Can cel animation ever make a comeback

CEL ANIMATION DIED FOR A REASON, STOP MAKING THIS THREAD

>>149287868 (OP)
Even if it did, it'd be shot with digital cameras instead of film which would take away at least a third of the appeal

>>149287868 (OP)
It can if we do it in America

>>149287868 (OP)
Just emulate it and move on
Nobody is going to spend all that fucking money on old equipment and painters, they can barely afford the korean slaves anymore

>>149287886
What's the reason.

>>149287868 (OP)
Sovl..

>>149287886
This
So many shows were eager to abandon it, even Ren and Stimpy was testing digital color before the original show ended (I think about 6 or so episodes used it)

>>149287912

>>149287920
Remember when King of the Hill was testing it so much that they had episodes where it'd switch from digital to cel within different scenes, sometimes from shot to shot?

>>149287889
Quentin Tarantino believes 35mm can come back through gen-ɑ, and he's probably right.

>>149287942
Filming people is easier than shooting a cartoon frame by frame

>>149287868 (OP)
you can mimic cels with digital, there is no need

>>149287957
I'd argue that you don't even have to shoot it on film, just print the final master on it
The South Park movie was animated entirely on computers and then printed on 35mm (it's the only master that has been available to the public, even on bluray) and imo, it's the best SP has ever looked
The Spongebob movie was also done digitally but had a 35mm print. The digital master was used for most home video releases until now for streaming and 4k

>>149287937
Yes the one where Peggy, Mihn, and Nancy run for the school board has a scene like that and the "That's my Purse!" episode is a really early full digital one

>>149287896
Companies don't want to pay American prices, hence why everything past boarding is shipped off to korea/canada/fucking phillipines

>>149287886
And yet, they replaced it with a system that involved middlemen on near-opposite sides of the Earth and not just doing what every 15-year-old with a Newgrounds account in 2007 learned to do and just use a computer.

>>149288031
>And yet, they replaced it with a system that involved middlemen on near-opposite sides of the Earth
They were doing that well before cel died

>>149287868 (OP)
What episode is this from?

>>149287908
>"just emulate the billions of organic chemical reactions that happen when paint touches paper, bro"

>>149288043
So why, when the home computer became good enough to both create and render animation, did they not scrap that system and do what was presumably cheap enough for every high-schooler with an internet connect to do?

>>149288064
yes

>>149288017
That's why whe have ambassadors Jon Voight and and Mel Gibson to make Hollywood great again

>>149288067
Because they'd have to pay american employees actual wages instead of cracking the whip on some asian boy

>>149288064
Most anons here can't even tell the fucking difference. Most conflate "cel" with "hand drawn" instead of referring to the actual painting process

>>149288067
Because technology was still evolving, and not everybody had the skills to animate on a computer yet. Your Newgrounds example doesn't mean anything because whatever animations you're thinking of don't look professional. And that leads us to today, where little to no cartoons are animated on paper anymore and are instead animated on Toon Boom.

>>149287868 (OP)
d-does the technology even still exist? Like cels themselves might exist but I doubt you can go to your local hobbey story to buy the layering machine. Which sucks, one thing I miss about cel is that it allowed for geniune focus pulls from camera adjusting, something very tricky off pull off digitally
(I know all the examples are anime but if there's one thing I wish westerns studios unapologetically stole from the japs it would be this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecwWMyFq8gs )

>>149287868 (OP)
No, once there was a way to animate without cels the practice was more or less done with unless the animator made a conscious choice to use them.
Why don't you just animate every frame completely like they did before the usage of cels? Why do you only lament the loss of cel animation?

>>149287868 (OP)
Even the Japanese stopped using it
It's over and has been over for 20 years

>>149288102
I've always found it odd how people on /co/ seem to know very little about their own hobby. Like, almost a refusal to actually research how animation is made

>>149287868 (OP)
Why do anons expect cel to make a comeback when they aren't even willing to pay for the cartoons they watch?

>>149287868 (OP)
no

No
Studios were desperate to get away from it
Fucking Hanna Barbera was testing what is essentially flash tier animation back in the 70s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLMA8w2jryk

I could see it come back as an occasional throwback or experimental piece, but on a large scale? Probably not, as much as part of me wishes the craft had a Laika equivalent dedicated to keeping it alive.

>>149288598
I know about Laika and Nike but what keeps Aardman alive?

