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Hello! My name is Dan,

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

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

Even the anime industry frequently
struggles to produce CG results

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

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

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

which are willing to embrace
their distinct 3D look.

The same has largely been
true for anime video games.

Many game developers
have taken a crack at

this same 3D anime
challenge over the years,

but nearly all of the successful
examples are the games

which aim to heavily
EVOKE the anime style

without actually trying to
fool anybody into thinking

that they’re looking at
a series of drawings.

But there is one game studio
out there who has been

pushing this envelope
further than any other,

and that studio is
Arc System Works.

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

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

given by technical animator
Junya C Motomura back in 2015.

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

I will link to it below.

So Arc System
Works, as a company,

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

They’ve worked on
a lot of things,

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

This studio is VERY VERY GOOD at making beautiful,

high-energy,
competitive anime fighting games.

And the anime fighter
that originally put

them on the map back in
1998 was Guilty Gear.

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

Now fast forward to the 2010s.

Guilty Gear hadn’t seen a
proper sequel since 2002

and Arc System Works was
looking to bring their

pillar franchise back
into the spotlight.

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

like BlazBlue and
Persona 4 Arena,

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

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

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

And the choice they
ultimately made

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

in favor of fully
3D character models.

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

These sprites are beautiful!

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

On top of giving your
game a more modern look,

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

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

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

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

It is for these
reasons (and more)

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

and to varying
degrees of success.

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

would necessitate at least some
degree of aesthetic change.

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

...to looking like this.

Marvel vs Capcom went
from this…

...to this.

And Mortal Kombat went from this…

...to this…

...and eventually to this.

And each of these 3D overhauls
more or less captures

the spirit of their
sprite-animated originals,

but those development teams had
clearly embraced the fact that

moving to 3D would inevitably
require some aesthetic changes.

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

What if they DIDN’T accept
that aesthetic change?

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

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

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

with 3D character models
while still retaining

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

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

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

First: they had a
LOT of 2D experience.

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

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

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

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

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

In order to streamline their
pixel animation workflow,

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

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

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

more stylistic consistency across
all the artists on the project.

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

All that remained was
figuring out the HOW.

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

which they achieved through a
combination of character model design,

some really clever texture
mapping techniques,

and some impressive custom
cel shaders designed to

replicate the look of traditional
anime character shading.

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

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

and shadows fell across each
character’s unique features.

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

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

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

It helps to sell the
fact that everything in

the scene is inhabiting
that same 3D space.

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

which affect their body and
NOTHING else in the scene.

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

but this original approach to
the problem was really clever,

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

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

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

So now they had the
characters looking right,

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

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

because anime has a very
distinct animation style.

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

Animating any television
series is a challenge,

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

a FRACTION of the budget
that most animated films get.

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

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

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

that TV animation studios
have been honing for decades.

The goal of Limited Animation
is maximum efficiency;

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

while sacrificing as little visual
fidelity as you realistically can,

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

This is why you so frequently
see anime characters

hold on a single drawing
for as long as possible.

It’s all about animating
performance and actions using

as few drawings per second
as you possibly can,

while still making sure
that you’re doing enough

drawings to adequately
sell those actions.

How few drawings can
you get away with?

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

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

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

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

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

How about 6?

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

You see Limited Animation all
over western TV as well,

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

have found different approaches
and solutions to that same problem.

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

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

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

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

Rather than crafting
a series of key poses

for the computer to smoothly
interpolate between,

the animators treated each
pose as a still drawing,

a series of
hand-crafted 2D images.

See, one of the inherent
benefits to computer animation

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

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

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

and make the ball smoothly
travel from keyframe to keyframe,

which can be really
really helpful!

But what ArcSys’s team basically
did was say:

“NO. Stop it."

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

And we have animator-y
terms for this, like

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

by not allowing the computer to smoothly
interpolate between their keyframes

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

behaved just like
a 2D drawing would,

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

to linger on screen before
the next one popped in.

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

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

if you think about it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because,
to complete the look of 2D anime,

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

See, perfection is something
that computers are GREAT at.

A computer can make every
movement perfectly smooth,

every body proportion
perfectly consistent,

every light source and
shadow perfectly correct.

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

subtle variations in
expression and slight changes

in body proportions from
one frame to the next.

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

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

tweaking each key frame ever so
slightly to implement those flaws

that make traditional
animation look hand-made.

They also had to stylize
and exaggerate their animations

the same
way 2D animators would,

warping character proportions and
exaggerating perspective intentionally

for emphasis or dynamic appeal.

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

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

sometimes over 500 of them.

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

to render two characters
on screen at once!

This not only allowed the
animators to deform and shape these

character models to implement that
imperfection I mentioned before,

but also gave them freedom to
warp the character proportions

in some extreme and bizarre
ways when necessary.

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

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

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

Then there’s the
effects animation.

Not only did they accentuate
all of these character animations

with some gorgeous hit
effects and speed lines

(all of which are
animated 2D textures),

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

they modeled those clouds
in 3D frame by frame.

And that is bonkers.

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

“Kill Every Thing 3D”.

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

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

the solution was -
more often than not -

quality tools and an extraordinary
amount of brute force.

To sculpt the character model
and the shading and the posing

and the effects and even
the LIGHTING if necessary

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

Just like with
traditional animation,

everything onscreen had to be
an intentional and artistic choice,

not a computer’s
automated solution.

And the results?

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

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

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

for the first time that
we stopped and said:

“Wait a minute….

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

Guilty Gear Xrd may not always
succeed in fooling your brain

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

And that was just
their FIRST try!

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

Because creating a convincing
faux 2D anime aesthetic

for your own original
property is one thing,

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

That adds a new
layer of challenge.

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

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

AND stay true to the
animation of characters that

their target audience
had likely grown up with,

AND - on top of all that -

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

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

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

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

I confess that I cannot speak
authoritatively on this one,

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

Dragon Ball fans over the
last year is any indication

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

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

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

relying more on those classic
old school speed lines

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

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

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

has slightly lower fidelity
than the previous game

in order to feel more true
to the source material.

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

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

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

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

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

But yeah, look at his breathing.

You see that expansion
in the chest?

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

That is a level of subtle
motion fidelity that you are

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

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

because it just
wouldn’t look right.

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

developed is still relatively
new and unexplored.

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

But their third
attempt is on the way.

The upcoming GranBlue
Fantasy Versus looks to bring

yet another subtle variation
on the anime aesthetic.

And Arc System Works is
also the publisher for that

new Kill la Kill fighting
game that just dropped.

Granted, actual development duties for that
one seem to have been handled by A+ Games,

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

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

knowledge-sharing happening
between these two studios.

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

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

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

never-before-seen technology.

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

for everything else toward
a different visual target,

and being willing to bend
our production approach

as necessary to achieve
our aesthetic goals.

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

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

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

interested in learning more
about how they achieved this.

He gets into more of the
technical details like

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

It’s all just so
very darned cool.

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

for double-checking
my script on this one.

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

he actually made a video
cataloging that very thing.

I will link to it below.

I hope you've enjoyed this!

Be sure to subscribe and bell-ring and all
that other stuff if you haven’t already,

and consider supporting the show
like all of these absolute champions.

Thank you for watching and I’ll see
you next time for more New Frame Plus.

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