Something I noticed

[manathief]

Jessie's hair is now very purplish. It used to be the sort of color you could simply call "red". Now it's very much like the "red violet" crayon in my box of crayons (yes, I said crayons).
Anyone have any idea why, exactly?

 

[Mooites]

Magenta? because she feels like it. I dunno, why is Pauls hair purple? is he a distant cousin of Barney?

 

[Adamant]

The late-Johto animation switch changed a lot of the colors. Another really noticeable one was Kasumi's shorts, which went from blue to green.

 

[manathief]

LOL ^.^

I didn't notice her shorts change color...Maybe cuz I was paying way more attention to Team Rocket? XD

 

[Cybersai]

The digital animation switch happened during the last episodes of Johto, the episode with Casey (the last one) is I think the first ep of the switch.

Misty was only around for like 10 eps at that point before she left, so it wasn't very noticeable. Not to mention by that point Misty was pretty much sidelined since all the focus was on Ash and his league matches.

 

[manathief]

And I was sidelined 'cuz I wasn't paying attention to Ash's dumb league battles. XD

I only pay attention to Team Rocket XD

 

[lalalei2001]

Did the 4Kids dub point out the color change?

 

[coolcatkim22]

I don't like the colour change. It makes everything seem duller.

 

[poke07]

Her hair was a strong red color when everything was hand-drawn. During MasterQuest (I believe), they switched to computer animation.

I think the majority (but not everyone) liked the hand-drawn style more. The computer animation produces less vivid colors (like in your Jessie example), and gives characters different appearances.

 

[Dogasu]

I think you're confused, poke07. Because the show is still very much drawn by hand.

Basically...in the old days up until the mid-late 90's, every cartoon out there was colored by hand. An animator would draw everything out, frame by frame, and then hand those drawings over to a cel artist. This person would then trace these drawings onto a piece of clear celluloid with a special marker before sending them to a colorist, who would go in and hand paint each cel using a special kind of paint. Once the cels are completed, they're laid over a pre-painted background and are photographed using a special camera. One by one.

(of course, this explanation is extremely simplified...don't want to get into too much detail here)

Nowadays, animators can draw out the animation and then just scan these images into a computer where they're cleaned up and colored. As you can imagine, this method is much faster and much cheaper because you're not dealing with a bunch of expensive media (paints, cels, expensive cameras) or other expensive (cel storage, cel replacements, etc.). It's also a LOT less time consuming, so animation companies don't have to keep employees at the office as long as they used to.

The only animation that's done by computer in the show would be certain attacks (i.e. I think Haruka's Zenigame's Bubblebeam attack was consistently rendered using CGI), some vehicles (the Magma-Dan's sub in the Groudon vs. Kyogre two-parter), and some of the stuff in the movies.