CGI in Traditional 2D Animation

CGI is not used just to produce 3-D animation. It is also used in 2-D animation as well. Computers are being used to "paint" digital cels instead of drawing and painting them by hand. There are several reasons to the shift. One is that it is better for the environment since traditional animation uses thousands of acetate cels that are non-biodegradable. It also costs less to produce because after the initial costs of buying the computers and software, the costs of production are far less than producing it the traditional way. Using computers makes it easier for animators to include more detail in their work. Another reason is that the animation studio has more control over their work because all of it is produced in the same place instead of having it shipped to developers and editors. It is also easier to edit and saves a tremendous amount of valuable time since the whole project can be made in one place instead of several. A Japanese animation studio called Studio Gonzo is one of the first animation studios to use CGI to create an animated series. The series, Blue Submarine No. 6 is one of the first animated series to use computer generated 2-D animation. The director, Mahiro Maeda, explains that one of the most important reasons why his studio used CGI is "there is a limit to the manpower that we can afford under the budget that the market allows us. So digital technology is an effective tool for maintaining a level of sophistication, quality, and consistency within those constraints" (Wright 12). Range Murata, a character designer who worked on Blue Submarine no 6 and one of Studio Gonzo's more recent series, Last Exile, uses a new animation technique called Toon Rendering, which is "a way of simulating the 'look' of cel animation using 3D computer graphics techniques"(Arias). Murata states that it is "good for combining 2D and 3D. We didn't use it with Blue Sub 6, so there was a bit of conflict between the two styles. They didn't mesh well. For Last Exile, the technology had, of course, improved over the years, so that and the Toon Rendering helped a lot" (Mays). According to Koji Morimoto, a Japanese animation director, using computers in animation opens the doors of this field to more people because before, it was very specialized. Now people that are knowledgeable in computers can work in the animation industry (Pilling137). Computers have helped the world of 2-D animation by speeding up the process and making that field more open to people that do not have previous animation experience.