80-90's Anime Aesthestic

Lounge
#1

I was thinking of how old school has its own distinct style. I was finding for the reason why the style works in this way. This is the youtube video I found on.


I understand that Noises and Chromatic aberration because of hardware or software limitations.
The another thing I find is color palette. The old school palette has interestingly yellow tint or somewhat different color palette compared to modern style. I still can’t figured out why the color is behaving in this way.
#2

I think it’s just the aberration on the lineart making the left side looking yellowish.

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#3

Mashinn Eiyuuden Wataru (1988)

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My Hero Academia
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Old school anime seems to have some kind of being drawn on yellowish old paper effect. Compared to modern digital animation. Others like Sailor Moon (1992) has reddish skin tone. It also looks like something is blocking over the paper. The color cannot go like full saturation in old school animation. Is that because of capturing the animation with physical camera ?

#4

In 1988, were they still using analogue film cameras?
With the old-style analogue cameras, there’s the characteristics and limitations of the lighting, the film stock, the developing and the printing process to consider. Getting all that ‘perfect’ was impossible and even getting it good was difficult and needed experience and constant care.

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#5

If the yellow tint is part of the emulation, it could also be an attempt to emulate the look of ccfl backlighting used in older TV sets - they have a warmer quality than we get with modern white led-lit TVs.

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#6

CCFL? LCD TVs in the 80s and 90s? Damn why didn’t we have those back then :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m fairly sure there was no digital equipment involved in those days…things like DVD, Digital8 camcorders etc. started in the late 90s and cinematic productions used analog film material well beyond that if I’m not totally mistaken.

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#7

Oh… Yeah… I umm… didn’t think that through really did I? :crazy_face:

For some reason I wasn’t distinguishing between CRT and CCFL. Both produced a warmer picture though from what I can remember? :man_shrugging:

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#8

Here are two tutorials by animator Toniko Pantoja that may be helpful to you. They are made in After Effects but I think that the effect could be achieved with other softwares also:


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#9

Not really, no…
CRT may have had lots of disadvantages, but accurate and vibrant colors is what kept them alive quite a while in professional graphics production.

Sure early color TVs probably weren’t anywhere near the late ones, but the look of old animes must be more the production and transmission technology from that time, not so much the display device itself.

So I guess we need an expert for the cel animation workflow at that time to explain the look…apparently they really colored every cel by hand and captured it on film in the 80s, and depending on the studio added more and more digital steps during the 90s.

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#10

I wasn’t sure either. I mean - I definitely notice a hue shift going from CCFL to LED or OLED, but I used to use a high quality CRT monitor, and I don’t recall that being off-white.

I know they used to hand paint everything - I still love the quality of older anime. At least the Ghibli films persisted with the hand-drawn aesthetic; it might be hard work, but the results are worth it.

I remember being in my local comics store a long time ago and they had some genuine Akira cels for sale. I was a bit disappointed when I looked at them though - so I didn’t splash out. Probably worth a small fortune now… :upside_down_face:

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