So, why did it take so long for the series to switch to digital animation?

[MizuTaipu]

Here's a question that popped into my mind today.

If I'm not mistaken, the very first use of digital animation in the Pocket Monsters series was the first Orchid-hakase Pokémon Lecture for EP061 (Hanada Gym! An Underwater Battle!) that first aired on September 3rd, 1998. The series has consistently used digital animation for those segments and all of the Johto openings during the rest of Kanto until the tail-end of Johto with those episodes traditionally animated. It wasn't until EP261 (Nanako and Elekid!) that the episodes were now being digitally animated. That first aired August 15th 2002 and by that time almost every animated series out there was solely digitally animated.

So why didn't the animators switch to digital animation for the first episode of the Orange Islands arc? Surely they were comfortable digitally animating all of the Pokémon abuse Orchid-hakase up to that point. Or, why didn't they start with the first Johto episodes so the episodes would match the digitally animated OK! opening?

Any thoughts on this?

 

[PockyAddict]

I was just thinking about this. The Openings used digital animation even tho most of the anime was cel at that time. It sorta stuck out on me. And the animation change from cel to digital was pretty abrupt too.

I would not be surprised if it had a bit to do with money..

 

[FANG-TAN]

I'm honestly curious as to why it took them so long to switch as well. OLM clearly had the tools to digitally animate full episodes beginning with the Mewtwo Special (which was the first time they used digital animation outside of openings and gag segments), and it would have been a good point for them to start doing so if not immediately when Jouto started.

Could it possibly have been something to do with the budget?

 

[Winterdaze]

I have to wonder how much the budget had to do with it. Digital animation is much, much cheaper than cel, but does anyone know if that was the case back in 1998?

 

[FANG-TAN]

I have to wonder how much the budget had to do with it. Digital animation is much, much cheaper than cel, but does anyone know if that was the case back in 1998?

All of OLM's other anime had already switched to digital animation by then, so it's really perplexing as to why they kept Pokemon traditional for so long before switching.

 

[Winterdaze]

That is certainly odd if OLM were already equipped to switch to digital animation (especially with parts of the anime already done with it). Assuming digital animation really was cheaper then too, I can't think of a rationale for not switching. I suppose there is a very vocal minority of detractors of digital animation even today, perhaps somebody on the Pokemon animation team was really against it or something?

 

[FANG-TAN]

To be fair, it took them a fair amount of time to switch in general. However, it doesn't explain why a series like Comic Party (2001) would be digitally animated in full while Pokemon was still using cel animation for a little while longer until more than midway through 2002, when they're both animated by the same company.

 

[HumanDawn]

Creative differences is a reason I can think up of, or maybe they just wanted to keep the entire show with the same style until the end, and when they got news that they needed to make a 3rd generation anime, they might have given up and started animating all the episodes digitally.

 

[Yoshi1001]

It could also have been forced by a change in the in the production chain-in other words, at some point they were no longer able to get the necessary materials for cel animation (or to get them at a reasonable cost).

 

[garrison-san]

Digital animation may be more cost-effective, but I believe that there was some resistance to it within the animation industry upon aesthetic grounds. I don't know what was going on with Pokemon, but it also took The Simpsons a long time to switch from traditional hand-coloured cel animation to digital ink and paint (they did this in their 14th season, having dabbled with the process as far back as their 7th). Al Jean does state on a DVD commentary for one of the episodes (I think it's "Whacking Day") that they stuck with the traditional techniques for as long as possible, but that the change was finally motivated by all the desirable animators having migrated to digital animation, with traditional cel animation increasingly being seen as a dying art, so eventually they had no choice but to comply.

 

[Yamadora]

Oddly, EP140 Wired for Battle had couple shots animated digitally while the rest of episode was traditional. As mentioned in OP, they didn't started animating whole episodes in digital until EP261.

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