OpenToonz is based on "Toonz Ghibli Edition," an in-house customized version of Toonz that Studio Ghibli has used for many years for digital workflow of their production. Since Toonz and GTS have been the core of the production process in the past, OpenToonz and GTS were also widely used in the production of "The Boy and the Heron".
IwaWarper, which was first developed for the production of "When Marnie Was There" (2014), was also further improved for this film and was used in many scenes.

In the key & inbetween animation process, OpenToonz was used for pencil testing.
In the ink & paint process, GTS was used for scanning all animation drawings, and OpenToonz was used for color designing and coloring all characters.
In the CG process, IwaWarper was used for "ハリコミ" (Harikomi, to paste-up), which is the warping of the painted textures to match the contours of the hand-drawn objects. The results can be seen in many of the scenes, especially in the latter half of the film.
During the digital composition process, all scenes were composed and rendered with OpenToonz. New visual effects such as GlareFx, FloorBumpFx, and the FlowFx series* were developed for this film.

Additionally, a new HDR rendering features have been developed for screening in Dolby Cinema. All of these new effects and new features have been included in OpenToonz V1.7 and newer versions.

(*)

• GlareFx : An effect to reproduce radial streaks of light appear around a bright light source. It simulates the diffraction of light from the shape of the optical filter.
• FloorBumpFx : An effect that makes the floor surface bumpy and uneven as if in three dimensions, from a hand-painted background image and a height reference image; three-dimensional bumpiness can be controlled on OpenToonz without involving 3D software.
• FlowFx series : An effect that generates a dirt appearance like the one made by "特効" (TOKKOU, a special effect staff), using a drawn diagonal line as a reference image for the direction of the touch. It is possible to create brush strokes that include hand-drawn randomness while following the character's movement.

OpenToonz was utilized for pencil testing by animators and a director.
Studio Chizu had used another software for pencil testing. They decided to migrate to OpenToonz for the production of "Belle" after hearing successful precedents of other studios.
They put camera stands on every drawing desks so that the animators can check their own animation on the fly. For animators working from home they also built the same environment at home for pencil testing.

Comments from staff in the studio:
"Since OpenToonz was more stable than the conventional software we could use it for production without any critical problem. The animators had learned to use the software relatively quickly. It is a user-friendly and powerful tool."

"Natsuzora" is a television drama series depicting the life of a heroine who becomes an animator in the early days of Japanese animation industry. OpenToonz was utilized in the production of the opening titles and many of the animated sequences to process effect compositions and cinematography.

Comments from Yoichi Senzui, the director of photography:
"I decided to use OpenToonz considering that it is useful for inputting the Xsheet and also it is easy to modify the painted drawings. During the production I could start creating the scene in parallel with ink & paint work. And in case there were adjustments in animation drawings, we could handle the changes seamlessly in the same software. So, using OpenToonz was timesaver."

OpenToonz was utilized for pencil testing by keyframe and inbetween animators.

TRIGGER had been introduced OpenToonz for pencil testing since the production of "Kiznaiver". In "Promare" production, OpenToonz was used not only by animators for checking thier own work, but also by an animation director and a director for checking and modifying timing of all animation footages.

OpenToonz was also utilized for "線撮"(Sensatsu, line compositing) on a trial basis. "線撮" is a workflow of making pre-visualization movie by using intermediate materials, which is to be used for post-production in case the production runs behind schedule.The clapperboard feature and the time code fx were newly developed and introduced for that purpose.

The camera capture feature of OpenToonz was utilized for pencil testing by keyframe and inbetween animators. It’s notable that the camera capture feature was originally demanded by the director Kitaro Kousaka and introduced to the production for the first time.

In one of the triple feature ”Invisible”, OpenToonz and GTS were utilized in all digital workflows including scanning, color designing, ink & painting, and compositing. A new visual effect for reproducing lens distortion was developed in order to represent a scene looked over a main character’s spectacles. OpenToonz was also utilized for pencil testing in the production of other two short films "Kanini & Kanino" and "Life ain't gonna lose".

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.