Saying “Anime” is the same as saying “Champagne”. Sparkling wine is the English term, we say champagne when we are specificaly refering to sparkling wine from a certain region in France. Anime is when we refer to Japanese stylised animation or stationary illustrations. Manga is when we refer to Japanese comic based illustration, usualy in black & white. The manga bit was a shock to me as I was first intoduced to the term when watching Japanese anime. Maybe Manga developed into an animation company just like marvel. But Manga comic illustration isn’t a company as I have manga books and they have nothing to do with the people behind Manag animations.
Anime can totaly be CG as long as it is rendered in the Japanese illustrative style. This is where people have got the look of Capcoms current fighters all wrong. 3d CG is definetly the way to go, the problem is that capcom havent put enough effort into the Graphics. Take any other game on the market, a fighter deals with one area and 2 to 6 fighters on screen at a time, compare that to games like Killzone or COD, you have an area which is vas and constantly changing with untold amount of enemies all different and all demanding resources. Capcoms fighters have extremely poor graphics for a game that demands alot less computing power as opposed to other games that look amazing.
There are the crowd that want to return to hand drawn sprites, but that isn’t necessary, when you look at some manga and any hi end animation there are scenes that you can’t tell if they are hand drawn or if they are CG. The fact is today both are done to a high standard and both are used in combination with each other. I appreciate why people think certain ways, and although there opinions are wrong and unfounded, I understand the resoning behind them. People asociate CG with life like to blocky shapes made from polygons etc. People ascoiate anime with smooth lines and a very stylised look. There are variations in stylisation and there is also the evolution over the years, but there is an unmistakeable look that we all know. The difference with CG is that CG isn’t a style CG is a method, anime can be created from pencils, to paint, to 2d CG when line at is created or scanned into a computer and coloured in. The thing with CG has in common with anime is the 2 step process, you make shapes and outlines, and then you fill them in. The beauty with 3d CG is that you can take the same shapes and render them in several different ways. I work in the design industry so I know more than most, but all of us are aware of the costume settings in Street Fighter. You can have the character rendered in various ways, everything stays the same, the costume colours etc, but the final rendering looks like it has been done in pastels to paint. A better example is Marvel Vs Capcom, there we have 3D CG characters but this time they are rendered to look like they have stepped out of Marvels Comics.
So now we have Capcom trying to render in 3D an anime style and a comic style. Years ago thy would have look drastically different. And just for the record there has never been a Street Fighter that has had hand drawn anime sprites. The cover artwork and promotional artwork and various media may have been in an anime style, but no 2d street fighter has been of high enough resolution to encorporate the styles and variations which seperate comic style from anime style, and even then the only time the characters were seen in the game to even qualify of having a style was when you die and the countdown appears. Actual gameplay graphics were very minimal, the amount of pixels alocated to an eye was just enough to depict an eye, it didn’t matter what style they was aiming for all they could do was a 2d character that looked like who i was suppos to be, there wasn’t enough resolution to add all the subtle things that determine a style. One thing that we all asociate with anime is the way the eyes are drawn, the over the top pokemon loose and boulbus eyes to the highly detailed and much more tightly drawn manga animation with all it’s reflections etc. It’s just a small part of the face but slight variations in angle and size and yes soemtimes elements that wouldn’t appear in any other style of illustration, but it’s down to the black and white outlines that make the anime style. It can be child like and loosely drawn or mature and tightly drawn, but we all recognise the subtle shapes that are unique to anime. That is why older 2d games, could not depict a true anime style as there were not enough pixels per inch to execute the subtle changes in lines that make a shape truly anime, only when the pictures were displayed larger or printed, when more pixels were available, that the artists could express the style they wanted for the characters.
The other main thing is evolution and development. Western and eastern styles have been uniquely different but over the years they have converged and also improved. You only have to look at comics these days and some look like they have been painted to masterpiece levels. Not only the comic covers but even the inner pages. Look at spiderman years ago and look at him now, it’s not just the style the has developed but it’s the level of execution in both outlines and the colouring, and I’m not just talking about the comics that are really well drawn and coloured in beautifully , I’m refering to the ones that are a next level, they are ultra realistic, they have less stylisation and seem to be aiming for a very realistic look, sometimes with veins bulging on bisceps that a medical artist would be proud of. The same can be said for anime. Akira was ground breaking back in the day, now that level is the norm but not only that the execution looks more like a portrait painter has rendered the chracters and scenes. Fortunately there is stil vast variations, in the west thee has been a massive resurgance in loose Hanna Barbra style animation, look at batman and superman with there huge chins, the same with anime, dragon ballz and pokemon with there massive eyes and bold brightly coloured cut scenes. But the higher end seems to have merged and becoming more life like, spiderman will always have his elongated hour glass peanut shaped feet, and ryu and ken will always have feet nearly the size of there body. Well not always no one knows what’s round the corner.
