"shoddy CGI"? At least the CGI here really start to get people to think the CGI can produce appealing character in animation and even make them moe enough for people to pay attention. This is why it has become the "dark horse" of this season.
And yes, in interview the producer clearly said that it is an experiment to prove the capability of CGI and they even took a deliberate step in stressing less about being more realistic or using more 3D effect but instead trying to get CGI to do what cel animation does.
I am sure the trend is shifting to CGI and this anime shows CGI is improving, often to people's surprise, so indeed I expect to see more CGI in the future? But "shoddy CGI"? Not if CGI continues to improve at this pace.
So MAL finally starts locking news threads that are only a few weeks old?
I wonder where was the announcement of this change? Or we are seeing yet another case of changes made that impacted users but not communicated to them?
I wonder how long people would put up with this.
As much as I have a bunch of information to share about anime announced recently I cannot share it in news board, and the anime series is too disorganized and chaotic to share information except with people already interested in the particular series.
SolviteSekai said: Apparently this series is ranked 65 on Amazon's list or whatever, considering i'm reading it right.
It seems to be ranked even above kill la kill...
Would I be jumping the gun to say we might see more shoddy CGI in the future?
Okay firstly what list is that, CGI anime or anime or full CG shows.
Secondly, personally as far as CG goes, it is rather well executed even for a CG. Its just that it is not within most of our comfort zone. 3D does lower the task of animator significantly, and as new software begin to be introduce, it will significantly speed up the process of cranking out animation
Now to sum it up 3D cuts down labour workloads and increase quality, as I will take a loooong time explaining it from my knowledge:
Traditional, from what I gather, 24 frames per second usually for the movement of the main object(japan standard, American cartoon uses 25) while the background uses a lower 12 fps. In traditional 2D anime, you need an army of worker contantly drawing and painting what appears is the same frame Over and Over again and if you imagine you need an average of 24 frames of main object ,8-24 frames(depending) of background and than the mouth(another several frames) movement for just a second of the anime and merge together later and most importantly they have to fit naturally. This is to give you the scale of the process and even with modern day Wacom tablets, the process is still extreme labour intensive; Hayao Miyazaki did close to 80,000 frames on paper for the animation Princess Mononke and mind you thats not even half of whats needed to create the entire movie and furthurmore, Mononke mix in some 3D CG to lower the labor of it all. In action animes like Aperggio, the sheer amount of drawing can lead to mental breakdown due to the constant drawing needed for the action movement and the detail of the animation, apperently thats what happen during NG:Evangelion production.
Now in 3D animation, the main labour begins in modelling....sheer amount of time is spent either in Maya or 3DMax to model, texture and rig it. making each battleship in Aperggio or Evas in Eva:Rebuilt requires alot of time, it took me at least a week to model ,texture and detail a relatively detail KV-2 tank. But once the all that is done, all those can be use as puppets for almost the entire length of the season and if any change is needed to the character/models/props, changes can be made relatively swift. Basically all they do is just puppeteering the models in camera, and if changes are made, they can be made withot restarting the drawing progress all they have to do is edit the keyframes. This basically cut down time and labour force/cost and since the puppet are the same throughout the entire series, the quality increases. Thou downside as all you who are inable to tolerate 3D CG are able to find out is that the animation looks robotic....without constant human input, the fluidity is lost from the animation as most of the animation is done by the software connecting one key frame to another.
I don't know how big Shazigan is, but probably is because the lack of time and workforce and the speciality in 3D CG like production I.G meant that they have no choice but to resort to this form of animation to produce and action and detail intensive anime like Aperggio. the fact they can't even add most of the large cast in the manga probably supports this fact.
Weather we might see this in the future? most probably, the 3D technology is now progressing ever furthur, and when there is an anime with alot of action/movement and detail works, I am sure CG will be the preffered choice over hand-drawn.
Can u honestly say that every form of animation started out great? of course not it takes time and CGI is no different. i mean sure thie CGI in this seriies has some things to work out but when u compare to previous series made with CGI this series is a stepping stone of showing how much CGI has improved over the years and if more is invested into it i wouldn't be surprised if more series will come out and start being produced in complete CGI.
Already with Ars Nova, the CGI has really improved a lot and it will probably improve even further in the future no questions about it.
At the moment I kinda find full-CGI a little too static for my tastes, but it's still pretty great, so it's just a matter of "Get used to it" in my case.
Btw, I like being positive and I have high expectations for "Knights of Sidonia" this 2014.
I don't think it has shoddy CGI. It's actually quite enjoyable. And if they get a little better at it and it's cheaper, we could be getting more and longer series out. But Japan as a whole will probably like 2d more, I like that they haven't gone down the American CGI everything route.
