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Sakura
Con - Sunday - Magical Witchland
 There are
plenty of anime series that feature cute little girls, although most of
them don't have that girl wearing a fish. Magical Witchland has that girl
- and a lot of other cute and sometimes scary features - but there's something
different about this series. It's going to be a computer animated series,
but that's nothing new - because much anime nowadays is animated with software
rather than ink and paint. Where Magical Witchland will be different is
that the artists who created the series are deliberately giving it a three-dimensional
look, instead of aiming for the flat 2-D look of cel animation. |
 Hiroki Hayashi,
the veteran AIC director who is in charge of Magical Witchland, said he's
had to adjust his style to accommodate the 3-D look. "At first I thought
i would be relatively easy," he said. "In reality, the project took two
years to take off. It's hard to compare to any project I've done before."
Hayashi got what he wanted with the new show, because he had wanted to
take on a new project with new techniques. One point that Hayashi wants
to be able to use in the future is the possibility of making changes in
animation after it's completed. While you can't revise cel animation without
reshooting a sequence, computer graphics can be changed with the right
software commands. |
 "It's hard
to show the feelings and the emotions, but Magical Witchland was a success
in my mind, said Mitsutaka Iguchi, the computer artist who created the
show's look. The advances in computer animation have led to predictions
that virtual actors eventually will replace flesh-and-blood performers.
"It could happen because progress is so quick," he answered. "I'm trying
to keep up with the technology." Iguchi said that computer-generated actors
could start to take over from the real thing after ten more years of development. |
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