@maxr Loved that! Thanks @BurnetRhodes I love Nimh as it has that "gritty" look. The cels just merge with the backgrounds. I still this is mostly part of them being photographed on film rather than digital. I sound like a grumpy ol man! haha

BTW I forgot to rant a bit on digital motion blur in modern digicel animation...god I hate that! Is it so hard to just draw blurred motion?! Looks so damn cheap! :-D

But very true on that if the artist puts the effort in they could replicate that look of classic cel animation.

Lucy's Escape from ELFEN LIED, Warning: Extreme Violence!

English Dub. HD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfen_Lied

An old Softimage PATENT: Simulating Cel Animation And Shading

see PDF for full patent

http://www.lens.org/lens/patent/US_5966134_A

Psychedelic, Shamanic, and Magickal Themes in Anime Culture

http://realitysandwich.com/219031/psychedelic-shamanic-and-magickal-themes-in-anime-culture/

Similar techniques being applied to digital video need to be explored for animation, particularly running a Film Convert type pass with scanned grain. Flat color cels still have texture when they're photographed on a multiplane camera. Metropolis is maybe the last great feature anime shot on real cels but I think this look can be synthesized, for the most part. We can even more accurately get the look of bi-pack photography like what you see used throughout Secret of Nimh thanks to linear float workflow. It just needs artists that value this aesthetic to put the effort in.

I've been really disappointed with the flatness and sterility in the last several Studio Ghibli projects. Studio 4C, and, to a lesser extent Production IG and Gainax or some of their subcontractors, since it's hard to tell their division of labor, seems to have pushed digital to sometimes create aesthetics that would be impossible with traditional cels. Like the clean, modern look of the last three Evangelion films is remarkable, but they don't erase how gorgeous most of End of Evangelion was.

@Mimirsan wow man ... Mind Game just totally blew my mind off any axis it was left spinnig ... big thank you 4 that =)

@Mimirsan

Angel's Egg is maybe, still, my favorite animated film of all time. I keep hoping one day I'll happen upon a film print screening of this one. I got to see a pristine print of X:1999 The Movie and there's just no substitute for seeing real, honest to goodness theatrical animation in a theater, projected on film.

Yeah, it's hard to stay involved with an anime group when they're so preoccupied with stuff that's neither technically or artistically interesting. The mainstream stuff that I enjoy still has to be excellent in some way because of singular artists involved. Speaking of Mamoru Oshii's work in particular (Angel's Egg) it's not gone unnoticed that the art and budget of his more contemporary stuff, post GitS, has been on a decline.

The proliferation of digital tools in anime production has brought about some new, interesting styles that work but it's also lead to an overall reduction in baseline craftsmanship. I don't see line quality that I enjoy anymore, for instance. I've always hated the "self-inked line" (an ironically unpopular opinion among my fellow students and teachers at CalArts) but somehow digital tools are now killing the look of clean up drawings for me. I don't really know why. I would have thought that scanning would preserve the look the same as xerox'd cels but perhaps there's a clean-up step to promote easy bucket-fill that's the culprit.

The illusion of life

Omega • 2014

Credits:
a film by Eva Franz & Andreas Goralczyk

sound design & music Lorenz Schwarz

production assistance Anna Gates Adam Gawel

screenplay Eva Franz

character design Andreas Goralczyk

additional stop motion animation
Andreas Grindler
Adam Gawel
Jan Eilts
Tibor Weissmar

environment department coordination Doga Cigsar

additional set and environment construction
Elenya Bannert
Jan Cordes
Hannes Gerlach
Hedi Haase
Erika Han Xue Hanson
Kairi Kuuskor
Janno Nou
Ursula Schachenhofer

additional puppet construction
Adam Gawel
Andreas Grindler
Benjamin Gillner
Oskar Klinkhammer
Pia Matthes
Juan Francisco Pedraza
Tibor Weissmar

compositing & computer animation
Eva Franz
Andreas Goralczyk

cgi rigging support
Bassam Kurdali
Nathan Vegdahl

sound recording assistance
Martin Buntz
Corinne Schlichtung

solo instruments
Theo Nabicht (Contrabass Clarinet)
Shinichi Minami (Percussion)
Rie Watanabe (Additional Percussion)

additional music loops Elmar Farchmin

additional vocals
Paula Ketteler
Hans Leo Neu

additional vocals recording
Tobias Fricke
Sonia Toepfer

I can't remember getting too excited after Animatrix...

For me it was all about Kid's Story and Beyond. Especially the later, being a lover of anything Koji Morimoto does. His studio does the best blending of traditional and computer generated animation techniques in my opinion.

In the Summer of 1991 I was accepted into the Character Animation department of the Film/Video School of CalArts. They were especially looking for folks that were going to be interested in their CG lab, which is how I got in, but while I was there I met some of the most amazing young animators and instructors, several of whom have gone on to help re-shape the industry.

One such fellow was Craig McCraken who was a sophomore (I think that's right). He was part of a small group of upperclassmen (there were practically no juniors or seniors in the department) who would go on to virtually take over TV animation in the US by the end of the decade. That year, this was his final film for the year:

...I think everyone knows what became of it after playing in Spike & Mike's festival for some time but not many people have seen where those girls came from.

REDLINE is pretty insane. It's one of those titles that you can whip out to show smug friends who think they know what anime is and isn't or that everything looks the same. Show them that or Dead Leaves and then maybe some Animatrix. There are some wildly talented artists at several studios in Japan doing work that really stretches beyond conventional design in their animation culture.

@mrbill =) . I'm pretty sure the girl is same actress from ... yes it is, from Martel's The holy Girl; María Alche.
Loved The Tempest which I didn't know, thanks

Thank you also BurnetRhoades, wonderful between worlds lingering imaginary
 

 
 
Un jour (One day) • 1997
 

Credits

Director: Marie Paccou
Writer: Marie Paccou
Voice: Christine Gagneux
Producer: Claude Huhardeaux
Original Music: Matthieu Aschehoug
Vibraphone: Matthieu Aschehoug
Chello: Stephane Manent
Foley: Eric Grattepain
Mix: Emmanuel Croset
Film Editing: Marie Paccou
Sound: Fabrice Gérardi
Animation: Alexis Appert / Marie Paccou
Produced at Studios de 2001

@maxr - that's just beautiful