90's Digital Animation's Love for Blurred light source Shading

When Disney ditched the old school acetate celluloid in favor of their CAPS computer systems during the production of RESCUERS DOWN UNDER in 1989, the artists realized how versatile the system is when it comes to not just coloring their characters with a paint bucket tool but also with using some blending tools to smooth out things such as Cheek Rouge on characters like Belle.

But one of the things that intrigue me is the smoothing of the separation between the colors used for regular shading vs darker shading in order to indicate light source.

This is most noticeable with GENIE shown below.

Like I said in my many posts, it took the industry much longer for them to embrace computers for 2D Animation. But when the studios embraced the tech, they realized the versatility.

My guess is that the studios anticipated the 3D Boom that would eventually come to fruition after TOY STORY in 1995 so in order to maintain a psuedo-3D Appearance with the digital cels used for these characters, the artists would blur the colors used for light source darker shade of color so that it feels 3D Like.

Sort of makes sense to do so due to higher budgets, the need to bring back true colored-outlines that were lost during the XEROX era, as well as hide the synthetic nature of the digital cels.

That's right. 

One of the reasons for animation companies to be that hesitant to embrace the tech during the 90s was due to a fierce belief from artists working in the industry that if the cels were all digital with thick outlines, bright colors, etc, the animation would feel synthetic and lose that aesthetic appeal.

Maybe that's why BEAUTY AND THE BEAST looked much better on 35MM filmstock and VHS when compared to Blu-Ray or 4K Streaming.

But then again, the techniques would become lost once again when studios mandated CGI-Only for theatrical features

as well as CALARTS Puppet Rigs in TV Animation.

As for anime, to which thankfully still does old-school hand drawn animation, that industry took even longer to adapt to computers due to the anime artists fiercely believing in acetate celluloid aesthetics.

And even when anime finally switched to computers for coloring the cels, the artists still didn't blur the darker shade of colors for the cels. Instead, preferring to generate computerized sunlight for many outdoor scenes or generating CG light for things like the light generated from lightbulbs.

Of course, I now see why many professional artist who were not Disney refused to switch to Digital Ink and Paint if this screenshot of the THOMPSON SISTERS from SOUL EATER are any indication.

"That's not a fair comparison since our anime is from 2008 and all the other digital anime of that time had much better digital cels than we did."

But the tech improves with time, whether it's the motherboards, the CPU clock speeds, the GPUs, the software, etc.

So this resulted in better character designs, better handling of the colors, better generated sunlight, etc.

You just had to look at the right side of the Cherry Blossom and Bonsai trees to find the best digital cels available in the realm of anime.

"And hope that the episode, OVA, or theatrical feature has an insanely good budget."

The digitally generated sunlight seen on so many anime is a testament to the fact that a lot of these anime are set during the summer and things get pretty hot during that time of the year 

Maybe that's why the digital artists always go for the brightest colors for these cartoons and anime because of taking advantage of all that high contrast on today's OLED 4K TVs or today's IPS 4K Computer Monitors with built in HDR even though not many people are going to set HDR on their displays due to personal preferences.

Here's something that all artists should try doing for today's digital 2D Animation:

Use a combination of drop shadows and grain filters to bring back that 90's 35mm filmstock aesthetic. There's an on social media artist who's been doing that lately.

So far, HAZBIN HOTEL as well as it's web-spinoff HELLUVA BOSS are the only modern animated series to use drop shadows in their digital cels but that's just the drop shadows.

But I guess using Toon Boom's Node System is better than having to go through multiple shutter passes only to find that the photo negative has gone defective...

Old Tech, New Tech, 

Defective photo negatives, dead pixels on monitors, 

Sometimes, you just have to fight limitations and problems to get the best results.