Toonz, Italian software that animates the masterpieces of Miyazaki – Tom’s Hardware

The classic 2D animation or frame by frame animation, is to draw all the frames (24 per second) of a scene. One by one! An exhausting job that requires passion, dedication and infinite patience. The results however are great, just think of the masterpieces of Disney .

 
 
 
 

From my point of view, despite the very considerable progress made 3D animation (CGI animation would be more correct to call it) that produces the highest quality films, I find the traditional animated films more fresh and alive, despite their imperfections. These are works “craft” and pulsating life that flowed from the hands of designers. In recent years, the arrival of computers has also provided the scribes cartoon powerful tools that help them in achieving their masterpieces. The software for the animation frame by frame allow designers to cut implementation times, allowing you to draw and paint directly on the canvas digital (paperless animation), and easy layer management. In practice a scene, simplifying to the maximum, it can be conceived as a series of stationary background layer and one or more animated layer on which the characters move.

 
 

Among the many software for the animation frame by frame in circulation there is toonz . Because I want to talk just toonz? Because the other day I read a tidbit about him: it was just released with open source license under the name opentoonz .

 
 

It is not a stripped down version, but the professional version, the one used by the animation studio Ghibli. Yes, you read right, this is the software that the study of Miyazaky normally use to create his masterpieces and a few days is freely downloadable and usable. The operation is similar in some ways to that relating to the release of the modeling / animation / 3D software and more Blender , which began as software development of the Dutch NeoGeo, then released as freeware and opensource later.

 
 
 
 

Sifting through the news I discovered, to my surprise and satisfaction, that the software toonz is 100% Italian. Very Italian! Roman company Digital Video , founded in Rome in 1986, which released the first version of its software toonz in 1993 for SO IRIS (Silicon Graphics system, at the time the graphic workstations for excellence ).

 
 

Recently, Digital Video has signed an agreement with Dwango (Japanese telecommunications giant) for the sale of toonz software and publishing it with open source license.

 
 

From fond of animation and computer technology I could not remain indifferent: I immediately contacted the creators toonz and I suggested a piece on Tom’s Hardware. The friendly Claudio Mattei, CEO of Digital Video , has given me a very long and fascinating conversation by telling the story of his company and its enhanced software from a number of beautiful anecdotes that I try to summarize:

 
 

How will you thinking of doing a software for 2D classical animation in Italy in the ’80s?

 
 
 
 

CM – In the 80s I worked as technical director of CGE (Computer Graphic Europe), who had signed with the Computer Graphics Laboratories of New York an agreement to buy a system for the animation called CISA (Computer Assisted Animation System) that stood in 4 copies. The software was virtually written by Catmull (founder and president of Pixar). One of these copies of the software was in Rome at the ECJ, ran under a VAX 11/780. This system had become uneconomical, only the maintenance contract with Digital cost a fortune, not to mention the power consumption of such a machine. In the meantime the first machines were leaving Silicon Graphics and then decided to try to write us a similar program.

 
 
 
 

We were able to produce a prototype at an affordable price that ran on Silicon Graphics IRIS. The product was so good that we decided to begin to show around. In 1993, at SIGGRAPH (Main Visual CGI conference in the world) to Chicago we presented at Softimage ones, so to speak, they did the dinosaurs in 3d at the time of the Spielberg film Jurassic Park. At the time was the software with which it was CGI animation in Hollywood. Became the exclusive distributors of our product then called ciack, later renamed toonz . With the Softimage product Toonz was made the first film, “Balto” that we, as it were, launched on the market, despite the film was not a blockbuster. Softimage was later purchased by Microsoft and our product became Microsoft Toonz. Microsoft imposed on us a quantum leap asking us to take care of 100% of our product from development to packaging assistance. And that was good for our company because it has made us grow.

 
 

Your software is born closely with production environments, that was created and measured on the demands of the animators. Especially with Don Bluth and Miyazaky. How were these collaborations?

 
 

After the “Balto”, Don Bluth (remember the video game “Dragon’s Lair”?) and Gary Oldman have chosen our software as a technology supplier for the “animation factory” that Fox was putting up in Arizona. E ‘was the first time that the entire production line of a study was built around our technology.

 
 
 
 

The first film produced by Fox was “Anastasia” and was actually a challenge because Fox had made up her mind to make a film in 4K Cinemascope in a sort of competition with Walt Disney, which until then produces its own films in 2K. All this at a time when this was really a very difficult technological challenge. Just to make it clear the issue: we had to go to dall’integer long integer in our source code to address all memory required, recompiling everything during the making of the film.