>>149288598
>as an occasional throwback or experimental piece
Tbh not even indie studios make cel animations. Maybe you can find like 5 cel projects on the whole youtube made in the last years. When studios for for experimentation in very niche european animation , they use practical effects and collages and stuff like that. They won't care for cels.

>>149287886
Fot a dumb reason. Companies are richer than ever.

>>149287908
>Nobody is going to spend all that fucking money on old equipment
Yet the spen 3 times that money on woke garbage nobody watch.

>>149288962
>>149288954
Learn to spell

>>149287930
They have more money than ever. So, that's not a reason.

>>149288674
Wallace and Gromit/Shaun the Sheep/Chicken Run
Nick Park carries the company on his back

>>149287868 (OP)
Cel will ALWAYS will be superior to digital.
Digital is nice and convenient but it will never be able to pull off the hard work and heart the artist pours into it. With cel you can see the amount of effort and passion. With digital you can have the passion but it won't be as warm and comforting, most modern cartoons are too bright and overuse their colors instead of experimenting.

There's a reason why people gawk at stuff like Evangellion and Nadia (excluding the island arc) because the art in those shows have soul poured into them, in fact most 80s and 90s animes have this feeling you don't get nowadays. Everything just feels corporate and robotic now, none of the artists have unique flair these days except for maybe like a handful.

>>149288305
Anons want cartoons using hand painted cels, completely animated in America, with Disney style framerates, all uploaded to YouTube for free, while also not caring if the animators are properly paid for it. If anything, they want the animators to work "real jobs" while animating a tv show "on the side"
I'm not sure what causes this level of expectations

>>149289040
Anon 4 animators in the 30s could make a 7 minute cartoon, y'all are just lazy and want all this extra shit on top.
Maybe don't do a shit job and you won't get a shit wage.

>>149289040
Is that wrong?

>>149289040
Most consoomers believe the things they enjoy are made from magic
This is why many of them eat up AI sloppa with a spoon

>>149289076
>>149289103
Samefag.

>>149288147
This board mostly just wants to wallow in their nostalgic escapism and jerk off and don't care about animation as an art form

>>149289040
honestly I think anons are conflicted because they like animation but hate most animators for being super left-wing, so they'd rather have their cake and eat it too than letting those people materially benefit. Hence why I think a lot of conservatives are latching onto AI art, given the general left-wing slant of most art industries in general

>>149289182
Why are normies not seeing Elio then? I was told woke stuff was extremely popular and yet nobody showed up to see it.

>>149288986
Tbh, I don't think people care. Even if there was a huge demand for cel animation you would have tens if not hundreds of indie animation teams doing it but you would struggle to find ten. Even HUUUGE cel-animation fans like otaking or other guys use digital coloring for their stuff.

>>149288986
Anon, just because someone has the money to do something doesn’t mean they will. Cel animation is still expensive. Why would a company spend millions on it when there are cheaper alternatives available? And remember, they don’t care about quality, only that the final product gets finished.

>>149289198
Most people care way less than culture warriors on either side think they do. Elio flopped even with all the "woke" elements excised from it because it was bland and had shit marketing

>>149289198
They gave Elio conversion therapy and it still flopped

>>149289206
>Even if
Meant to write If

>>149289223
Yeah but they didn't say that until after the movie flopped. So people were already expecting woke shit before even seeing it.

>>149289258
>So people were already expecting woke shit
People weren't expecting anything to begin with because they didn't care since the movie looked like beanmouth slop from the get go

Personally, I have nothing against woke stuff existing, I just don't want stuff I like to become woke. I also don't like the idea of the anti-woke backlash causing collateral damage.

>>149289289
That too, Beanmouth is automatically associated with woke.
Also I don't like these fags now going and saying "we've always hated that style too" as if they weren't the ones shilling it the past 15 years, nah they're just mad that nobody likes it anymore and they actually feel shame over it and gotta gaslight.

>>149289334
To be honest, I was fine with it until it started showing up everywhere.

>>149288147
>I've always found it odd how people on /co/ seem to know very little about their own hobby.
I've always been curious as to how comics were made in the pre-digital world
The internet doesn't have anyone who knows
And anyone who's big into comics that you ask "How'd they get the big india ink drawings to transfer into a tiny box? How'd they add colour?" act like it's obvious and refuse to acknowledge there's anything beyond a food analogy of "Bread comes from the store, the store is where the bread is"

>>149287967

Why dont they then.

