Ni no Kuni–The Future of Animation?

      Comments Off on Ni no Kuni–The Future of Animation?

Ars Technica links to some demo footage of Ni no Kuni: The Another World, a video game being developed by Level 5 and Studio Ghibli.

There’s only so much you can tell from a 2-minute promo clip. The gameplay itself doesn’t look like a breakthrough–sort of Pokemonish in fact. The graphics on the other hand do indeed look amazing. It’s obviously computer-generated, but it looks surprisingly like a Studio Ghibli hand-drawn anime.

On closer examination, the quality isn’t really at a Studio Ghibli level. Maybe more like a second-tier studio’s imitation of Studio Ghibli. Nevertheless it looks vastly better than what we have come to expect from computer generated animation.

Could this approach become good enough to revolutionize CG animation? Possibly. Could it become good enough to kill off hand-drawn animation? Regrettably that’s also possible. We shall see.