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[music]

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Hello! My name is Dan,

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I’m an animator,
and this is New Frame Plus.

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Replicating the look of hand-drawn
anime in 3D is a daunting challenge.

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Even the anime industry frequently
struggles to produce CG results

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that don’t fall into some
weird, animation uncanny valley.

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It’s just SO EASY to get a result
that feels vaguely wrong-looking,

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and most of the CG anime success
stories seem to be the shows

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which are willing to embrace
their distinct 3D look.

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The same has largely been
true for anime video games.

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Many game developers
have taken a crack at

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this same 3D anime
challenge over the years,

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but nearly all of the successful
examples are the games

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which aim to heavily
EVOKE the anime style

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without actually trying to
fool anybody into thinking

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that they’re looking at
a series of drawings.

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But there is one game studio
out there who has been

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pushing this envelope
further than any other,

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and that studio is
Arc System Works.

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And, before I start talking about how they
achieved this, I do want to point out:

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much of what I’m about to say here
comes directly from a GDC talk

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given by technical animator
Junya C Motomura back in 2015.

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You can (and should) check
that talk out yourself later.

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I will link to it below.

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So Arc System
Works, as a company,

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has been kicking around in
some form since the late 80s.

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They’ve worked on
a lot of things,

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but the genre of game they are
most famous for is: 2D fighters.

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This studio is VERY VERY GOOD at making beautiful,

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high-energy,
competitive anime fighting games.

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And the anime fighter
that originally put

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them on the map back in
1998 was Guilty Gear.

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It was fast, it was
stylish, it was beautiful.

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Now fast forward to the 2010s.

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Guilty Gear hadn’t seen a
proper sequel since 2002

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and Arc System Works was
looking to bring their

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pillar franchise back
into the spotlight.

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But now that they had several other high
profile anime fighters on the market,

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like BlazBlue and
Persona 4 Arena,

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Guilty Gear’s stylistic niche
was feeling a little crowded.

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So, rather than trying to
compete with their own products,

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Arc System Works looked for a way to set
the next Guilty Gear apart from the pack.

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And the choice they
ultimately made

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was that the next Guilty Gear title would
abandon its traditional 2D sprite animation

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in favor of fully
3D character models.

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Now, why would they do
that, you might ask?

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These sprites are beautiful!

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Well, there are plenty of enticing
incentives to switching a fighter to 3D.

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On top of giving your
game a more modern look,

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with 3D animation you can more
easily support higher resolutions,

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you can make your animations smoother
without breaking the art budget,

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and you can actually move the camera
around the characters in dynamic ways

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when you want to,
which has all kinds of exciting potential.

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It is for these
reasons (and more)

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that many other fighting game franchises
have made that jump to 3D over the years,

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and to varying
degrees of success.

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But most of those franchises had taken that
leap with the understanding that doing so

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would necessitate at least some
degree of aesthetic change.

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Street Fighter, for example, went from
looking like this…

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...to looking like this.

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Marvel vs Capcom went
from this…

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...to this.

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And Mortal Kombat went from this…

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...to this…

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...and eventually to this.

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And each of these 3D overhauls
more or less captures

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the spirit of their
sprite-animated originals,

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but those development teams had
clearly embraced the fact that

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moving to 3D would inevitably
require some aesthetic changes.

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But Arc System Works went into the new
Guilty Gear with a different mentality.

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What if they DIDN’T accept
that aesthetic change?

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What if, instead, they set out to make
their leap to 3D as INVISIBLE as possible,

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while still reaping many of
the benefits 3D has to offer?

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And so, Arc System Works set out to tackle
the challenge of building a 2.5D fighter

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with 3D character models
while still retaining

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the look of the series’s
sprite-based origins.

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Which meant: they were gonna have to
figure out how to make 3D anime look right.

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Fortunately, ArcSys had some big
advantages going into this project.

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First: they had a
LOT of 2D experience.

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Their teams had been producing
2D anime fighters for years.

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They were intimately familiar with the visual
style that they now needed to recreate.

