The staff of "Dorohedoro" talks about "The Present and Future of 3DCG Animation Expression" [Watching the Animation Industry No.64

Dorohedoro," an animated TV series based on a manga series by Hayashida Kyu, is going strong as it nears its final episode. The story is a buddy story in which Caiman, a man whose head has been magically turned into a lizard, and the martial arts heroine Nikkaidou search for the culprit who cast the spell, and the action is both speedy and unpredictable. The development is fast and unpredictable.
We spoke with Yusuke Awawa (MAPPA), screen designer and creative producer, and Kaeko Noda (MAPPA), animation producer, who are at the forefront of producing this energetic work.

How to create "hand-drawn-like 3DCG characters

What was the impetus for the "Dorohedoro" animation project?

Awawa: Around the spring of 2017, I received a proposal from Toho for an anime adaptation. The original manga was still being serialized and was about to end. When I thought about how to make it work as a video while preserving the atmosphere of the original work, I thought that a 3DCG-based version would have a good chance of winning.

Noda: It seems that there are many people in the industry, not only within MAPPA, who like the original "Dorohedoro" manga. Therefore, we all felt that if we were going to animate this manga, we did not want it to be a half-hearted effort. If we tried to move Caiman's scales by drawing, it would only take more effort and would not be effective, and eventually the quality would drop. I understood this just by looking at Mr. Hayashida's drawings.

Awawa I also loved the original manga, so even years before I received a concrete proposal, I personally had an idea of what I wanted to do if I were to animate it.

Noda: Everyone had a specific name in mind, "The background of this original work would be Shinji Kimura-san (who participated in this work as worldview designer and art director)," didn't they?

Awawa: The first film I participated in after entering the industry was "Tekkonkinkreet" (2006) by STUDIO4℃. There, I was struck by Mr. Kimura's background and work, and I wanted to see "Dorohedoro" with this world view!　I want to make it! I wanted to make it! I was very happy to be able to participate this time.

I was really happy to be able to participate in this project. Did you do this with the original work in mind?

Awawa: Yes, if I had to design the characters by hand, I would have to rearrange the lines. If we had to rearrange the lines in order to create the original drawings and split the video, the image would inevitably be far removed from the original work. We decided that it would be better to use hand-drawn textures on the 3DCG characters, which would be closer to the image of the original work. I also drew the fixed shadows by hand, aiming to create characters as "pictures" even though they were CG.

Noda When I received the modeling of Fujita, Ebisu, Nikkaidou, and other real people, I felt that they looked very much like the drawings.

Toward that end, did you do any special processing to the CG models to make them look like drawings?

Awawa: In 3DCG, characters are beautifully created based on symmetry. The animators then move the beautifully created models by changing their forms, but they also add distortion processing in the final composite (filming) process. For example, the spikes on Caiman are straight on the model, but by distorting them slightly in the composite, the straight elements are reduced and they look hand-drawn. Furthermore, by adding noise processing to the solid lines, an analog-like texture is achieved.

↑upBefore analog processing

↑upAfter analog processing

Noda Also, touch lines are superimposed on the shadow surface, making it look more like a drawing. I thought it would be a good match with Mr. Kimura's background.

Awawa: If you add too many shadows to a 3D character, the difficulty of controlling the look increases dramatically. In this case, to keep lighting costs down, I used fixed shadows with forward lighting as the basic shadows and used lights to create shadows when necessary.

Noda: At the stage of character design by Tomohiro Kishi, you were able to find a good landing point between the original Hayashida-sensei's drawings and the animated version, didn't you?

Awawa: When I looked at the original work, there are many lines, but the shadows are surprisingly simple. Mr. Hayashida asked me to darken the area around the eyes behind the mask, so I was careful to keep that in mind while Mr. Kishi supervised me on the form and the way to add touches to the character.

How about the colors of the characters?

Awawa: The colors of the characters were decided according to the background. The more colors the background has, the more colors the characters will have, so you can play with them in many different ways. On the other hand, if the number of colors in the background is small, we have to decide the colors of the characters within that range. The original "Dorohedoro" has low color saturation throughout and high pinpoint saturation. I thought that if I made an animated version with the colors as they were, I might not be able to choose the right audience. The original author wanted to broadcast it on TV, so I asked Tomoko Washida, the color designer, to put together a 30-minute TV program, placing the highest priority on creating a screen that could be enjoyed by people who were not familiar with the original work.