>>149288130
Japan has no choice. They had one supplier of those cels and they quit
Somehow they couldn't just source more from China I guess

>>149290552
Because they don't have to

>>149289060
Didn't they have armies of women doing the ink and paint, all uncredited

>>149290552
Cuphead for a games that had cel like atmosphere in its animation even though it was digital and the megalobox anime had backgrounds that were inspired by cel stuff.

>>149290837
Yes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7AJAk0kPLM

>>149287868 (OP)
Not really. I imagine as time goes on there will be more projects that use cel animation, but those will always be curiosities.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, curiosities are neat.

>man who's never animated: "THIS IS HOW ANIMATION SHOULD BE DONE!!!"
Have you ever animated using cels, knowing a much easier, faster and cheaper alternative is available on your computer? There's literally zero practical reason to use cels in the modern age. Theyre a horrible asspain to what is already a horrible asspain medium. If Ub Iwerks had the option to use a Wacom he'd have jumped on it in a heartbeat.

>>149287896
yo i love these goobas yo

>>149291130
>I imagine as time goes on there will be more projects that use cel animation
How many cel animated cartoons we've had in the last 15 years?

>>149289009
Reminds me of how the 2000 JoJo OVAs were originally meant to be animated on Cels.

No. It had to go. Its planet needed it.
>Note: Cel Animation died on the way to its home planet.
I have a sworn affidavit that Cel Animation will never ever ever return. The document conforms to all applicable laws and statutes.

>>149287868 (OP)
No
Truth is, animation is only as good as it is allowed to be. Had digital color or even rigging been a thing back in the day, studios would be happy to use it. Even John K jumped onto computers as soon as he could. I think he made some of the first flash animations

>>149287868 (OP)
no, but AI will be able to replicate it well in a few years, so hope is not lost

>>149290837
>all uncredited
You say that like secretaries, cleaners and truck drivers should be credited.

>>149289182
>anons want left wing cartoons without left wingers benefiting
They don't...?

>>149287868 (OP)
Probably only for niche indie stuff where they sell the cells as extra collectibles.

>>149291967
You're supposed to be dead, Schlesinger.

>>149288064
it's not that hard

>>149292019
We have the technology but they refuse to implement it.

>>149292019
I'm still waiting for a retrotink that only uses HDMI.

>>149291975
Count all the people continuing to coom over Gravity Falls despite having a leftist creator

>>149292019
so it's just
>darker colors
>oversaturation
>dropshadow around characters/elements
>dust particles
>minor blur

>>149292308
>The low effort bait got me!

Dumbass.

>>149292019
This is low effort co-opt, similar to the new modern SpongeBob episodes trying to "imitate" the old style, except not really, its meant to get it wrong, ON PORPUSE!, so they can make a strawman.

Remember that one episode of PPG2016 that had a flashback with Bubbles accidentally destroying their old kindergarten and it was done in the old style, but something STILL felt wrong and off-putting about the whole deal?, making it feel, not right? That feeling you get when something's is wrong?.

>>149287868 (OP)
This goes into the modem effort needed
https://youtu.be/8YjZeHtqZSw?si=RpZ41B7woD9mBC1L
Skip to the animation section.

>>149292019
Still looks digital

>>149292102
Those gooners are left wing and like the creators?

>>149292359
>look how inferior the old cartoon designs are! Their lines don't even look shit!
I remember the Simpsons trying to replicate the pilot/whatever show art and they couldn't draw the lines straight enough.
Same with TTGo being unable to even draw the simple anime style of TT that was intentionally supposed to be easy to draw.

Are artists just bad these days?

No, closest thing is probably vanity projects partook solely because people want to recreate the craft for its own sake but as an industry standard never.

>>149292368
>Steal some guys art from twitter
>make a "film" with Family Guy tier mouth and eye movement

Even Season 1 Spongebob was more expressive

>>149292881
Yeah the guy himself is a hack film student who half assed the process, but it does show the work that's needed to make a animated show on cels in the modern day.

>>149292702
what about this?

>>149290552
Because corps don't give a fuck about styling or "SOVL" as some people call it
And it's not just the hand-drawn feel that cartoons shot on cels have. Backgrounds being excessively clean (there is nothing really stopping hand-painted backgrounds today, unlike cels which just don't exist), colors being super bright, and character designs being uber-simplified are all exec mandates to make the process of animation cheaper/easier, as wel as make the end product 'flashier' to the audience

>>149292772
Yes, and also they are a bunch of dysfunctional scummy manchildren that keep failing upwards, who literally cannot see anything without a deconstructive ironic filter.

>>149293267
How about redraw it yourself you cretinous little shit.

