect, cell animation is the way to go.

I don't know enough about how digital is done though, because thinking about it seems to go around in circles. I'm sure you have to draw the picture on a plastic sheet (i.e. cell) first then digitise it, so I don't see why the same picture can't be digitised at a higher resolution. So I'm guessing digital means drawing directly onto the computer screen (i.e. by a graphics tablet), and that would make sense that by increasing the resolution you get less detail because when you try and make a picture bigger on the computer it makes it look bad (by personal experience).

So I guess if it's possible to do the former way I talked about of digital animation, then that seems to be the way to go. Limitless upgrading (with a lot more work) to HD, with all the pro's of creating a digital image.
 
Nyu said:
not fussed, they both look good when done right. Digital Animation in theory allows for more fluid animation, but the difference isn't that amazing.

however on the cost and time side, digital wins.
Click to expand...

I was going to mention that. Animators don't have to worry so much about number of animation cells they can afford anymore, thus giving them more creative freedom. Good for them I say :)
 
Its not like they do absolutely everything digitally when making anime these days; they do have to draw out all the story boards, character designs etc by hand and do all the necessary shizzle before transferring and colouring in backgrounds/ scenery on the computer. The "art form" is still present.

As for my opinion, I went for not fussed. Providing it looks good, it doesn't bother me in the slightest. However, CG when overly used when its not needed or blended well looks sooo bad, and it puts me right off. Cell shaded CG looks good, like how they do the vehicles in GitS:SAC.
 
Not the kind of thing I notice. I wouldn't be able to tell you if an image is cel or digital (bar some obvious ones), to be honest.
 
Lupus Inu said:
Digital Animation looks nice and cleaner, but I appreciate effort put into cel animation more so.
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I agree it does look cleaner but

When someone draws a picture, I don't expect to find things that look perfectly straight like doors and windows. I expect imperfections in things. Thus why I prefer cel animation.

Not having a dig at anyone who prefers digital, just my opinion.

Actually like someone said it is getting better and a mix of the two is very good.

A while ago I picked up Shura No Toki, thats a classic example of a Digital Anime that I detest, just no effort what so ever. As you'd expect I don't have it anymore :D
 
melonpan said:
I don't know enough about how digital is done though, because thinking about it seems to go around in circles. I'm sure you have to draw the picture on a plastic sheet (i.e. cell) first then digitise it, so I don't see why the same picture can't be digitised at a higher resolution. So I'm guessing digital means drawing directly onto the computer screen…
Click to expand...
Some (cheaper) animation is drawn directly onto computers with a tablet, but by and large – and especially in Japan – animation is done the way it has always been done – in pencil, on paper. What has changed is the method of colouring and composition. Previously, the animation was traced, by hand, onto cels, and then coloured on the back. When photocopying was invented, this was then used instead to transfer the line drawing onto the cels, so that only the colouring had to be done by hand. And finally, we now have digital ink and paint, wherein the background paintings and animation drawings are scanned onto computers, and then traced, coloured and compositioned digitally.

I understand the myriad advantages of digital ink and paint. It makes a lot of things much cheaper and easier, and, most importantly for me, it doesn't use up plastic and generate physical waste. But despite all that, I can't help but love the physicality and warmth of it… Digital ink and paint is just so cynical in comparison. It needs to used in conjunction with other effects for it to be interesting (as is done in Haibane-Renmei and Princess Tutu) but with cels there's a wider range of things I can enjoy, as the physicality is something I enjoy in and of itself.

But though I'd undoubtedly choose real cels if I had to decide between them, most of all I like a variety – though not within the same animation. What I mean is that if I watch a lot of older stuff, I tire of the dirtiness of it, while if I watch mainly newer things then instead I tire of the cleaness of it, and end up alternating between the two.
 
So it seems that upgrading the resolution isn't as much of a challenge, if it's already been drawn on paper, it can be rescanned in, cutting down the time it would take to produce the final version. Digital colouring effects could be upsized as well possibly so they just fit into the rescanned image at the higher resolution.

I don't see why that's such a big deal then.

I heard KyoAni redrew the opening of Air in HD, focussing on the redrew part of that statement I've heard time and time again, I'd have to make a comparison myself but maybe they just did what I said above? I think that's too simple though, so maybe they just throw away the drawings after they've scanned them in? *shock*
 
I'd say things like computer-colouring and after-effects have really helped improve the quality of anime production - the only down side would be that it takes less people to make a production. That can be offset though by the ease at which smaller studios can have an impact though - look at how Voices Of A Distant Star was produced by one person over a space of a year. Something like that would have been unthinkable just 15 years ago.

I'm all for digital advancements in the production of anime, just as long as somebody is still drawing the characters onto paper. It's that one thing that essentially defines anime as a style, as well as how the motion appears on-screen. Without it, it'd be hard to see it being as appealing as it is.
 
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