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And second: their team had
actually been using 3D tools

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as part of their pixel animation
pipeline for a long time!

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Every pixel art character in
BlazBlue began life as a 3D model.

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In order to streamline their
pixel animation workflow,

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each character was sculpted and posed
in 3D first to lay a foundation,

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and then the pixel artists would
use that posed model as reference,

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which not only sped up the entire
animation process but also ensured

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more stylistic consistency across
all the artists on the project.

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So ArcSys had both the experience and
the tools they needed to make this work.

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All that remained was
figuring out the HOW.

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The first step was getting the fundamental
look of an anime character right,

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which they achieved through a
combination of character model design,

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some really clever texture
mapping techniques,

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and some impressive custom
cel shaders designed to

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replicate the look of traditional
anime character shading.

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Most importantly, the application of this
shading effect was highly customizable.

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The team’s character artists could
endlessly tweak and finesse how light

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and shadows fell across each
character’s unique features.

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What’s more, each character got their
own independent custom lighting.

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See, in most forms of 3D animation, you
often want to make it look like your

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light sources are affecting every character
or object in the environment similarly.

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It helps to sell the
fact that everything in

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the scene is inhabiting
that same 3D space.

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But in Guilty Gear Xrd, every character
has their own individual light sources

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which affect their body and
NOTHING else in the scene.

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Later versions of the game would add the
option for more dynamic scene-based lighting,

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but this original approach to
the problem was really clever,

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because it mimics the way those classic 2D
sprites would have originally been colored,

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with each character having their
own shading hand-drawn in and no

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ability to change that shading based
on the character’s environment.

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So now they had the
characters looking right,

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but there was still the remaining problem
of getting them to look right in motion.

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And that’s (arguably) an
even bigger challenge,

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because anime has a very
distinct animation style.

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See, anime’s unique look is a by-product
of its production limitations.

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Animating any television
series is a challenge,

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because you've got to produce
an entire season of TV on

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a FRACTION of the budget
that most animated films get.

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That is a daunting problem,
and the approach that TV animation studios

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around the world have developed to solve
that problem is: Limited Animation.

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Limited Animation is a technique (or
really, a huge collection of techniques)

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that TV animation studios
have been honing for decades.

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The goal of Limited Animation
is maximum efficiency;

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to find as many cost-saving and
corner-cutting measures as possible

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while sacrificing as little visual
fidelity as you realistically can,

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all in order to get the most
bang from your limited buck.

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This is why you so frequently
see anime characters

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hold on a single drawing
for as long as possible.

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It’s all about animating
performance and actions using

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as few drawings per second
as you possibly can,

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while still making sure
that you’re doing enough

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drawings to adequately
sell those actions.

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How few drawings can
you get away with?

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And if you HAVE to create additional
drawings to make something look right,

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can you get away with only re-drawing
specific parts of the character?

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Maybe just their mouth? Their eyes?
Their hair or clothing?

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Sure, you can make this action
look great with 10 drawings,

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but can you make it look
great using just 8 of them?

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How about 6?

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Awesome, we can only afford 3
so, good luck!

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You see Limited Animation all
over western TV as well,

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and it’s really fascinating seeing
how different sectors of this industry

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have found different approaches
and solutions to that same problem.

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But if you’re wanting to truly
imitate the look of anime specially,

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capturing the feel of this Limited
Animation style is the key.

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And Guilty Gear’s animators achieved that
by throwing out standard 3D technique

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and approaching their animation pretty
much exactly the way 2D animators do.

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Rather than crafting
a series of key poses

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for the computer to smoothly
interpolate between,

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the animators treated each
pose as a still drawing,

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a series of
hand-crafted 2D images.

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See, one of the inherent
benefits to computer animation

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is the way the computer can fill
in the gaps between your key poses.

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Like, if I put this ball on screen and I say
"I want keyframes here here here and here",

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the computer can be like “Oh
here, lemme help you out”

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and make the ball smoothly
travel from keyframe to keyframe,

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which can be really
really helpful!