>>149289210
Because its beauty would attract more consumers.

>>149293267
Not any of the anons who replied to you previously.
The first image you posted looks digital mostly because of the character designs. Like The Simpsons, SpongeBob animation at one point became really focused on staying on-model. Even with the 'hand-painted' filter, the character design fundamentally looks like it was taken out of a mold. The outline looks too perfect (and maybe too thick), and the block of color looks really uniform, too much to be hand-painted

None of this is your fault of course, mostly it speaks about how Nick and other studios just churn out animation without caring about style

The second image sorta has the outline issue better, but the underlying problem is that the style is too corporatized.

Also, don't pay too much mind to cel animation uber-defenders, they almost always disingenuous or delusional. It's not coming back, period

>>149293351
consumers don't give a shit about cel anymore
They flat out reject shit that looks "too old", this is why remasters of older tv shows usually get cropped to 16:9

Ok OK I get it. We celfags are retarded and you digital chads don't want CEOs to lose money. But why not using all those fancy digital tools to replicate the look of hand painted cels?

>you digital chads don't want CEOs to lose money
What a dumb bad faith post.

>>149293599
How bad was it?

>>149293380
Always gets me. I wonder how the conversation for that went.

>>149293423
there just isn't that big of a demand for hand painted cels. what was the last cartoon that tried to mimic cels? cuphead? look at how popular that was.

>>149294316
I thought the cuphead show tried to mimic tawog with all the meme faces

>>149293351
I hate to break it to you, Anon, but not everyone likes the look of cel animation. I do, but the idea that it’s some kind of apex art style that everyone loves just isn’t enough to bring it back. 2D movies look great and could potentially attract more viewers, but we’re not seeing any because of the same reason we won’t see cel return. Money. Honestly, most consumers don’t care that much about the animation style. Take Cuphead, for example, the whole appeal was its 1930s cartoon aesthetic, yet the show was animated with Toon Boom and puppet rigs. And people still watched it.

>>149293368
>this is why remasters of older tv shows usually get cropped to 16:9
I honestly can’t understand why some people refuse to watch a show just because it has black bars on the sides. Even worse, I don’t get why the DVD or Blu-ray release has to crop the image instead of just making it an option. Most TVs let you adjust the aspect ratio anyway, so why force it by baking the crop into the disc?

>>149294520
>I honestly can’t understand why some people refuse to watch a show just because it has black bars on the sides
The average consoomer is obscenely low IQ and will think their TV is broken
I'm not joking

>>149291238
I MIGHT GET TREE GOOBAS
I MIGHT GET FOH GOOBAS

>>149291881
If you think this is good, even by AI standards then we will never get even good pseudo-cel animation.

>>149293267
No, how about this instead?

>>149294808
too grainy

>>149294810
no such thing

>>149287868 (OP)
>>149287889
>>149288064
The entirety of Digimon Adventures was digital, it's more about the director and animation team than anything. Sure cel makes it easier to get a nice looks off the bat since there's a catalog of paint colors to choose from but digital can achieve a similar palette and look if the art directors care enough and want that look. It's just that with the advent of digital coloring, not having to mix pigments and having free-reign over the entire gamut of colors has led to fewer artists understanding color theory, leading to plastic-y and clashing color palettes becoming more of the norm in today's animation.

>>149289060
Yeah, with basic backgrounds (sometimes no background), with 2 characters on screen max (often the only animated things on screen), low res and minimal/no colors, like most cartoons back then. You can't do that shit anymore.
If you're looking for an extreme example, then in the case of Disney they basically had a harem of women to do all the inking for them, and nobody had good working conditions.

>>149287868 (OP)
Too many drawbacks, not enough positives, especially now, in an age of digital art.
Just because digital art allows laziness and soullessness, doesn't mean it inherently is bad and soulless.

Pros for cels in 202X compared to digital:
>automatic sovl with very little effort
>has to be done by hand, meaning it's more likely to have personal touches
>there are very few viable shortcuts you can get away with in 1080p, so it's more likely to have personal touches
>can do some weird stuff with the backlights
>can auction/sell the cels after the show's over

Cons for cels in 202X compared to digital:
>requires a fuckload of specialized equipment and tools (some huge and/or expensive)
>requires a lot of skills that most people don't have anymore, or skills people can't be assed to do
>has to be done by hand, meaning it's slow and expensive
>there are very few viable shortcuts you can get away with in 1080p, so it's slow and expensive
>higher risk of damage/loss, both minor and major
>it's hard/impossible to back up physical media, you can't just photocopy it and upload it to a server
>have to buy/restock all the paints, paper, pencils, pens and such, and pray your preferred options never run out (see: claymation)
>no "undo" if you fuck up other than hoping you can scrape it off, erase it, or paint over it
>expensive as fuck to do any decent framerate
>requires the artists to be in-house unless you know/have a second studio somewhere else
>1080p requires a lot of extra detail work
>digital can replicate/emulate most effects (if the artists choose to)
etc.

