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is there room for photo-realism in anime? stereotypically, anime is regarded as a 2dmedium, with 2d backgrounds and homogeneous character designs. of course, this definition isn’t exactlyuseful, since you can probably think of about ten shows that don’t fit this mold, butthe point is that at the very least, these shows try to fit into a similar aesthetic. it’s been one of the greatest challengesfor 3d animation in japan. you’ve got this large established audienceattached to a particular visual style that specifically excludes the entire productionprocess that you work with.

and so, there’s been an organised effortby japan’s 3d animation houses to find ways to replicate that style. new software, new production processes, it’snot just about cel shading, it’s about finding an entirely new way of doing things. one of the most successful attempts is actuallystudio orange’s land of the lustrous, airing this season. which i may or may not be researching fora video. but what if you rejected that challenge entirely. what if you, as a company at the forefrontof technological skills and equipment devote

more time and resources to creating anime? hello and welcome to the canipa effect. this is an anime studio spotlight on the 3dcgstudio, digital frontier. i should probably introduce digital frontierfirst. digital frontier are a 3d production studioat the height of 3dcg animation in japan. they are known as the main studio on appleseed,the creators of appleseed ex-machina, gantz: o and this season, they are producing the tatsunoko production homage series, infini-t force. in addition, they created all of the supersmash bros. for wii u trailers, do motion capture for the yakuza series and create theopening films for tekken.

they are also the parent company of studiogemba, known for, well… this: i wrote an entire article on the productionproblems that berserk faced, but the short story is that they don’t have nearly thetechnology nor the internal organisation that digital frontier can produce. which is why digital frontier productionslook more like this: the relationship between technology and artis shaky. technological prowess can aid in the deliveryof artistic ideas, but with sophisticated technology and software comes assembly lines. it’s difficult to guarantee that the originalidea will make it through all those twists

and turns. it’s an advantage that 2d animation hasover its 3d counterpart. there is generally not much difference betweenan original keyframe animation and the final product and that's why animator fandom ispossible. there are a number of animators whose workcan be recognised. but in 3d, it’s difficult to know how muchof a particular scene was created by a human being, let alone which human being it was. so the job of maintaining a particular visionfalls to the 3d director. and digital frontier has eight, each specialisedin different parts of cgi production and different

media, allowing for a visual diversity acrosstheir productions. simply put, because each director is a specialistat a certain genre or type of film, they can use their technology effectively to createart within their genre. for example, yasushi kawamura, the directorof gantz: o is a specialist in science fiction and so he knows how to capture using futuristicweapons and spent a lot of time on the mechanics of the x-gun that kato uses in the film. in 2016, gantz: o won the cgworld award for3d in a feature film, beating out both your name and shin godzilla, much to the surpriseof the staff at digital frontier. the reason cgworld offered for giving theaward to gantz referred to accomplishments

in realistic expression within 3d. this was something that plagued the stafffor the five years that the film was in production. they were creating anime, but wanted to accomplishsomething realistic. generally, you have to choose and since there’salready an audience for anime, most 3d production companies are working on emulating 2d animation. but digital frontier and director kawamuratook on the uncanny valley head on. they describe the uncanny valley as beinga kind of disconnect between the elements. if the backgrounds don’t look realistic,then nothing looks realistic. if the character’s skin reflects too muchlight then it’s fucked.

nobody can look at the film in the same way. i absolutely loved star wars: rogue one, butthe uncanny cg model of peter cushing meant that i can never look at the film the sameway again. but what kawamura ended up doing was backingaway from photorealism. after all, what they wanted to achieve wasrealistic expressions and all they needed was character designs that didn’t look oddwith them. so they brought up the manga again, took alook at kato and steadily reformed his character model until he looked like this. the final product that bridges the uncannyvalley by smoothing the skin and giving it

an anime-esque facial structure. this is a film that took 5 years to make. everything needed to be perfect. the film wasn’t just about showing horrifyingthings happening, but it was also about delivering this fear through realistic expressions. and to achieve this, they headed to theirvery own motion capture studio. but digital frontier aren’t referred toas such because it sounds like a cool name and so a huge part of gantz: o’s successwas due to their technological abilities at the studio.

here’s a load of guys in dumb suits dancingaround for appleseed: ex-machina released in 2007. and this is a behind-the scenes video fromgantz: o. apart from the new suits looking way more stylish, you probably noticed thehuge helmet rigs. the idea behind these is that you’re notjust capturing an actor’s body movements, you’re also capturing how their face movesand mapping that onto a 3d character model. this was a technique famously used in thefilm, avatar, so that the way sam worthington moves his face normally is also the way hisblue fursona expresses emotion. but in gantz, there’s none of those sillydots.

