âJapanese developer and media company Dwango announced that it has acquired animation production software Toonz from Italian developer Digital Video, with a forthcoming release of an open-source version containing the same feature sets as the Toonz Ghibli Edition developed by longtime Toonz user Studio Ghibli.
Toonz Ghibli Edition is a customized version of the Toonz software which was developed by the famed Japanese studio and has been used in the ink and paint, color design and digital composition process for most of their titles ever since The Secret World of Arrietty. In addition, OpenToonz will also include effects developed by Dwango that utilize its artificial intelligence technology, and a plug-in feature that enables anybody to add original effects to OpenToonz. The new open-source software â which is completely free to use and update â will be officially presented in Tokyo at Anime Japan, running March 26-27.
âDuring the production of Princess Mononoke in 1995, we needed a software which enables us to create a certain section of the animation digitally,â Atsushi Okui, Executive Imaging Director, Studio Ghibli, commented. âWe checked for what was available at that time and chose Toonz. Our requirement was that in order to continue producing theater-quality animation without additional stress, the software must have the ability to combine the hand-drawn animation with the digitally painted ones seamlessly. From then onwards we continued to use the software while going through major updates to make it easier for us to use. We are happy to hear that this open-source version contains the Ghibli Edition. We hope that many people inside and outside of the animation industry will utilize this software for their work. We would like to extend our gratitude to the staff of Digital Video.ââ
