How is Anime Drawn?

y2kwizard · Post by **y2kwizard** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 12:09 am

Bah. I feel like a complete moron for not knowing this, but I honestly don't know what the process of drawing an anime series is.

How much is hand drawn? How much is done in the computer? What is the PROCESS of the animation? How many people work on a series at a time? How long does it take to draw a particular series? What systems are used to edit? How is the stuff captured? How are backgrounds added?

Thanks a lot!

Chaos Angel · Post by **Chaos Angel** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 1:54 am

To learn how many people are involved in making an anime series, simply look at the credits. You've got the director, the voice actors, the directors of animation, art, sound, not to mention the countless grunt people who do the tedious crap.

System specs for equipment would be trickier, and I don't know where to find the information off-hand.

I would imagine, however, that the equipment necessary for good animation is probably in the thousands range. Say, $2,000-$3,000 minimum would be my guess.

Chaos Angel · Post by **Chaos Angel** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 1:58 am

Oh, and hand-drawn vs. computer is dependant upon the style of the anime. Spirited Away, for example, although it looks digital, was done entirely hand-drawn, according to an interview with Hayao Miyazaki that I read somewhere and cannot remember where to find.

Capturing is essentially, I believe, a matter of photographing the cels. The cells are drawn, everything is layered together (backgrounds, then items, characters, etc.), and photographed. Each photograph is one frame. So, animation is essentially thousands of photographs of drawings that are created from scratch and drawn in a manner that makes them seem to actually move. It's just that the "cameras" used for high-quality pictures are expensive. And I have no idea about digital, you're on your own there my friend.

dokidoki · Post by **dokidoki** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 2:12 am

Chaos Angel wrote:Oh, and hand-drawn vs. computer is dependant upon the style of the anime. Spirited Away, for example, although it looks digital, was done entirely hand-drawn, according to an interview with Hayao Miyazaki that I read somewhere and cannot remember where to find.

http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/371/371579p1.html
"Fundamentally, the animation is all pencil-drawn. In a few scenes we turned to digital; for instance to create patterns on the waves or to show bubbling water."

kthulhu · Post by **kthulhu** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 2:12 am

Cel drawn animation is typically done in layers. A background is drawn on the bottom cel, and then the actual animation is successive layers of cels piled together, to build a frame. Each frame is then filmed with a special camera, then changed.

Take the example of a character throwing a ball. You have the background (a field, a playground, a stadium, something like that), and then the first frame is of the character lifting their arm to throw the ball. When it looks right *snap*, you film it (basically take a snapshot), then change the cels for the next frame, film it, and so on. Naturally, all those cels take time and work, and a GOOD cel drawn series (fluid, vibrant, quality drawing) can be very expensive. It can also look VERY good. Which brings in CGI.

Computers can be used to draw frames faster, add effects that are a pain or nearly impossible to do by hand, and clean up cels (or create clean ones digitally). CGI can also be used to render 3D scenes and objects, but how well that integrates with the cel drawn stuff depends on budget, director, and the animators' own talent.

Regardless, there's usually a lot of people involved.

tacooe · Post by **tacooe** » Sun Dec 29, 2002 11:12 am

The way I see it it is all very complicated and time consuming. Just to make sure that there is no use of computers in the animation just watch the classical oldies like Akira or Vampire Hunter D there you can truely appreciate the work and art that went into them.

Mroni · Post by **Mroni** » Sun Dec 29, 2002 1:17 pm

Well the original vampire hunter d isn't that impressive. The new one heavily uses cgi. But Yes akira character designs aside is impressive. Also disney movies like Bambi from the 40s and the 50's very very impressive animation back then.

Mr Oni