#animation cels

The idea I had was that in the original NES manual there are these gorgeous anime cel illustrations highlighting some of the action you’ll get into playing the game.

However, these are not actually part of any long lost anime or anything. They were single images produced to look like an anime by hand painting cels and placing them over backgrounds.

So my thought was… why don’t I actually animate these scenes and try to make them look like true hand painted 80’s anime?

To help with this project I’ve identified a number of factors that go into what makes 80’s anime look the way it does. Take a look at the example:

SHADING: Unlike a lot of American productions where the shadow layer is a separate animation pass overlayed on top of the original through a composting effect, Anime is done much cheaper. Artists would actually ink the colors of where shadows are supposed to be on the cels themselves, and then paint the shadows onto the cels using a different color.

BRUSH WORK: 80’s anime has a rougher edge to it. Either through using the xerox method or by hand painting the ink lines with a dry brush, the one point that is clear is that the actual linework of each stroke is often broken up and brittle.

CEL LAYERS: Anime cels are actual sheets of celluloid painted and layed down on top of a background painting. No matter how flat you try to make it, the more layers you introduce the more likely cel shadows will start to pile up, and the foggier the background gets.

MY PROCESS: So this is what I’ve come up with as my method of reproducing this digitally.

1) I’m going to use a dry brush that cracks and will intentionally try to make the animation a little messy. I won’t be trying to clean it up much (if at all) and if I make a mistake it stays in. Anime was often produced very fast and very cheaply so I am trying to replicate that effect.

2) I’m going to use multiple shades of colors to represent the flats, shadows, and the painted lines depicting where shadows will go.

3) I will include a shadow layer underneath the animation to give it a traditional 2D effect of having multiple cels piled up on top of each other.

4) When all is said and done I will run the whole thing through a VHS filter to really sell the idea this is a long lost animation from a bygone era.

I bought Brave Police J-Decker production pieces! (˶ˆᗜˆ˵)

You bet your sweet bippy, I did <_<

Also, I thought I was buying one cel - it’s THREE stacked! And matching gengas ;v;

Been a while, but new cel time! Why not, for the 30th anniversary? THIS HAND OF MINE GLOWS WITH AN AWESOME POWER! IT'S BURNING GRIP TELLS ME TO DEFEAT YOU! HERE I GO! SHINING FINGERRRRRRR~!! It's an iconic double Shining Finger, featuring both Rain and Domon, from Episode 13 of G Gundam: "Big Pinch! The Enemies Are the Five Great Gundams!" Shiny green glow effect and all! Background is a decent facsimile, minus the pink effects. This frame is mostly faded out by the time it gets to it, as it transitions to the Shining Gundam overlayed, before focusing on the mecha's attack: