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Answerman - How Is Anime Changing Visually These Days?

I don't know if this is related to increased CG use or just a difference in character designs in recent years, but I have noticed that characters of late look more...squashy, if that makes sense. More marshmallowy, less detailed, and with less angular designs. I actually kind of dislike it. Characters look less appealing and fall further into the uncanny valley spectrum. It isn't true of all shows, and its very subtle, but it's a realization that's been creeping up on me.

Gundam Thunderbolt was mastered in 4k for the theater releases, the BD ofc is still mastered (or in this case) downscaled to 1080p for release.

synaia wrote:

Gundam Thunderbolt was mastered in 4k for the theater releases, the BD ofc is still mastered (or in this case) downscaled to 1080p for release.

Do you have a source for that? That sounds to good to be true. Maybe they "mastered" it in 4K, but I doubt it was drawn and composited at that resolution. However, what about cel animation? It could benefit from new 4K scans.

According to a staff talkshow, it is 4k, but I don't know about the costs. I guess it was the safest place to test 4k, since it's a short OVA series with a high profile Gundam budget.

Not to mention that anime 3d is SO far behind western CG that it makes no sense to enter that market.

The problem is CG will NEVER (and I really mean it) have the same feel as 2d animation. It's simply not designed to work in the same way, you don't deform character models in CG where you do in 2d. Imo CG characters are fundamentally the wrong direction for anime to go because you start to lose the very essence of what makes anime...anime. Anime, as a medium, is about over-exaggeration, CG tends to give series too much of an easy baseline to follow.

CG works well in backgrounds, sometimes large objects, effects and crowds - but I really don't think that any anime should be all CG. It doesn't matter how good you get the characters to look, you lose so much in the process that it's just not worth it. Not to mention that anime 3d is SO far behind western CG that it makes no sense to enter that market. Stay 2d and use new technologies to bolster that.

crappy, and you will stop noticing it. American flash cartoons looked like garbage in the early to mid 2000s, but technology progressed and now many shows look so good people can't tell if it was done by computer program or by hand.
And you can totally exaggerate CG builds. They're just still experimenting on how to do it well.

Raneth wrote:

I don't know if this is related to increased CG use or just a difference in character designs in recent years, but I have noticed that characters of late look more...squashy, if that makes sense. More marshmallowy, less detailed, and with less angular designs. I actually kind of dislike it. Characters look less appealing and fall further into the uncanny valley spectrum. It isn't true of all shows, and its very subtle, but it's a realization that's been creeping up on me.

I've been where you are for a while now. I might say every now and then that modern anime is worse; what I really mean is that the artwork is worse. I'm not fond of these marshmellowy people, either.

The problem is CG will NEVER (and I really mean it) have the same feel as 2d animation. It's simply not designed to work in the same way, you don't deform character models in CG where you do in 2d. Imo CG characters are fundamentally the wrong direction for anime to go because you start to lose the very essence of what makes anime...anime. Anime, as a medium, is about over-exaggeration, CG tends to give series too much of an easy baseline to follow.

Honestly, on my large screen computer monitor, I can't see any appreciable difference between a 1080p anime stream and a 720p. So I just stick with 720.

Someone who works at sunrise as production assistant on Gundam said it.

Quote:

According to a staff talkshow, it is 4k, but I don't know about the costs. I guess it was the safest place to test 4k, since it's a short OVA series with a high profile Gundam budget.

The problem with older anime is not how the art looks, but the low quality of the video. I think many people mistake the two, and if they see beautiful drawings at low resolutions they will say the art is bad.

I personally don't like how anime looks nowadays. True that the video "quality" is better, but the art is very poor. Well, background art is usually gorgeous, but the characters are very ugly, at least that's how I feel. And then there is the flash animation and things like Dragon Ball Super that look worse than any anime in the 70s.

The problem with older anime is not how the art looks, but the low quality of the video. I think many people mistake the two, and if they see beautiful drawings at low resolutions they will say the art is bad.

Where we are now is essentially the beginning of a 3D anime era, and I don't think it's fair to judge a technique's potential based on it's earliest examples. 3D is a road of constant improvement, whereas 2D anime techniques have stagnated for decades If in 2106 3D anime still looks little better than it does in 2016, then we can safely say we can't develop it any further.