The point is just becuase something is hand drawn doesn’t make it anime, and just becuase something is created with CG doesn’t mean it can’t be anime. After all, all games are CG weather they are 2d or 3d, and you can draw on a computer just as well with pen and paper. When you create shapes in 3d you can render in different ways just like the effects in Street Fighter IV with the costumes. You can render real life to even pencil and painting illustration colours and the way they are applied, lighting also has a great roll to play there, and this is where Street fighter IV has utalised, although they have tried to keep to the style illustrated the improved lighting and shadows over traditional hand drawn methods has created a confusion. People assume that to have nice stylised characters with crisp clean lines means that you can’t have the superior lighting and shadows that naturaly come with 3d cg. The lighting and shadows can and is achieved without 3d cg. But using 3d CG doesn’t mean that you have to have realistic lighting and shadows, and it doesn’t mean you can’t have simpler shades used to make it more stylised. The important thing is the shapes and outlines. Blazeblue looks nice and smooth, and street fighter IV is quite blocky in comparison. If you look at the trailer animation it’s all nicely done, and when you clock Street Fighter IV and you see the individual characters briefly one by one, look at there movements, they hvae definently been motion captured, the fact they have slowd them down really shows how well they move, it looks so good. But when in game graphics move like that and circles are perfect circles, it won’t matter that they are 3d CG, you won’t even know. The act is anime illustrators are contsantly trying to improve the style to depict greater depth and lighting, the same goes for western animators. Even the simpsons uses more shading creating better depth, sometimes they even do it in 3d cg. The thing that seems to be happening is to give that realism they are not only improving the rendering, they are adding more detail in the shapes and outlines. Comics, cartoons, animation etc all develop there styles from simplicty it’s he lack of detail where the artist uses stylisation to fill in the gaps. For example a brick wall doesn’t have every brick drawn, a feww lines crossing here and there to hint at some bricks is enough. Years ago western childrens books, used to draw reflections with a square or rectangle split into four, it was o represnt an indoor reflection of the light coming from a window. These little details are what stylisation is all about, it’s away of taking something which can be quite detailed and complex and simplifying it in away that we still recognisable, the thing with anime was the solutions were much more elegant than western solutions, it was the huge eyes and the way the reflections were represented that got me hooked.
The problem with Capcoms 3d fighters is that the attempt at 3d cg is unbalanced. If they lessene dthe demand on lighting they could have flatter shading to compliment the anime style, which could free up some power to give much smoother edges. Also the actual artist has some blame, well not blame, it’s just not everyones cup of tea, it’s nothing to do with the method. Remeber the guile and blanka artwork on the snes, it was hideous. Look at how Marvel Vs Capcom is clearly more stylised than SFIV. If anything MvC3 is as much an attempt at western comic style as it is Japanese manga style. SFIV is an unbalanced mixmatch of realism and anime stylisation.
The crowd who argue that capcom should revert back to hand drawn sprites over 3d cg are wrong. But they are only wrong in the way they present there argument. 3d CG is purely a method. If you strip anything back design wise it has to work in it’s purest form, and it’s in it’s purest form where you can determine the difference between comic and manga, anime from animaion. When executed right, 3d cg should make no difference to weather something is hand drawn frame by frame, or is animated from a pre fabbed shape. When both methods are executed to the highest level, you won’t even know the difference. It’s not just the style it’s the variations within the style, just like Marvel has many artsts who draw spiderman, and they all have there own take, but all keeping within a certain style. The same goes with street fighter. I think people need to familarise themselves with the artists behind the Capcom art. The beauty of 3d cg is that once the character is modeled, it would be possible to load several models of a character into a game, and you can choose the one that you like the most. The changes are mainly subtle and coloiur application and shading, so they wont affect hit boxes, especialy not as much as some of the costume packs have done in the past. It’s just how well the 3d cg rendering is executed.
Anime is a style, not a method. And peoples issues are not with the method, they are with the style, and the execution of the style and method togther. What’s weird is when films like Toy story have stylised characters , mainly becuase they are based on stylised toys, but the enviroment is ultra realistic. I think the reason behind this is becuase they wanted to make it more epic and becuase they could, and sometimes I think people go for realism just becuase they can, like in southpark when they use footage of fire instead of illustrated fire. I know that is a bad example as southpark isn’t trying to have a perfect design consitency but there are many instances in comics and animations when they use a mor realistic look than necessary. I think this is what has made people think that CG especialy 3d means that you can’t have the simplicity and look that comes with 2d drawn graphics, when an artist designs the actual lighing and shadows, rather than a computer calculating the result. new and realistic effects are a novelty. But cell shading has been used to great affect in the past lots of times in games and movies. But the thing is now that hand drawn illustrations are becomign more realistic so when rendering in 3d, the simpler settings and cell shading, and pencil effects are not needed as uch as the line between real and stylised is becoming blurred.
