The decision to allow one of the most commonly used filmmaking software tools to go open source also means a big change for Digital Video, which will now shift to an open source business model.
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Studio Ghibli’s imaging director Atsushi Okui says, “we are happy to hear that this open-source version contains the Ghibli Edition”.
“We hope the high-quality software that meets the demands of animation professionals will contribute to revitalizing the animation industry”, Nobuo Kawakami, chairman and CTO at Dwango, said in a statement. From there, it can be animated in 2D by creating “skeletons” for characters, providing a similar animation workflow to 3D projects.
The announcement represents a major boon to smaller animation studios. Our requirement was that in order to continue producing theater-quality animation without additional stress, the software must have the ability to combine the hand-drawn animation with the digitally painted ones seamlessly. The acclaimed Japanese animation producer has been long-time user of Toonz software.
Studio Ghibli’s hand-drawn animation style never fails to impress, consistently bringing together traditional and modern elements of the genre to create films that appeal to our childhood memories of film and ignite the imagination.
The company’s main product is a piece of enterprise animation software that helps with scanning and cleanup of drawings, editing, animation and compositing. In some cases, the price exceeded $10,000. Toonz Studio Ghibli Version, which includes features the famed animation house has helped develop, will be available for free download.
“The contract with Dwango, which offers the Toonz open source platform to the animation community, has enabled Digital Video to realize one of its strategies, i.e.to make of Toonz a world standard for 2D animation”, said Claudio Mattei, managing director of Digital Video. The platform will be known as simply OpenToonz.
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The software, called Toonz, has been used by Studio Ghibli in some of their most popular films including Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away as well as by other studios like Rough Draft who were behind Futurama.