^ Actually in the interview I read the producer stated clearly that they decided NOT to go the American CGI route and chose to stick to what they think Japan did best - which is the feel of 2d cel animation, and the challenge for them in this anime is to use CGI to produce a comparable effect (which I think they pretty much succeeded).
He also said that the bulk of the hard work in CG is the modelling but compared to this the 2D cel animation requires hard work at every step throughout the animation process. Besides, one big advantages for CG is that the models can then be used relatively smoothly into merchandise design. Traditionally for merchandise design you will need a whole lot of staff resource again to draw up the designs (in 2D) and then build 3D prototypes. CGI shortens many of the intervening steps and can thus simplify and speed up the merchandise design process.
I also remember reading some interview with senior animators that if it were not for CGI Japan would not be able to make even one-tenth of the anime output it is producing these days.
So MAL finally starts locking news threads that are only a few weeks old?
I wonder where was the announcement of this change? Or we are seeing yet another case of changes made that impacted users but not communicated to them?
I wonder how long people would put up with this.
As much as I have a bunch of information to share about anime announced recently I cannot share it in news board, and the anime series is too disorganized and chaotic to share information except with people already interested in the particular series.
SolviteSekai said: Its ranked 65 on amazon.jp for pre orders or whatever.
Yes, it is one of the most popular shows this season.
SolviteSekai said: And the CGI looks like poop in my opinion, with the hair being clumped and the oceans not even being textured.
I admit I was not used to it when it began but I could see it improve over time, and I also got used to it much easier than I had expected. Now like many watchers I even find the characters moe - which is something I never expected for a character done completely in CGI.
SolviteSekai said: I don't mind CGI, i love it in Infinite Stratos and Valvrave where you see it every now and then, but this show's CGI is just lame.
Well, then it is just that you have not made the leap (or found it hard to), which is not the same as CGI remaining shoddy and undeveloped.
So MAL finally starts locking news threads that are only a few weeks old?
I wonder where was the announcement of this change? Or we are seeing yet another case of changes made that impacted users but not communicated to them?
I wonder how long people would put up with this.
As much as I have a bunch of information to share about anime announced recently I cannot share it in news board, and the anime series is too disorganized and chaotic to share information except with people already interested in the particular series.
symbv said: ^ Actually in the interview I read the producer stated clearly that they decided NOT to go the American CGI route and chose to stick to what they think Japan did best - which is the feel of 2d cel animation, and the challenge for them in this anime is to use CGI to produce a comparable effect (which I think they pretty much succeeded).
He also said that the bulk of the hard work in CG is the modelling but compared to this the 2D cel animation requires hard work at every step throughout the animation process. Besides, one big advantages for CG is that the models can then be used relatively smoothly into merchandise design. Traditionally for merchandise design you will need a whole lot of staff resource again to draw up the designs (in 2D) and then build 3D prototypes. CGI shortens many of the intervening steps and can thus simplify and speed up the merchandise design process.
I also remember reading some interview with senior animators that if it were not for CGI Japan would not be able to make even one-tenth of the anime output it is producing these days.
Well that's good, that's something I wish for the majority of Japanese animation not to do. I think they succeeded too, feels better than most cgi, never forced.
So are you saying this as as much work or more as regular 2d animating? I get the whole merchandising thing but if it's more work then is it like you said in your first post that they're trying to find more techniques or whatever to make it easier and better looking?
Wow, that is a big number. Is CGI really so out there in all those anime.
So are you saying this as as much work or more as regular 2d animating? I get the whole merchandising thing but if it's more work then is it like you said in your first post that they're trying to find more techniques or whatever to make it easier and better looking?
What I meant to say is that besides a lot of work is saved by moving animation to CGI, CGI also shifts the workload towards heavier workload at the beginning because all the need to build models and add textures.
For the merchandise design, again a lot of work is saved by using CGI because there is no more need to throw in a lot of resource to draw the characters from scratch and build 3D design prototypes. A lot of those steps can be jumped with a CGI model which is already made for the anime production.
So MAL finally starts locking news threads that are only a few weeks old?
I wonder where was the announcement of this change? Or we are seeing yet another case of changes made that impacted users but not communicated to them?
I wonder how long people would put up with this.
As much as I have a bunch of information to share about anime announced recently I cannot share it in news board, and the anime series is too disorganized and chaotic to share information except with people already interested in the particular series.
So are you saying this as as much work or more as regular 2d animating? I get the whole merchandising thing but if it's more work then is it like you said in your first post that they're trying to find more techniques or whatever to make it easier and better looking?
What I meant to say is that besides a lot of work is saved by moving animation to CGI, CGI also shifts the workload towards heavier workload at the beginning because all the need to build models and add textures.
