Dwango Co., Ltd.
July 12th, 2018

Tokyo, Japan (July 12th, 2018) -- Dwango Co., Ltd. has announced that the 2D animation production software "OpenToonz" which they started distributing in March 2016 as an open source software program has been used in the production of Kamikaze Douga's first animated feature film BATMAN NINJA (Director: Junpei Mizusaki / Script: Kazuki Nakashima) which came out in theaters on June 15th in Japan.

OpenToonz is a 2D animation software program based on "Toonz" which was
first developed by the Italian developer Digital Video S.p.A. After Dwango
acquired Toonz it was then developed/distributed as an open source software
program that anybody can use and modify free of charge. OpenToonz has several
features which include functions customized by the longtime Toonz user
Studio Ghibli. Dwango has developed visual effects that utilize their
artificial intelligence technology and plugin features that enable any
user to add effects. Since its release, Dwango has been making additional
modifications based on on-site feedbacks.

OpenToonz utilized to process brush strokes, effect composition and cinematography

BATMAN NINJA is an animated film created mainly by 3DCG. However certain scenes incorporate traditional 2D animation. OpenToonz was utilized in the production of those scenes to process strokes, effect compositions and cinematography (e.g. camera works).
One of the reasons why OpenToonz was chosen for this film was because it processes drawing in a special format which preserves the halftone information required to replicate the natural look of a pencil’s stroke and subtle faint lines. Additionally, OpenToonz uses a palette system which enables the user to work flexibly - a user can for example work on the cinematography of materials before the colorization process or change the color specification without having to go back to the finishing process.

■BATMAN NINJA Compositor Yoichi Senzui

“I was able to make a good use of OpenToonz to complete this film – however not without a slight trepidation as this was my first time working on a large-scale project with this software. I found it particularly useful during the last few sequences of the production where we needed to correct colors and Xsheets. OpenToonz had many well thought out features that helped me along the way such as - the color management system which utilized palettes and the Xsheet interface. The camera work configuration was also visually intuitive. Although I was the sole staff working on OpenToonz for this project, I hope that more people will learn how to use this software to produce more works.”

OpenToonz has also been used in other animated feature films such as Mary and The Witch’s Flower (produced by Studio Ponoc). Dwango aims to contribute to the development and improvement of OpenToonz by listening to the opinions from Japan’s animation industry.

{class="" caption="Batman and all related characters and elements are trademarks\n
of ©DC Comics. and © Warner Bros. Japan LLC"}

＜Related Websites＞

●「OpenToonz」：https://opentoonz.github.io/e/
●「BATMAN NINJA Official Website：http://wwws.warnerbros.co.jp/batman-ninja/