turns out, you don’t need them. turns out all you need is to do is get this$10,000 headrig. this is the dynamixyz and what it does isit captures and uses the full face as a reference, instead of just a select group of 50 dots. and so two actors who look ridiculous herecan be turned into realistic scenes in gantz with their literal expressions being on theircharacters. oh, fun fact: the actor here who played katowas such a big fan of gantz that he even changed his hairstyle to look more like kato for theauditions. but 3d companies don’t usually spend alltheir time working on their own films.

this process is incredibly expensive and eventhough digital frontier is a huge company, they need to take up other jobs along theway. so they’ll work with nintendo on the smashbros. trailers, create the vfx for the new death note movie and even work with one oftheir biggest fans, mamoru hosoda. yeah, hosoda is a huge fan of digital frontierand in fact, one of the studio’s very first works was his short digimon film called digimon:grand prix, released in 2000. this was back when hosoda was working at toeianimation, but when he started creating his own films, he finally got the chance to workwith them again, starting on summer wars. summer wars is a 2 hour film, but almost halfof that takes place within the cg environment

of oz. the film features 300 unique digital avatarswith unique forms of movement along with a fully 3d environment. even in cg production, all the storyboardsare drawn up by hand and just from hosoda’s drawings and a couple of short conversations,they created an entire digital world. thanks to 3d director ryo horibe’s abilityto understand hosoda’s vision, he returned for the boy and the beast, with his main jobthis time being to populate the cities. and so for the boy and the beast, there were 600 total models to be produced for crowd shots with hundreds of them moving at once.

and so to get this looking natural, they usedtwo different software to simulate natural human behaviour in a crowd. meaning that from a distance, it looks likepeople moving about naturally within shibuya and the beast town. they went overboard with the colosseum battle,with tens of thousands of characters within the stands. some sitting, some walking about, it was absolutelyinsane. but even with all of this, no matter how muchgoes into these scenes, it looks unnatural. having 2d characters, particularly the uniquedesigns within hosoda’s films on screen

with cg humans just can’t help but lookwrong. cg looks best when it works on its own merits. this is why mamoru hosoda is planning to directa fully 3d film with digital frontier. but in the meantime, ryo horibe’s next projectwas infini-t force, a 3d tv series that combines the worlds of classic tatsunoko characters. infini-t force is gantz, but in a way thatdoesn’t take five years to make. in fact, they started production last year. the original plan was to have the series airfor a full year, but when it comes to digital frontier, even with them trying to cut costs,their production methods aren’t cheap and

it looks like the series will run for 24 episodesinstead. the original plan also had kenji nakamura,the director of gatchaman crowds in charge of the series, but production overlapped withgatchaman crowds insight. additionally, they used techniques such asreal time render to speed things up, a technique often used in video games. real time render is a technique that skipsthe part where you have to wait an entire day to see the final version of a dude walking,instead creating the render immediately. this is why when you play a video game, itdoesn’t take an hour to walk down the street, it’s rendering the movements as you play.

however, real time render hits an issue whenthere’s too much detail or too many frames and so it’s always lagging behind 3d filmand 3d cutscenes. it’s going to take many years before a finalfantasy game is able to look as good as the kingsglaive movie. or more relevantly, infini-t force cannothave nearly the level of detail as gantz. digital frontier’s speciality is in turningtechnology into art. in using the latest techniques and hardwareto create something unimaginable. however, when restricted to a tv schedulewith tv resources, the magic collapses. infini-t force is a really fun show, but itdoesn’t push the boundaries and in an effort

to get episodes complete in the first place,the show itself appears entirely uninspired. the hope is that this is a one-off. that digital frontier will remain a bastionof turning technology into art and that we will get more films on the level of gantz:o. kawamura’s goal is to get people who don’t usually watch 3d animation to seedigital frontier’s films. and who knows? maybe the next step is a fully 3d hosoda film. thanks for watching the canipa effect. gantz: o is available to watch on netflixwhilst infini-t force is streaming on viz.

also, thank you to everyone who said hi atanime festival asia in singapore this year. i was there thanks to the hotel jen orchardgateway, which made it a really enjoyable trip. but before i go, i’d like to thank thesespectacular people for supporting the channel. in particular, i’d like to thank: the youthful yah-cop gadhe, the classy cubes,the mythological mike tamburelli, the fancy frog-kun who translated part of the research in this video, the headstronghamad, the fashionable flying colours foundation, the attractive austin hardwicke, the illuminatedisaac woo, literally my own mother and the

person who has been a patreon for so longthat i’m running out of “a” adjectives, the airworthy albireo. that’s right. albireo can fly now. please visit the canipa effect patreon tosee what i’ve been working on and perhaps support the channel.

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