Actually, my first thought on seeing that shot was, “Reminds me of the first ep. of Lord of Mysteries.” So the technique itself isn’t that innovative, although applying it to a show intended for the Japanese domestic market might be, since Lord of Mysteries is a donghua.
zippy552@ero.ani.social 3 days ago
I wonder if this studio is getting paid to be the testing ground for new techniques.
Their reputation is in the perfect spot to make an anime to demo the risky tech no one else will touch.
The aerial fly-in shot of the city was pretty impressive; I bet we see stuff like that adopted by other studios in the next couple of years.
nyan@lemmy.cafe 3 days ago
headward_scissorfeet@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Lord of Mysteries probably had a larger budget and it felt like some parts of it were proofing out the technology as well. It’s perfectly fair to say LoM is on another level.
The other thing that LoM has going for it is there is a great deal of depth that can be easily ignored by people who don’t care for political intrigue and figuring out the factions and so on, and they separated out some of the world building into separate mini-episodes that were entirely optional.
There is a kind of problem for a show’s ratings when you try to keep in all the world building and politics.
nyan@lemmy.cafe 1 day ago
My understanding is that they discovered they’d bitten off a bit more than they could chew (or at least fit into the intended episode count) when they were too far into production to pull back, and that’s why the guy from the other continent appears in one episode of the main series, then is never spoken of again in the main run but has an entire episode-length OAV to cover his backstory. (I’m still not sure whether they should be called “OAVs” when the A stands for “Anime”. ODVs?)
Anyway, we’ll see if they manage to fold things back together when the second season airs next year.
Unboxious@ani.social 3 days ago
You think so? I thought it looked like an Unreal Engine 4 tech demo.
zippy552@ero.ani.social 1 day ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if CGI was involved in some of Frieren’s more badass fight scenes; they’ve just evolved the techniques from when Berserk did it.
Three years from now, the new hype anime will do a flyover shot they wouldn’t have otherwise had the resources to draw, and no one will complain about CGI because they evolved the techniques from when Heavy Knight did it.
Unboxious@ani.social 1 day ago
Certainly; Demon Slayer does it a whole bunch too.
Absolutely not. There’s this thing called “compositing” that other anime do where they try to make the 3d CGI backgrounds not look like they exist in a separate universe from the characters. CGI backgrounds are pretty normal in anime these days; the only thing GoHands is doing special is not even trying to match them to the foreground.
zippy552@ero.ani.social 1 day ago
So you agree with me. Some studios took the risk years back, other studios built on that work, and now “these days” no one’s complaining about that kind of CGI.
Static background CGI work like what you’re talking about is now a solved problem.
Between that and not paying your employees, you’ve got a safe way to stretch the budget.
What are you talking about? GoHands is notoriously unique. Their unique style is one of the things people complain about the most. In just one episode, you’ve got:
Every week, GoHands puts out six minutes of genuinely new, experimental animation work. Sometimes it makes you nauseous, especially when they spend the rest of the runtime showing it to you over and over again.
They’re not hiding behind industry best practice, they’re taking creative risks and pissing people off, while putting out full seasons and paying their employees on time.