In recent years, various types of 3D animation have emerged in Japan, and the method of making 3D celluloid has also attracted attention. The so-called 3D celluloid is a 3DCG technique that allows 3D animation to have the power of 2D traditional hand-drawn tables. In the last year or two, the number of full CG animations made of 3D celluloid, such as "The Arpeggio Theatrical Version of Blue Steel", "The Knight of Sidnia", and "Ronya, the Daughter of the Green Forest", has exploded. Originally, there were ideas about 3D animation among fans such as "3DCG animation and hand-drawn animation are completely different" and "3DCG zuò girls are not cute at all", but now their cognition has been subverted by the birth of 3D celluloid zuò technique.

◇Is it difficult to make a beautiful girl character 3DCG?

To put it simply, hand-drawn animation is a collection of countless comics, while 3DCG animation completes a series of processes such as character modeling, styling, and shooting in a computer. 3DCG animation can be used to change the camera angle while rotating the character model, so that the character movement effect can be produced more smoothly.

Since the release of the 1995 full-CG theatrical version of the animation "Toy Story", Disney and Pixar have continued to produce full-CG animation. Around the 2000s, in Japan's animation industry, half of the works were dominated by the combination of CG and hand-drawn human characters in 3DCG and hand-drawn human characters.

The reason why Japanese animation uses hand-drawn human characters is that it is too difficult to express their unique shapes in 3DCG. For example, if the traditional beautiful girl image with a sharp face and oversized eyes in a Japanese manga is 3DCG, it will make the character very unnatural. In addition, 3DCG's characters tend to be "overly fluid" in the action table, which can also be a sense of disobedience for fans who are used to the rhythm of traditional hand-drawn animation (1 second and 24 frames). As a result, 3D celluloid, which fine-tuned the styling and movements of 3DCG characters and incorporated a hand-drawn rendering style, was born.

◇Follow the hand-drawn animation method

The 3D celluloid that attracted attention was the TV anime "Arpeggio of Blue Steel", which aired from October to December 2013. For late-night animation at the time,This is a very rare full CG zuò work。 The natural dynamics of the beautiful girl rendered by hand-drawn rendering made fans refreshed and shouted "so cute"!

According to Ken Nan, a person from FlyingDog Zuò, when the plan was discussed within the company, there was an opinion that "a beautiful girl made with 3DCG is definitely not cute." "Therefore, although the 3DCG animation does have problems with the smoothness of the movements, in the process of making this work, we fine-tuned the movements of the characters that appeared in the impact images."

"Arpeggios of Blue Steel" not only has a 3DCG dynamic performance, but also integrates the natural movements of traditional hand-drawn animation, following the hand-drawn animation method. The result not only won the approval of anime fans, but also proved that 3DCG beautiful girl images can also become cute.

◇Can 3DCG reduce the cost of animation production?

In 3DCG animation, there is a cost for character modeling, but it can be used as materials to store characters from zài computers and be used over and over again, so it can reduce costs. Hand-drawn animation has a large number of manual drawing processes that will incur huge labor costs, but 3DCG does not need to draw the actions of the characters one by one, so the number of employees can be controlled.

Mr. Nan said that although a large amount of money was invested in character modeling in the early stage of production, the final cost was almost the same as that of ordinary late-night animations because only a small number of employees were hired.

◇ "Miss Conch" is suitable for 3D celluloid?!

According to the experience accumulated by Nan producer Tong Guò zuò "Arpeggios of Blue Steel", "If you consider the cost, not all animations are suitable for 3DCG. Because 3DCG incurs an initial cost for character modeling, "it is more suitable for animations with few changes in the number of characters, costumes, and backgrounds." "The original characters can be carried over without adding new characters...... From this point of view, "Yuo in the Housing Area" (3DCG system, broadcast by NHK General Channel) is quite in line with the requirements. Works like "Miss Conch" and "Crayon Shin-chan" should also be suitable."

In addition to the aforementioned "Arpeggios of Blue Steel", "Knights of Sidnia" and "ExpelledfromParadise-" and other full CG animations using 3D celluloid techniques have been successful, and anime fans are gradually getting used to 3DCG. "Arpeggio of Blue Steel" will be released in October this year, and the second installment of the theatrical version of "Cadenza" will be released, and the development momentum is very good. As a result, we can foresee that there will be more and more excellent full CG animations in the future.

But on the other hand, if you really make a long-lived work like "Miss Conch" fully CG, there must still be many people who find it difficult to accept. Whether the new 3DCG animation can penetrate into groups other than anime fans may be a new issue.