Bruce Timm on Color

[mbaker]

I just read Bruce Timm's view on computer coloring vs. traditional cel painting. He made some good points about it. In the previous shows, you had more dark, and rich colors. With computer coloring, everything looks so bright. On the plus side, they can now do more special effects that would've been hard to pull of in traditional animation. I only have one question. If this computer coloring software they use similar to Photoshop? Do they scan in the hand drawn animation, and color it in? I think they do because they mention this in the audio commentary for "Return Of The Joker". I use Photoshop to scan in alot of my work, and color it in.

[Heehaw]

Yeah, using the computer makes everything easier, but it doesn't make it better, necessarily. Those effects he was talking about like smoke, fire, water, etc., etc., look terrible. They have a cheesy, fake look to them. So far I've seen them used for rain, fire, fire glow, lightning, representation of wind, and flashlights. They also use it to artificial scale and rotate objects(esp. in space scenes). Bah!!

[Caped Crusader]

Originally posted by Heehaw
Yeah, using the computer makes everything easier, but it doesn't make it better, necessarily. Those effects he was talking about like smoke, fire, water, etc., etc., look terrible. They have a cheesy, fake look to them. So far I've seen them used for rain, fire, fire glow, lightning, representation of wind, and flashlights. They also use it to artificial scale and rotate objects(esp. in space scenes). Bah!!

I agree, some of those computer effects look really terrible at times. I like the traditional cel paintings a lot better.

[Jack]

Me too, there's something really beautiful about hand painted cels. I'm not so sure if hand painting is more difficult, it's just less forgiving if you make staging and color choice mistakes. I think that airbrush and transparent paint effects look really spectacular compared to their computer counterparts.

Something I don't like about the computer-made cels is that they somehow distance the animated things from the backgrounds. I'm not sure how to describe it.

One would think the demand for animation art would make cel-animation more popular.


Jack :D
...for really beautiful cel painting, watch Fantasia. It has some of the most elaborite cel-painting tricks ever devised.