#STUDIO GHIBLI FREE ANIMATION SOFTWARE SOFTWARE#

to make of Toonz a world standard for 2D animation,” said Claudio Mattei, managing director of Digital Video. “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. A premium version will continue to be sold at a “very competitive price” for companies who wish to invest in the customization of Toonz for major projects. It was originally available only for high-end SGI workstations, and for a period of time was part of Microsoft’s Softimage arm, which later became Autodesk.ĭigital Video will continue to develop and market Toonz software, and will offer installation, configuration, training, support and customization services to studios.

#STUDIO GHIBLI FREE ANIMATION SOFTWARE SOFTWARE#

The software boasts an extensive history, dating back to 1993, and has been used on the production of many Hollywood features and TV series including Fox’s Anastasia, Amblimation’s Balto, and MTV’s The Maxx, as well as popular computer games like Psygnosis’s Discworld 2. However, Toonz is not exclusive to Ghibli and is used by plenty of other studios, including Rough Draft, which produced Matt Groening’s Futurama with it, and Folimage, which used it for its recent feature, Phantom Boy. I have a feeling we’ll see some really exciting and beautiful things come from this.Atsushi Okui, executive imaging director at Studio Ghibli, explained that they initially chose Toonz back in 1995 “in order to continue producing theater-quality animation without additional stress,” and a desire for software that had “the ability to combine the hand-drawn animation with the digitally painted ones seamlessly.” Young animators and small studios all over the world will now have the chance to use professional-grade software in their projects which will be a serious boon for the animation industry, helping it to grow and diversify. However, having an open source version is still incredibly exciting considering it previously cost around $10,000 per license. Perhaps there will be key features missing from OpenToonz. It’s a strange statement to make since going open source means the free version can be customised by anyone anyway. They claim that the premium version, which will be competitively priced, is for those who want to customise the software for their own project. It’s not clear how powerful their open source version of Toonz will be, especially since they’re also going to offer a premium version for large companies. The new owners want to move towards a more open source business model and the companies have agreed that the version of Toonz being made open source will have tools and features included that were co-developed with Studio Ghibli. The software is being made open source due to the recent acquisition of Digital Video, the company responsible for Toonz, by Japanese publisher DWANGO. Atsushi Okui, Executive Imaging Director at Studio Ghibli, said himself that “in order to continue producing theatre-quality animation without additional stress” they had to use a software that had “the ability to combine the hand-drawn animation with the digitally painted ones seamlessly” and Toonz was such software. The software was essentially used by Ghibli in order to bring together the traditional hand-drawn elements of their animation and the modern digital elements quickly and seamlessly. 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. Excitingly, one piece of software the studio use to create their films is going open source from March 26th. 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.

Studio ghibli free animation software