For the merchandise design, again a lot of work is saved by using CGI because there is no more need to throw in a lot of resource to draw the characters from scratch and build 3D design prototypes. A lot of those steps can be jumped with a CGI model which is already made for the anime production.
Oh, ok. I get it now. My bad for misunderstanding.
Yeah I get that. I was thinking that if it was just for merchandising design than choosing to do a full CGI anime(which I don't know the success rate in Japan) which I thought was as hard as 2d(which you corrected me) sounds like it might not be worth it. But like I said, you corrected me.
As tech advances CGI will be able to duplicate the hand-drawn look completely. The only reason "CGI" looks weird is simply because there's a lot of work to be done on the tech to understand the principles behind the aesthetics of hand-drawn animation.
Lets not forget most animes are in fact 'CGI' already they are just drawn by animators on wacom tablets. They draw characters with things like photoshop or some other art program or scan their own pencil rough concepts in.
Coloring and shading drawn animation has been done by computer for a while now in anime. It's part of the reason animes color consistency looks so good.
Sooner or later CGI will be indistinguishable from hand drawn animation other then the tradtional non-exact lines hand drawn animation is known for.
The computer can do finer details and hence cleaner lines which gives away that it is CGI.
The whole reason CGI doesn't look like 'hand drawn' right now at the moment is they haven't mastered the rules behind the aesthetics. Hand drawn animation aesthetics doesn't obey physical laws of the universe. That's part of why it has it's charm so once they master the arbitrary shape/size/camera perspective of traditional free form 2D animation things will look just as good eventually.
Get this..most ppl's problem with CGi is not how it looks, but how it moves!
It's okay for battles but character movement is often unnatural because we sort of know how people move...and CG animation doesn't move anything like that.
So whilst the model itself can look better and better, how it gets used, is another matter. You'd think the same challenge applies for cel animation, maybe the expertise is not yet transferred to the CG domain as it's still more technology dominated and the CG industry as a whole need more experience.
not really anime studios will still need to draw in 2D to make concept arts to be made 3D later
and 2D anime drawings cannot be called your usual art since the character designs are usually not for artistic stuff but for efficient and easy drawings because deadlines of anime production are tight
This not shoddy CGI. While the slightly "robotic" animation can sometimes be noticed, the benefits greatly outweighs the negatives, as it allows the anime to maintain a consistent level of quality, background detail, etc, that may be missing from classical animation methods. The Japanese exchange student with whom I marathoned this anime with even commented that such a nicely animated, well-funded series must be getting pretty popular in Japan.
In other words, this is now the 47th Best Seller on AmazonJP's aggregate DVD list, placing 16th and 17th in anime BD and dvd, respectively. In addition, the most recent reviews refer to the fact that despite using "3DCG", it's done very well.
cgi isnt so bad...takao looks amazing
talking about rank but outa topic, i must nominate this shows OP to be best OP of the year!...cant stop replaying it every time i watch a new episode
It took me about 1-2 episodes to get used to the CGI. And now to be honest: I really like it! I love traditional anime art but this is a nice variation of things for a change I must say and I also think it really works well with this show! The ships and battles look amazingly good and I also love the character design (especially Iona und Takao look great IMO). It reminds me a bit of the Anime-3D-Look that Tales of Xillia has for example. The only thing that is somewhat noticable sometimes are the a lil bit jumpy character animations on a few occasions, but other than that I like it a lot.
I sure hope it really will be a success in Japan, because even though the show is still running now I'd love to see a sequel to it! Ars Nova is definitely one of the best shows this season for me - really took me by surprise! I'm loving it and it keeps getting better IMO~
Can't see full CGI ever being widespread in usual, it's pretty obvious the full CGI limited Arpeggio in many ways and they had to make changes to the series for it, like getting rid of the mini-Shipgirls that the manga had and getting rid of many characters. Animating a huge cast is going to be a nightmare for a full CGI series as each new model is a lot of work to do, and I can never see an Attack on Titan or even a Kuroko no Basket being made with full CGI.
What I can see the success of Arpeggio led to is anime companies looking at making more realistic war series based on real life weaponry, it's something that's untapped but has a lot of potential as the success of Arpeggio and also Girls Und Panzer shows. That would probably led to further death in the mecha genre but whatever.
scytheavatar said: Can't see full CGI ever being widespread in usual, it's pretty obvious the full CGI limited Arpeggio in many ways and they had to make changes to the series for it, like getting rid of the mini-Shipgirls that the manga had and getting rid of many characters. Animating a huge cast is going to be a nightmare for a full CGI series as each new model is a lot of work to do, and I can never see an Attack on Titan or even a Kuroko no Basket being made with full CGI.
