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CGI!


awesomedude20

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Ah yes, CGI. The stuff that makes the 3D be the go. It's very clearly a hated thing amongst the anime community, as basically everyone would prefer that traditional 2D drawn anime look.

Would you prefer this 3D?

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Or would you prefer this 2D?

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Now, if you say you'd prefer the 2D image there, I'm laughing since that one is also a fully CGI anime.

My opinion on CGI is this:

If the story is good enough, it doesn't matter, unless it's severely impacting the flow of the show. An action series for example would need to do some great things with its CGI in order to impress me, as the CGI has to look good to really hit the action home. Example, Garo: Divine Flame

Note how the CGI is actually rather good. Clearly CGI, but the action is still awesome, and I daresay it's entirely on par, maybe even better, than the 2D portion of the clip.

Moving on with my earlier point though, depending on the show, a simple drama anime could be fully CGI and not even be all that nice looking, but so long as the story is great, it doesn't matter to me at all, as it most likely wouldn't be directly impacting the show in any way.

On top of that point though, I'm also always trying to get people to be of the opinion that not all CGI anime look terrible by ANY means. High Score Girl in the second screenshot there is one example, as is the armor in Garo: Divine Flame. A third example is Land of the Lustrous, as it was entirely a contender to be the prettiest anime of its season. Example.

So, what do you think of CGI? Should it banned from the world, there's nothing it can do that 2D can't do better? Or do you not mind it at all? Perhaps even prefer it? Lemme know.

Edited by awesomedude20
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I think CGI is just another natural course a lot of media including anime is going to take more, and more. Its something we'll just need to accept weather we like it or not.  Its true growing up in the 90s/early 2000s I like a lot of traditional drawn anime. Though that dose not mean I don't like newer things. The fact is nowa days CGI is simply cheaper. Also CGI is less about art style, and more about how the art is animated. For me art style dose influence a great deal on weather I will think positively on a anime, but it isn't everything story is the ultimate thing that brings it all together after all. So my answer is long as story, and art are good could honestly care less on at least a basic level how exactly it is animated. Having done both animation methods myself with various software I can say both have their ups as well as downs.

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Depends how its done, and by whom. Berserk 2016/17 is a good example on how not to do CGI granted they managed to mess up pacing and everything else except the music and there are good examples on how to do it, like Boro the Caterpillar. It really depends on how it affects the rest of the anime - I do think that certain animation styles or art styles would suffer from having CGI. Overall I agree with Archiekun, if story, pacing and characters are well done, and the CGI doesn't look awful, like really awful, I don't mind.

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I generally don't have a problem with CGI in Anime tbh. Most people use it cuz it's just easier to animate with, especially when your project is one a strict schedule/timeline to be made o_o (and a time line I might add that never caters for human errors/issues, such as someone getting fired, or getting sick and being unable to work for a while. And in some cases, they don't cater for you eating or sleeping etc.) 

Sure, everyone would love to do full on 2D master pieces if they could, but sadly, cuz of that time restrictions and other issues that might happen, well... we get that stuff. (shrugs)

The only time I have a problem with the CGI is when they use 3D elements that you could just tell instantly is 3D - ie it's not rendered properly to match the rest of the animation work. 

Other than that, it's fine. 

 

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The style of CGI that is used for that first anime, which by the way is one I dropped for reasons other than it's crappy CGI, is hugely problematic because it takes any chance of looking at the characters as humans and removes them due to the wonky motions they take which is the worst example of the uncanny valley that anime has ever had. Now the CGI here: 

 

which probably has a lot to do with why the CGI debate even started when it did, I think is fine. 

 

Another example of it being fine is this: 

 

However, at the time people hated that CGI was even being used in anime to the extent that it was changing the look of an anime so people pushed back against it, and in an attempt to save it, animators went with the crap from the first image OP posted. That kind of CG is not acceptable because it looks worse and it's movements are entirely so unnatural that it's impossible to enjoy anything that looks that way for a lot of people. However CGI itself is not a bad idea, and it was being used before changes like Haruka and The Magic Mirror, or the .hack//The Movie was made, and people didn't notice it much. When it's done right, it's fine, when it done incorrectly and ruins a show like the one from that first image, it's problematic. 

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CGI has this stigma against it, that it honestly no longer deserves. The combination of Kado: The Right Answer, Houseki no Kuni, High Score Girl, and Ufotable shows is enough to tell us that in this last year or so, they’ve really worked out how to do it properly. Especially in Houseki, it doesn’t even try to look 2D. All of the staging and camera angles are different, and it just looks amazing. There’s a pretty good quote that we can’t remember the source of which said “The first thing you have to learn when moving to 3D animation, is to forget everything you knew about 2D animation.” That makes a lot of sense to us due to the styles being so different, so it’s possible that someone (other than Polygon) may try to make a studio focused on CGI, and then do a bunch of collaborations. We’d like to see that.

The only real black marks against CGI recently have been Berserk, which we all know why it looks bad, and CGI crowds, who are only in the background. Are the crowds as good as 2D backgrounds? No. But it’s better than having no one in the background, or having motionless people, and since it’s so much cheaper than 2D animated backgrounds, that means that they can spend more time on the important stuff.

 

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13 minutes ago, the_twig said:

CGI has this stigma against it, that it honestly no longer deserves. The combination of Kado: The Right Answer, Houseki no Kuni, High Score Girl, and Ufotable shows is enough to tell us that in this last year or so, they’ve really worked out how to do it properly. Especially in Houseki, it doesn’t even try to look 2D. All of the staging and camera angles are different, and it just looks amazing. There’s a pretty good quote that we can’t remember the source of which said “The first thing you have to learn when moving to 3D animation, is to forget everything you knew about 2D animation.” That makes a lot of sense to us due to the styles being so different, so it’s possible that someone (other than Polygon) may try to make a studio focused on CGI, and then do a bunch of collaborations. We’d like to see that.

The only real black marks against CGI recently have been Berserk, which we all know why it looks bad, and CGI crowds, who are only in the background. Are the crowds as good as 2D backgrounds? No. But it’s better than having no one in the background, or having motionless people, and since it’s so much cheaper than 2D animated backgrounds, that means that they can spend more time on the important stuff.

 

Very well said on this. I know for me its a case of not wanting to deal with change much like a lot of anime fans out there. We want what we have always had, and what we are used to looking it. I do certainly agree that it has come a very long way from what it was. It has potential its just up to the future now to see what will become of it.

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CGI like that old show that used to air on cartoon network (the one with all the blue ppl)or something like beast wars even though the show is great is not something I like. Hopefully one day cgi can look like 2d and then there can be more anime!

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It really depends on if the story makes up for the cgi. Like Ajin, when I first saw Ajin I was off put by the cgi but I still decided to give it a a few more episodes before I deciede weither to drop it or not and I must say it turned out to be pretty good.

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If something is purely CGI and done WELL, I don't usually have a problem with it. Where I have issues with CGI is

1) when they try to blend CGI characters with more traditional ones, because they almost always clash (a perfect recent example are the bears in Golden Kamuy)

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2) when the purpose of CGI is to look more "realistic". One of the advantages of animation over live action IMO is the use of UNREALISTIC character or baclground designs to influence the tone or mood of the show

Edited by Ohiotaku
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5 hours ago, Ohiotaku said:

2) when the purpose of CGI is to look more "realistic". One of the advantages of animation over live action IMO is the use of UNREALISTIC character or baclground designs to influence the tone or mood of the show

I object!

 

Obviously depends on the quality, of course.

Edited by awesomedude20
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