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But what ArcSys’s team basically
did was say:

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“NO. Stop it."

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"Just have the ball be here...
then here... and then here... then here."

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And we have animator-y
terms for this, like

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“Stepped keys” and “held keys” and
whatnot, but the point is

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by not allowing the computer to smoothly
interpolate between their keyframes

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Arc System Works’s animators made
it so that each pose they made

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behaved just like
a 2D drawing would,

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and they could then choose exactly
how long they wanted each “drawing”

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to linger on screen before
the next one popped in.

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Again, exactly the same as a traditional
hand-drawn animation workflow!

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And basically the same as their
old sprite animation workflow too,

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if you think about it.

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You can even see examples of them
holding parts of the body still,

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just like a 2D animator
would when they didn’t want

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to have to redraw the whole
thing for the next frame,

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while still animating secondary parts
of the character like hair or clothing.

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It is completely unlike how we would
animate something in 3D normally,

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but it absolutely evokes the look
of anime’s Limited Animation.

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But that, my friends,
is just the tip of the iceberg.

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Because,
to complete the look of 2D anime,

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the animators also had to add a
generous helping of imperfection.

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See, perfection is something
that computers are GREAT at.

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A computer can make every
movement perfectly smooth,

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every body proportion
perfectly consistent,

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every light source and
shadow perfectly correct.

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But hand drawn animation - by its
very nature - contains imperfections;

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subtle variations in
expression and slight changes

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in body proportions from
one frame to the next.

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So, to maintain the illusion
of something hand-drawn,

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the animators had to force 2D’s imperfection
BACK into the computer’s perfect system,

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tweaking each key frame ever so
slightly to implement those flaws

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that make traditional
animation look hand-made.

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They also had to stylize
and exaggerate their animations

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the same
way 2D animators would,

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warping character proportions and
exaggerating perspective intentionally

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for emphasis or dynamic appeal.

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This was made possible by the fact that each
of these character’s animation skeletons

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contains far more animatable joints
than your average 3D game character,

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sometimes over 500 of them.

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And that's something you
can do when you've only got

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to render two characters
on screen at once!

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This not only allowed the
animators to deform and shape these

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character models to implement that
imperfection I mentioned before,

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but also gave them freedom to
warp the character proportions

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in some extreme and bizarre
ways when necessary.

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And if all those joints weren’t enough
to do what the animators needed -

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like if the character needed to morph
into some entirely different form -

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well, then they could just swap in
another character model on the fly.

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Then there’s the
effects animation.

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Not only did they accentuate
all of these character animations

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with some gorgeous hit
effects and speed lines

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(all of which are
animated 2D textures),

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but - when necessary for certain effects like
the clouds of dust at a character’s feet -

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they modeled those clouds
in 3D frame by frame.

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And that is bonkers.

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Basically, in all things,
the Arc System Works team had one edict:

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“Kill Every Thing 3D”.

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If something felt 3D,
you found a way to fix it.

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And, as I have hopefully
made clear at this point,

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the solution was -
more often than not -

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quality tools and an extraordinary
amount of brute force.

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To sculpt the character model
and the shading and the posing

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and the effects and even
the LIGHTING if necessary

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- FRAME BY FRAME - until the entire game
looked like a series of hand drawn images.

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Just like with
traditional animation,

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everything onscreen had to be
an intentional and artistic choice,

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not a computer’s
automated solution.

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And the results?

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Well, a lot of folks (myself included)
didn’t even immediately recognize

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that this was a 3D game
when we first saw it.

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Usually, it wasn’t until
we saw the camera move

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for the first time that
we stopped and said:

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“Wait a minute….

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...no way.
Has this been 3D the ENTIRE TIME?!”

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Guilty Gear Xrd may not always
succeed in fooling your brain

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into thinking it’s looking at a 2D fighter,
but STILL, this is an amazing achievement.

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And that was just
their FIRST try!

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For their next attempt, Arc System Works
would face an even greater challenge.

