Anime Paper Size

[Donomator]

Tervehdys! I recently attended an exhibition at the AMPAS' Samuel Goldwyn theater in Hollywood called "Anime! High Art: Pop Culture". One of the big things I noticed about the paper and cels on display is not just the placement of the registration on top of the paper/cels, (as opposed to the bottom of the paper), the paper/cels are also TEENY! Well, at least considerably smaller in size than the 12F paper used in the North American industry. That really makes me wonder how the artist can fit all the fine details of an anime character closeup in such a small space. Does anybody know the approximate dimensions of the paper used in the anime industry in Asia? I am curious.

While I am at it; since an anime TV series is obviously more complex visually than a North American animated TV series, (even though the motion is still limited considerably with both types) how much more would it cost in dollars to make an Anime TV show than a North American animated TV show? I'm just wondering.

[DNethery]

I haven't seen the cels or paper you are describing , but it seems plausible that Japan's anime industry has shifted over to using standard A4 size (8.5" x 11") paper to take advantage of being able to use less-expensive A4 Auto-Document Feed scanners and other standard office equipment.

(as we've discussed elsewhere on this forum large format A3 size 11" x 17" scanners are MUCH more expensive than standard A4 scanners , but those larger scanners are necessary when using traditional 12 Field or 16 Field animation paper.)

"makes me wonder how the artist can fit all the fine details of an anime character closeup in such a small space."

It does seem like it would be more difficult to draw very detailed drawings on the smaller paper . The original reason "16 Field" paper developed was mostly for use on feature films where it was necessary to retain a certain amount of line detail on characters , even when they were drawn small for crowd scenes, etc. Now of course with digital ink & paint it's easier to compensate by laying out a scene so that animator can actually work in registration to an enlarged section of the layout , effectively drawing the character(s) at a larger scale on the physical animation paper, then when the drawing is scanned in to the animation software the character can be selected and digitally reduced to a much smaller size to fit within the layout.

However, to me 12 Field (10.5" x 12.5") is still easier to work with in terms of the size of the drawings and also is a comfortable size for rolling the drawings on the disc , but it may just have to do with what one is used to working on. I suppose if one got used to working on smaller paper ( 10 F = 8.5" x 11") it might not feel too small.

I will say that I've seen drawings and cels from the 20's and 30's that were done on 8.5" x 11 or 9" x 12" size paper . Fleischer's and TerryToons on the east coast seemed to have used the smaller paper well into the late 30's. Fleischer's switched to standard 12 Field size paper for the feature Gulliver's Travels. Terrytoons seemed to continue using smaller sized paper well into the 1940's or 50's. At an even earlier stage in animation's history Winsor McCay's animation work was mostly on smaller size paper , about 6.5" x 8.5" . McCay's drawings were highly detailed, so the smaller paper size didn't seem to deter him in that area.

Here's a photo of animator/author John Canemaker holding an original McCay "Gertie the Dinosaur" animation drawing so you can see the scale:

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~jc7/images/photos/024.jpg
(the smaller paper was attached to slightly larger cardboard backing shown here so the actual size of McCay's animation paper was a bit smaller than
this appears.)

Anyway, it's interesting that animation started on smaller size paper, eventually standardized in North America to 12 Field (10.5" x 12.5") and 16 Field (13.5" x 16.5") and now because of the cost of paper and scanning many traditional hand-drawn animators are going back to smaller 8.5" x 11" size paper.