What I can see the success of Arpeggio led to is anime companies looking at making more realistic war series based on real life weaponry, it's something that's untapped but has a lot of potential as the success of Arpeggio and also Girls Und Panzer shows. That would probably led to further death in the mecha genre but whatever.
SolviteSekai said: Apparently this series is ranked 65 on Amazon's list or whatever, considering i'm reading it right.
It seems to be ranked even above kill la kill...
Would I be jumping the gun to say we might see more shoddy CGI in the future?
Okay firstly what list is that, CGI anime or anime or full CG shows.
Secondly, personally as far as CG goes, it is rather well executed even for a CG. Its just that it is not within most of our comfort zone. 3D does lower the task of animator significantly, and as new software begin to be introduce, it will significantly speed up the process of cranking out animation
Now to sum it up 3D cuts down labour workloads and increase quality, as I will take a loooong time explaining it from my knowledge:
Traditional, from what I gather, 24 frames per second usually for the movement of the main object(japan standard, American cartoon uses 25) while the background uses a lower 12 fps. In traditional 2D anime, you need an army of worker contantly drawing and painting what appears is the same frame Over and Over again and if you imagine you need an average of 24 frames of main object ,8-24 frames(depending) of background and than the mouth(another several frames) movement for just a second of the anime and merge together later and most importantly they have to fit naturally. This is to give you the scale of the process and even with modern day Wacom tablets, the process is still extreme labour intensive; Hayao Miyazaki did close to 80,000 frames on paper for the animation Princess Mononke and mind you thats not even half of whats needed to create the entire movie and furthurmore, Mononke mix in some 3D CG to lower the labor of it all. In action animes like Aperggio, the sheer amount of drawing can lead to mental breakdown due to the constant drawing needed for the action movement and the detail of the animation, apperently thats what happen during NG:Evangelion production.
Now in 3D animation, the main labour begins in modelling....sheer amount of time is spent either in Maya or 3DMax to model, texture and rig it. making each battleship in Aperggio or Evas in Eva:Rebuilt requires alot of time, it took me at least a week to model ,texture and detail a relatively detail KV-2 tank. But once the all that is done, all those can be use as puppets for almost the entire length of the season and if any change is needed to the character/models/props, changes can be made relatively swift. Basically all they do is just puppeteering the models in camera, and if changes are made, they can be made withot restarting the drawing progress all they have to do is edit the keyframes. This basically cut down time and labour force/cost and since the puppet are the same throughout the entire series, the quality increases. Thou downside as all you who are inable to tolerate 3D CG are able to find out is that the animation looks robotic....without constant human input, the fluidity is lost from the animation as most of the animation is done by the software connecting one key frame to another.
I don't know how big Shazigan is, but probably is because the lack of time and workforce and the speciality in 3D CG like production I.G meant that they have no choice but to resort to this form of animation to produce and action and detail intensive anime like Aperggio. the fact they can't even add most of the large cast in the manga probably supports this fact.
Weather we might see this in the future? most probably, the 3D technology is now progressing ever furthur, and when there is an anime with alot of action/movement and detail works, I am sure CG will be the preffered choice over hand-drawn.
Gonna have to agree here. The CGI was done quite well, since for the most part, they only used it for the ships. I really don't see CGI taking over 2D animation, but I personally feel that incorporating CGI 3D effects at the right places is a definite enhancer, rather than a detractor.
In my honest opinion, CGI shall only be used for battle scenes or something like that, they should never use CGI for the characters, for some people it might work, but the majority of people who watches Anime will reject it.
Anime is Anime because of the 2D and the character designs we all know and see, if they try to make CGI the future of Anime then it's not Anime, Anime will die.
Tengai said: In my honest opinion, CGI shall only be used for battle scenes or something like that, they should never use CGI for the characters, for some people it might work, but the majority of people who watches Anime will reject it.
Anime is Anime because of the 2D and the character designs we all know and see, if they try to make CGI the future of Anime then it's not Anime, Anime will die.
The only problem I see with CGI is that the movement is too unnatural. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before we can't distinguish 2D from 3D though...
Tengai said: In my honest opinion, CGI shall only be used for battle scenes or something like that, they should never use CGI for the characters, for some people it might work, but the majority of people who watches Anime will reject it.
Anime is Anime because of the 2D and the character designs we all know and see, if they try to make CGI the future of Anime then it's not Anime, Anime will die.
My thoughts exactly. After seeing the first episode, the ship CG was OK but I couldn't handle character CG, way too unnatural after being used to the 2D designs. Unfortunately this anime has been put in the oh-hold but maybe dropped list...