Like any artistic tool, it can be used to great effect but it can also be done shitty too.
People think of CGI as 3D models but it is so much more than that. It also includes lighting and physics engines. It enables things that either cannot be done manually or are too laborious to do for every single frame of an anime.
Used well, it can really enhance scenes with things like animations of background elements like grass or lighting effects. Used poorly, it can really pull you out of the scene.
What do I mean by poorly? Well, when you mix and match manual animations with CGI without considering the nature of both, would be a good start, and something that many anime are guilty of.
Manual animations are very approximate and choppy, with clear distinctions between key frames that are obviously meant to be the focal point, and tween frames that are transitional. Manual animations hang on to their key frames longer than the tween frames, even if there are slight alterations (eg: mouth movements) between one frame and the next.
CGI animation is very precise and smooth, and animates much more mechanically. It has no concept of a key frame, and moves from A to B in a perfectly consistent speed, in a mechanical way. Even if the animators cap the framerate to 25fps, the difference in movement is still obvious if that’s all they’ve done. Same goes for lighting too, switching from 2D manual shading to 3D automated shading can be really obvious.
There are ways to eliminate this problem, but it takes great care and planning with regards to art styles in order to do it correctly.
Like any artistic tool, it can be used to great effect but it can also be done shitty too.
People think of CGI as 3D models but it is so much more than that. It also includes lighting and physics engines. It enables things that either cannot be done manually or are too laborious to do for every single frame of an anime.
Used well, it can really enhance scenes with things like animations of background elements like grass or lighting effects. Used poorly, it can really pull you out of the scene.
What do I mean by poorly? Well, when you mix and match manual animations with CGI without considering the nature of both, would be a good start, and something that many anime are guilty of.
Manual animations are very approximate and choppy, with clear distinctions between key frames that are obviously meant to be the focal point, and tween frames that are transitional. Manual animations hang on to their key frames longer than the tween frames, even if there are slight alterations (eg: mouth movements) between one frame and the next.
CGI animation is very precise and smooth, and animates much more mechanically. It has no concept of a key frame, and moves from A to B in a perfectly consistent speed, in a mechanical way. Even if the animators cap the framerate to 25fps, the difference in movement is still obvious if that’s all they’ve done. Same goes for lighting too, switching from 2D manual shading to 3D automated shading can be really obvious.
There are ways to eliminate this problem, but it takes great care and planning with regards to art styles in order to do it correctly.