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Because creating a convincing
faux 2D anime aesthetic

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for your own original
property is one thing,

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but emulating the look of an
established and beloved anime series?

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That adds a new
layer of challenge.

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This time, Arc System Works couldn’t
just recreate AN anime look,

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they had to successfully nail
Dragon Ball’s unique aesthetic,

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AND stay true to the
animation of characters that

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their target audience
had likely grown up with,

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AND - on top of all that -

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they actually needed to make it look
BETTER than those old anime series.

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They had to replicate what a
nostalgic DBZ fan sees in their head

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when they think back on their
favorite moments from the show.

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And as one who did not
grow up with Dragon Ball,

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I confess that I cannot speak
authoritatively on this one,

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but - if the level of delight
I’ve been hearing from

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Dragon Ball fans over the
last year is any indication

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- I’m gonna go ahead and guess
that they did pretty good.

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And I really love seeing the subtle differences in
approach and style between these two games.

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Like for example, Dragon Ball FighterZ
has a different approach to smears,

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relying more on those classic
old school speed lines

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instead of Guilty Gear’s smooth,
stretched-out solid shapes.

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I love all of the Dragon Ball-influenced
posing on these characters

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and most of all,
I love that the animation in this game

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has slightly lower fidelity
than the previous game

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in order to feel more true
to the source material.

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It's in the way that the
Dragon Ball fighters hold their

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poses for seconds at a time
with only their mouths moving.

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The way they’ll hold on a single frame
longer than the Guilty Gear Xrd fighters will.

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Or… ok, look at Sol
Badguy’s idle animation.

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His name is Sol Badguy, by the way.
Guilty Gear is bonkers.

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But yeah, look at his breathing.

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You see that expansion
in the chest?

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The way it stretches out that
buckle strap on his clothes?

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That is a level of subtle
motion fidelity that you are

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not going to see very often
in a show like Dragon Ball,

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and you won’t see it in
Dragon Ball FighterZ either,

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because it just
wouldn’t look right.

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And the really exciting thing is that
this whole approach Arc System Works has

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developed is still relatively
new and unexplored.

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I mean, they’ve only really
done this trick twice so far.

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But their third
attempt is on the way.

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The upcoming GranBlue
Fantasy Versus looks to bring

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yet another subtle variation
on the anime aesthetic.

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And Arc System Works is
also the publisher for that

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new Kill la Kill fighting
game that just dropped.

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00:15:48,184 --> 00:15:52,709
Granted, actual development duties for that
one seem to have been handled by A+ Games,

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the same folks who made that (also very
nice looking) Little Witch Academia game,

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but I can’t imagine there
wasn’t at least SOME

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knowledge-sharing happening
between these two studios.

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If there’s one thing that the
production of these games shows

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(and it’s something that
Motomura has said himself),

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it’s that achieving this look
wasn’t about developing some new,

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never-before-seen technology.

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It was simply a matter of
applying the same tech we use

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for everything else toward
a different visual target,

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and being willing to bend
our production approach

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as necessary to achieve
our aesthetic goals.

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I cannot wait to see what Arc System
Works has in store for us next,

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and I really hope to see more studios take a
crack at this sort of thing in the future.

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Again, definitely check out
Junya C Motomura’s talk if you’re

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interested in learning more
about how they achieved this.

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He gets into more of the
technical details like

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the nitty-gritty of their
cel shading and texture work.

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It’s all just so
very darned cool.

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Also, a big thanks to
Geoff Thew of Mother’s Basement

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for double-checking
my script on this one.

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If you’re curious to learn more
about the history of anime games,

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he actually made a video
cataloging that very thing.

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I will link to it below.

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I hope you've enjoyed this!

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00:17:00,278 --> 00:17:04,116
Be sure to subscribe and bell-ring and all
that other stuff if you haven’t already,

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00:17:04,141 --> 00:17:08,031
and consider supporting the show
like all of these absolute champions.

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00:17:08,056 --> 00:17:11,735
Thank you for watching and I’ll see
you next time for more New Frame Plus.

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[music]