FEATURE: What is Anime Post-Production?
How did your favorite anime get created? It’s a pretty big question that has an equally big answer. Japanese animation has a highly unique and specific workflow from start to finish and there’s very few comprehensive explanations of that workflow available in English. That’s where this article series comes in!
Welcome to How Is Anime Made? a series of articles that will guide you through the entire lifespan of an anime, from the initial seed of an idea to watching it here on Crunchyroll. This series is organized into six articles that break up the creation of anime into broad concepts. We’re publishing a new part every day this week, so be sure to check back on our article hub to see when new articles go live!
After tackling all stages of production from conception to audio recording, today we’re exploring the post-production process for anime. In this article we will be taking you through 3DCG animation, image compositing, and editing. These are the final stages before an episode of anime is ready to air. We’re in the home stretch, so let’s get going and see this episode of anime through to completion! Our first stop will be…
3DCG in Anime
Anime from Studio Orange like TRIGUN STAMPEDE are particularly beautiful examples of 3DCG in anime
Since the 1990s, more and more anime have been incorporating computer generated graphics (also called 3DCG) into their production process. These days you’ll be hard pressed to find an anime series that hasn’t used 3DCG in some way, and more and more anime like TRIGUN STAMPEDE and Knights of Sidonia are being created exclusively with 3DCG.
As with the hand-drawn animation, 3DCG in anime begins with the e-conte (storyboards) which lay out the roughest possible sense of how each shot should be laid out. Sometimes the layout (rough hand-drawn animation) will precede 3DCG giving additional rough indications of how things are… well, laid out along with camera instructions. The artists will then begin rendering the scene. The 3DCG process is usually overseen by a 3DCG Director (3DCG Kantoku) and undergoes many of the same approval processes seen in the traditional animation stage.
Let’s take a look at some 3DCG Directors for series you might have seen:
- Kazuki Nishiwaki — Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba
- Motoi Okunou — Chainsaw Man, Attack on Titan Final Season
- Eiji Inomoto — TRIGUN STAMPEDE, Ghost in the Shell: Arise
Some of the most bombastic and noticeable usage of CG in anime can be seen in the wild camerawork allowed with 3D backgrounds (seen in many ufotable works like Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba and Fate/Zero), but it is also used for more subtle workflow optimization like filling out a zoomed out crowd, animating automobiles or other rigid, mechanical devices, and so on.
Image Compositing in Anime
Compositing makes battles like this one in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba really pop!
The animation has gone through numerous steps and revisions, from the genga to the douga clean-up and in-betweens to the shiage coloring stage to 3DCG. Now, the digital compositing staff gets to work bringing visual cohesion to each shot. Compositing in anime consists of color correction, adding lighting effects, enhancing hand animated or 3DCG special effects, adding camera movements, and other techniques all with the aim of bringing visual harmony to the multitude of different layers of animation.
A compositor’s goal is to make each animated element and the background all look like they belong together and are part of the same world. If the background art has a light source, a compositor will try to make sure the characters, objects, and anything else not painted into the background is highlighted with just the right color, hue, angle, intensity, and warmth of light.
Additionally, compositing in anime is key to ensuring that any 3DCG animation meshes well with traditional hand-drawn animation — the highly fluid nature of 3DCG makes it challenging to match it with hand-drawn animation that often is animated only every other frame. Anime produced by the studio ufotable are often praised for their impressive compositing which make the bombastic fights of series like Fate/Zero, Fate/stay night, The Garden of Sinners, and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba so immersive with their particle effects, lighting, and camerawork.
Once compositing is done, we have all of the finished visuals for the series! It’s time to put everything together in our next step…
Editing an Episode of Anime
An episode of anime getting edited in non-linear video editing software in SHIROBAKO (image via Sentai Filmworks)
Like any other audiovisual medium, someone has to assemble everything and bring an episode of anime together as a cohesive whole. The anime editor is the one who takes all of the different video and audio tracks and stacks them on top of one another in a non-linear video editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro.
Editors must have a certain degree of knowledge for each and every step in the production process as their work touches absolutely everything that will be in an anime episode. This is where everything, all of the hard work from each and every individual beforehand comes together into the final version. The video file is exported and then sent on for approval and eventual distribution at the television network, streaming service, and wherever else it will be airing.
—
At long last, we have reached the end of the animation production process. We’ve explored everything from initial concepts and funding to the very last finishing touches put on an anime episode, but there is still one final piece to the puzzle. How does anime make it out of Japan and onto your screen at home? That’s exactly what we’re exploring tomorrow. Check back with us to learn all about the anime localization process and all the work that goes into getting anime ready for you to watch!
Glossary of terms we’ve learned about the post-production process for anime:
- 3DCG: Any animation made by computer modeling and imaging software instead of hand-drawn frames.
- Compositing: Digitally altering frames of animation and background art with the purpose of visual cohesion.
- Editing: Assembling each audio and visual element into a complete episode ready for air.
Sources:
Currently available articles in this series:
Upcoming articles in this series:
—
Cayla Coats is the Editorial Partnerships Manager at Crunchyroll. She tweets @ceicocat and you can watch her YouTube channel here.
