Animation Software used by Studio Ghibli Goes Free: Futurama Maker Goes Open Source

Animation Software used by Studio Ghibli gets Open Access!

Films like Spirited Away and Tale of the Princess Kaguya or even the animated series Futurama used the Toonz animation software. The legendary Japanese filmmakers like Hayao Miyazaki who used the Toonz Ghibli Edition is now going open-source. This means that it will be absolutely free of cost and can be used by the studios and even by the novice animators.

The software was acquired from Italian Developer Digital Video by Dwango who is a Japanese publisher. Then came up the deal of making the software open-source. Now the focus is on customizing and training but will continue selling the premium version of the software at a competitive price to companies.

Imaging Director of Studio Ghibli Atsushi Okui said that they were happy to hear that the software was now available to everybody and that it contains the Ghibli Edition. He also added that he was expecting a better and effective utilization of the software by people who are inside and outside of the animation industry.

Debuted in the year 1993, Toonz is used to convert hand-drawn and rasterized art into vector graphics. After the required conversion the graphics can be animated in 2D by creating "skeletons" for characters, providing a similar animation workflow to 3D projects.

The aspiring editors can now have access to a production-ready version of the software which used to run for about thousand dollars. The app was first used in 1995 for Princess Monomoke said Studio Ghibli. It was used to combine hand-drawn animation with the digitally painted ones. This was done to reduce the additional stress and also to ensure a continued production of theatre-quality animation. Now that the software is open-source the considerable effort to learn software as deep as Toonz, is made simpler and easier for the aspiring animators. It will be presented officially at Anime Japan in Tokyo, which starts on March 26th.