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Makoto Shinkai interview
Makoto Shinkai Layout (hand drawn)

First the layout is drawn.
This is the preliminary process, setting up the background and the characters' actions. Based on this, background production is done by the art department. The characters are produced by the animators.
Smooth is a plugin used in character production.
Scan (photoshop)

The original image drawn in black, red and green is scanned in. Looking at the scan with anti-alias on, the lines look smooth. However, applying colour by using the Paint Bucket tool creates a gap along the borders because of the anti-aliasing. The image is posterised to black & white at this point to ease colouring later.
plug-in Posterise to black&white to ease colouring

To achieve intricate colouring finished with attention to detail. Bypass anti-aliasing and posterise the image to black & white to create a clear single pixel level border.

smoothing Effective colouring using Paint Bucket tool

The colouring process starts.The trick here is to switch off anti-aliasing in the Paint Bucket tool itself to seamlessly colour in without any in-between colours. By posterising to black & white, not only can you increase colouring efficiency, but because there will be no in-between colours, subsequent colour adjustment is easy.

AE plugin Composite the whole scene

The background is added. To create an overall unified scene, Photoshop filters such as Flare are added to produce the final animated scene.
Nevertheless, images produced like this have jagged lines around the characters against the background. Here we use Smooth.
smoothing Finish in Smooth (Smooth+After Effects)

The Photoshop (PSD) file of the completed scene is imported as After Effects layers. In After Effects, apply smoothing to the character layers to Smooth the jagged lines and the process is finished. Modify the background and the overall scene as required and a shot is
completed.
After Effect plugin A scene is completed!
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Jagged lines become this smooth!
Smooth Comments on Smooth from Makoto Shinkai

With this process, it is possible to work very productively by using the Paint Bucket tool to colour seamlessly. The problem with this method is that the outline becomes jagged because of the posterisation to black & white. Here Smooth becomes a requirement.

Any effects for the background and the overall scene are applied in Photoshop and in the final step Smooth is applied to the characters' layers in After Effects. The jagged lines become smooth, completing the shot composition. Animation production can be finished using After Effects. RETAS features that do not exist in After Effects, such as the Time Sheet input, are a matter of familiarity with the horizontal timeline and personal taste.

After Effects can be integrated into the animation production workflow. Colours can be altered easily at a later stage by adjusting the colours in Photoshop, Finishing the production using Smooth in After Effects allows? focus on improving the production quality.

(C) Makoto Shinkai / CoMix Wave



Check it out! Smooth