 
 

So the partnership with Fox was a turning point?

 
 

In fact, the technological progress of the software has been constant over time and there has been a quantum leap with the various users. With Fox was instrumental work done to allow the manipulation of large amounts of data.

 
 

 
 

It Ghibli?

 
 

The choice of Ghibli was made to a specific element, namely the “quality of the line” (the “dusty” effect and inaccurate pencil that toonz simulated perfectly) it needed to make indistinguishable parts of the hand-made films and those made digitally. We are talking about the movie “ Princess Mononoke ‘: only a part of the film was made with toonz that you had to integrate with the parts already built in hand. We were at a time when the study Ghibli evaluating the transition to new digital technologies. They initially had to do the two techniques. And ‘state Miyazaki in person to opt for our software for this feature.

 
 

How did you come to the decision to publish toonz in the open source version?

 
 

E ‘duty to make an introduction. Many years ago we signed an agreement with Studio Ghibli that he needed to greatly customize the software with internal resources. We gave the possibility to use the source code to personalize adding from time to time necessary elements for the development of the various films. The other aspect of their work related to the user interface. The story is fun in the studio Ghibli exists a senior colorist, who also sees little there, which is “the” colorist Miyazaky and is the only one who chooses, even today, the colors of his films. You should know that at that time we were passing by the major release 4 to 5 toonz completely rewriting the software from the 1.2 million lines of code in C to 750 thousand in C ++. A significant breakthrough in the overall architecture of the software. Everything had also involved a UI change that put in difficulty the elderly colorist. In practice at home Ghibli they have redone the user interface in the image of the old release.

 
 
 
 

Coming to the present day the cause of the recent events are related to the closure of the Ghibli studio – actually continue to produce but in fact the old working group was sent home. And ‘it changed the business model. The old studio Ghibli, where everything was homemade, had become unmanageable and too expensive. So Miyazaky and others, including his producer and the author of Naruto, a group of wise old men who were asked what they could do for the Japanese animation now in crisis. Work is increasingly out where it costs less, with an extreme parcellizazione, with too many too small studies with little capacity to invest. Well, they thought that by giving free use of a software like toonz , could be an opportunity to retrain all studies, even the little ones. They therefore contacted Kawakamy of Dwango AD-known fan of manga and animation, with patron driven (but with an eye on business, of course), in September 2015 acquired the latest software release toonz . Simultaneously Kawakamy recovered responsible for the development of Ghibli that was, say, a walk, after the study closed, and part of his staff, to manage the operation.

 
 

So from September to now Dwango bought the software, set up a working group with former developers and researchers Ghibli and produced the version of opentoonz that was released a few days ago. What is the economic interest of Dwango in this operation?

 
 

The first thing I expect is the publication of a book / dVD with the instruction manual to use opentoonz , then start to do training and education.

 
 

And because the software is, in fact, been acquired by Dwango, what will be the strategy of Digital Video from now on?

 
 

The arrival of Dwango was a bit ‘a fluke. We are thinking for some time to pass all’opensource because we are deeply convinced that the license sale does not generate more profits that are needed. The cost that people are willing to spend to acquire the software fell to levels below the returns have. Our plan fortunately coincided with that of Dwango and were well paid for it! Of course we welcome this proposal gladly, with the condition that the object was used for non-commercial purposes, in particular the license is a BSD license.

 
 

Who will develop opentoonz from now on?

 
 

The control is Dwango. But it is possible that we will contribute to the development. They currently have acquired the software and they control it. So much so that they have changed from the original version delivered and strive for a minimal user interface. This interface, however, has “hidden” a number of features that are there, inside: in fact opentoonz is, at present, a subset of toonz “premium.” Right now their priority is to provide a tool that can be used in Japanese workflow and production of a “pilot” (a short or pilot animated film ed still secret that will show the possibilities of this software) probably themed fiction.

 
 
 
 

What will be the strategy of the company Digital Video in the future as part of the animation?

 
 

 
 

Digital video continues to sell a “premium” version of toonz a fraction of the cost, it comes to less than 1/10 of the previous price. We changed our business model by charging very little licensing and trying to make money with support, training and customization. We are very happy that young artists and animators can use our tools.

 
 

The company Digital Video has established and internationally known. It seems a little ‘less in Italy. He currently works with major studios in the entertainment world. Its software has become a de facto standard in the field of animation 2D. Digital Video is not just cartoons but web animation, broadcasting, etc … What can I say? Long live our Italian genius. When’ll watch some animated films, from now on, I can not help but think, with a little ‘envy, I confess, that perhaps there is also our paw in there.