>>149291881
Nigga, I like AI but that pic's full of more than the average number of errors AI does in 2025, you could've picked/made a better example, even for a "what if" like this.
Besides, AI'd be better used as a "filter" for standard digital art, rather than generating it from scratch, at least in the short term.
Ten years max before we can just tell some free online AI a single lazy prompt like "make me a classic season 2 styled Spongebob episode about Sandy's boobs inflating out of control with air," and it'd just do it, full length, voice acted and all with a negligible amount of errors.

I know some people like Worthikids more or less cracked the code on making stop-motion with computer animation so maybe in the future someone will figure out how to make a digital to cel animation pipeline.

>>149295206
it already does will smith eating spaghetti with audio after 2 years of work, so maybe 5 years? 7?

>>149293267
I tried to replicate cel on this thing I did 7 years ago. Starts at the 0:02 mark. It was a very early attempt. The outlines are done on paper and scanned in, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYMdmUtS3SM

>>149294808
I did this a few years ago. No background, and it was scanned in.

>>149287868 (OP)
bump

>>149287868 (OP)
Is this from an actual episode? I don’t recognize it.

>>149294958
Really? Even the movie? Then that's a fantastic one since the movie really feels like it's done on cel. Also for another digital anime that feels like cel, Alien 9.

>>149287908
>snow white's budget adjusted for inflation in $current_year dollars is $34 million compared to Elio with a budget of $150 million
good thing progress and computers made animation cheaper

>>149294660
You know, for being a Satanic homosexual pedophilic rich boy Jewish Freemason, Sam Hyde has his moments back in the day.

>>149287868 (OP)
An eccentric billionaire would have to want it. Is the guy who funds Laika looking for new project?

>>149287868 (OP)
>>149294808
>>149293267

Here's my clean Cel to compare.

>>149287868 (OP)
Nu-Spongebob doesn't deserve the effort.

>>149292019
>Drop shadow
Weird how the Simpson S34E03 has the same trick

>>149297796
The looney tunes show also did this

>>149297707
No one cares, give it up, AI all the way baby.

>>149297707
>>149298654
Keep up the great work!

>>149287868 (OP)
prolly not

>>149288064
bitch we can go further beyond

>>149290008
go ask dave
he has a QnA every month
https://momentofcerebus.blogspot.com/2025/07/please-hold-for-dave-sim-72025.html

>>149295710
what do you think of this
https://youtu.be/kuBRaABZ_To?t=42

Because only 5 people on the planet know how to do and training is too costly nor do modern animators have the skill level needed to paint on cells. Toonboom and Adobe animate crippled an entire generation of animators . You can now just use line tool to fix your crappy sketches albeit using those softwares is like needed a fucking computer degree cuz they are so complicated

>>149301008
>nor do modern animators have the skill level needed to paint on cells
You guys piss me off. It's the ink and paint artists who are supposed to paint the cels, not the animators.

>>149287868 (OP)
Never, anon. Sorry.

>>149287868 (OP)
No and it's not because "it's too expensive" or "no one has the skill to do it anymore" or whatever faggot cope anons are saying here, it's because there's no real benefit to it.

>>149301776
>it's because there's no real benefit to it.
It looks better?

>>149294365
>muh "unironically believing le meme faces are a real thing" meme

>>149301845
Deez nuts look better than your mom.

>>149287981
>The South Park movie was animated entirely on computers and then printed on 35mm (it's the only master that has been available to the public, even on bluray) and imo, it's the best SP has ever looked
Couldn't they just re-render it in HD or 4K like they've done for the remastered seasons?

>>149301882
Post nuts or stfu

>>149301962
IIRC, they claim they don't have the files necessary
My bet is that the hell scenes/effects are missing. Those were done by another studio

>>149300523
>>149294808
We will never have something like this again, just accept it.

>>149288986
uuh no, you see they gotta have MORE money! Everything is expensive because all the money that has been saved has GOT to be MINE

>>149302082
damn shame really