Take
a long, last look at the object displayed by veteran animator Koichi
Tsunoda at Animazement: it's an anime cel, the piece of celluloid
plastic once used as the source for every frame of animation. For
eighty years, uncounted numbers of cels were used worldwide in every
animated series. Now, the same job is done in computers, with drawing
tablets and paint programs. Computer-assisted animation looks just like
cel animation, but it's less expensive because ink, paint and cels
aren't used - in the same way that digital photography saves the cost
of processing and printing film. At Animazement, it was mentioned that
only one anime studio still used cels for an old-school series, and
even they are expected to make the transition to computers.
At
an interview session, Tsunoda said the end of the cel era gives
animation a different feel for the artists. "As a line animator and an
artist, you become an animator because you want to see the product of
your work come to life," he said. "For that, pencil and paper is the
most satisfying way to work on it. This seems to be regardless of age -
it's the feeling of young animators as well as old fogies such as me.
But if you look at the production system, computer animation is more
convenient. It's more efficient and faster and it involves fewer
people. It's the same for background painters - there's less painting
work. So, artists with a true artistic calling have become frustrated
with computer work and have left the industry. Perhaps, for those who
love to work with computer graphics, they're probably having the time
of their life. Even a lot of the young animators say it's not as much
fun to be working in a totally mechanized environment."
The hobby
of cel collecting is certain to become more expensive, since the number
of cels will not longer increase, but
the streamlined computerized animation makes possible the large number
of animated shows on television and cable in Japan, Tsunoda estimated
120 animated programs are shown each week. Computerization also hasn't
changed the artistic skills needed to succeed in the business. Tsunoda
demonstrated one of those skills for fans when he challenged them to
become an in-betweener. Key animators decide a character's appearance
at certain key frames during a sequence, and the rest of the frames
that simulate movement are drawn by "in-betweeners." All animation
artists have to develop and in-betweener's skills, to be able to show a
character's proper proportion and perspective in movement from frame to
frame. Tsunoda's assignment to fans was to fill in the frames of a
simple spherical head, but to make them fell better, he showed the fans
what animators really face - the key frames of the sequence of a
running wildcat. He admitted that the cat frames would be far more
difficult to draw.
Tsunoda
has been around for decades in the anime industry, and he's seen the
changes in which characters are drawn. In anime shows of the 1960's and
1970's, female characters had uniformly round faces. In the last
decades, those characters have developed pointy chins, something that
Tsunoda jokingly called the results of a diet. He also noted that the
proportions of many of the costumers at Animazement were larger than
the proportions of the original character designs.
Take
a long, last look at the object displayed by veteran animator Koichi
Tsunoda at Animazement: it's an anime cel, the piece of celluloid
plastic once used as the source for every frame of animation. For
eighty years, uncounted numbers of cels were used worldwide in every
animated series. Now, the same job is done in computers, with drawing
tablets and paint programs. Computer-assisted animation looks just like
cel animation, but it's less expensive because ink, paint and cels
aren't used - in the same way that digital photography saves the cost
of processing and printing film. At Animazement, it was mentioned that
only one anime studio still used cels for an old-school series, and
even they are expected to make the transition to computers. 
At
an interview session, Tsunoda said the end of the cel era gives
animation a different feel for the artists. "As a line animator and an
artist, you become an animator because you want to see the product of
your work come to life," he said. "For that, pencil and paper is the
most satisfying way to work on it. This seems to be regardless of age -
it's the feeling of young animators as well as old fogies such as me.
But if you look at the production system, computer animation is more
convenient. It's more efficient and faster and it involves fewer
people. It's the same for background painters - there's less painting
work. So, artists with a true artistic calling have become frustrated
with computer work and have left the industry. Perhaps, for those who
love to work with computer graphics, they're probably having the time
of their life. Even a lot of the young animators say it's not as much
fun to be working in a totally mechanized environment." 
The hobby
of cel collecting is certain to become more expensive, since the number
of cels will not longer increase, but
the streamlined computerized animation makes possible the large number
of animated shows on television and cable in Japan, Tsunoda estimated
120 animated programs are shown each week. Computerization also hasn't
changed the artistic skills needed to succeed in the business. Tsunoda
demonstrated one of those skills for fans when he challenged them to
become an in-betweener. Key animators decide a character's appearance
at certain key frames during a sequence, and the rest of the frames
that simulate movement are drawn by "in-betweeners." All animation
artists have to develop and in-betweener's skills, to be able to show a
character's proper proportion and perspective in movement from frame to
frame. Tsunoda's assignment to fans was to fill in the frames of a
simple spherical head, but to make them fell better, he showed the fans
what animators really face - the key frames of the sequence of a
running wildcat. He admitted that the cat frames would be far more
difficult to draw.
Tsunoda
has been around for decades in the anime industry, and he's seen the
changes in which characters are drawn. In anime shows of the 1960's and
1970's, female characters had uniformly round faces. In the last
decades, those characters have developed pointy chins, something that
Tsunoda jokingly called the results of a diet. He also noted that the
proportions of many of the costumers at Animazement were larger than
the proportions of the original character designs.
