The cartoonist's work is solitary; even when dealing with editors and assistants, there is no such excitement as to creating unexpected drastic changes for projects. But by the same token, manga can't be drawn by a lot of people, as done in film.
Although all studios are now moving towards digitalization, a foundation in which we draw pictures by hand hasn't changed, so I foresee that we will continue to keep it in the future. After all, we used the digital method based on a conception of expanding and advancing the expression of the traditional animation cel in Steamboy. The first goal of this project was to overcome limitations of camera angles caused by platforms. On that aspect, I won't go back to the traditional method. I hoped to combine the merits of the traditional method of cel animation with the merits of the new CGI method.
During the production of the Steamboy film, what I put my most effort in was the process of layouts, and I did my best to check every detail. Once this process is done precisely, we will get great backgrounds from our art team. This makes the team effort fun. I can't create a movie by myself. It is worthy only because many staff bring new ideas and techniques. I think the appeal of being the director is to encounter such new things, which I don't possess. It is absolutely wonderful to create something new based on teamwork. It is something that I couldn't appreciate in my cartoonist days.
Since the waiting time required during the rendering process has been dramatically shorter in the last 10 years, I think that CGI animation has finally become practical. It is a fact that I processed the Steamboy work based on the assumption that the machine spec would be higher. In that context, young 3D animators have also gotten more skillful in recent years. But what I didn't expect is that the skills of traditional 2D animators have become worse, and notable young animators have not come out to the scene. This is a big issue for the industry.
The industry in Japan moving toward CGI is not as severe and extreme as in the U.S. The animation industry in the U.S. is firing 2D animators and closing those studios, but I think it's possibly because the national traits of the U.S. prefer super-realism. Since Japan is a country that prefers plane vision, I don't think we will leave 2D and substitute hand-drawing with CGI entirely.
Approximately 400 cuts - that would make 25 percent of the total - use CGI. I worked on the Steamboy's animation production based on the usual handwriting method. Digital animation is just supplementary. I didn't do anything surprising, because the idea is to overcome the limitation of expressions done by handwriting with the help of CGI.
