Cel Shading

Cel shading draws a 3D model with flat bands of colour and a heavy outline so that it reads as hand-drawn animation. The term came from 3D animation software in the late 1990s; Sega applied it to Jet Set Radio in 2000, and within three years magazines were calling it the industry’s buzzword, a fad, and an over-used technique.

Fast facts

The word: LightWave 3D shipped a “Cel Shader” by 1997, used to fit 3D vehicles into hand-drawn television animation.
In games: Jet Set Radio (Smilebit, Dreamcast, 2000) — “a new trend, which Sega is dubbing ‘cel shading’” (Edge, May 2000).
The look: “bold colours, reduced detail and heavy black outlines” (PlayStation 2 Official Magazine, January 2003).
The cost: more rendering work, not less — “the cost of rendering the models was relatively high” (Russel Comte, Melbourne House).

The word

Cel shading is named after the celluloid sheets of hand-drawn animation, and the term reached games from the software used to make that animation. NewTek’s July 1997 advertisement for LightWave 3D promised that “the Cel Shader comes standard with every copy”, and the same issue of NewTekniques described Foundation Imaging’s animators adjusting their models “so that the Cel Shader gave them just the right look” on Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero — 3D vehicles rendered flat enough to sit inside a 2D cartoon. The technique existed to hide 3D inside animation before any game used it to look like animation.

Jet Set Radio

Edge previewed Jet Set Radio in May 2000 as “exuding a cartoon style that will soon become a common sight in a new generation of games”, and described the method as “cel rendering, a technique which highlights main characters and background features by delineating them with a heavy black border”. A caption supplied the name that stuck: “a new trend, which Sega is dubbing ‘cel shading’”, noting that Infogrames’ Wacky Races “uses a similar method”.

The team — Kawagoe Takayuki, Ueda Ryu, Hosokawa Kazuki and Kikuchi Masayoshi, from Panzer Dragoon and Sega Rally 2 — presented the look as a designer’s choice rather than a rendering trick. Ueda, the art producer, told Edge he had joined Sega for the design of Sonic and been “surprised and disappointed since there was only anime and manga-like designs … With JSR, I have been able to explore my own ideas about design. There is not any special Sega concept or inspiration. It is my style”. By February 2001 Edge was reviewing Sonic Shuffle under a sidebar headed “Cel shading revisited”: “the cel-shading technique that made Jet Set Radio so visually striking”.

The trend

The term became a reference point within a year. In April 2001 Core’s Adrian Smith placed his hand-drawn Atlantis “on a wholly separate evolutionary branch to the cel-shaded likes of Jet Set Radio”; the same issue previewed Capcom’s cel-shaded JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Capcom’s Auto Modellista made Edge’s Christmas 2001 cover — “Capcom brings cel-shading to the racing genre” — as “the antithesis of the realistic simulations that dominate the motorsports market”, running “up to eight cars onscreen”.

By January 2003 the Australian PlayStation 2 Official Magazine was running a feature on “the new buzz word in the games industry”, with a definition — “the deliberate use of a cartoon art style characterised by its bold colours, reduced detail and heavy black outlines” — a list of PlayStation 2 games already using it (Klonoa 2, Herdy Gerdy, Looney Tunes: Space Race) and of E3 2002 showings (Gungrave, XIII, Superman: Shadow of Apokolips, Auto Modellista), and a step-by-step of Capcom’s cars: “Notice how shadowing on the car’s body and windscreen is relatively blocky. There’s no attempt to graduate it.” Superman’s producer conceded that “some people in the games industry argue that it’s become an over-used technique”.

Russel Comte of Melbourne House, whose Looney Tunes: Space Race the magazine called the first Australian cel-shaded game, gave the working definition: the technique “renders the characters in a flatter, more controlled way. Tonal qualities of the surface are minimised, shape definition and profile are maximised.” He also corrected the assumption that flat shading is cheap: “There are plenty of disadvantages actually, as the rendering can become more complex. The real advantage is simply the accurate interpretation of the cartoon style.”

Zelda

The technique’s most contested use was announced at Spaceworld in August 2001. Edge reported “the shock of Link … complete with cel-shaded polys and a stylisation harking back to ’50s Disney”, which “initially stunned attendees. A few half-hearted cheers went up, but the usually boisterous US correspondents looked on bemused.” Miyamoto’s explanation was about the character, not the renderer: “I started to feel strange making Link like an adult. Link was growing up and I wanted to return him to a childlike state.” The caption’s verdict — “The American’s didn’t like it. Everyone else did.” — was still being cited in 2003, when the PlayStation 2 magazine recalled that Nintendo had “enraged legions of Zelda fans” by dropping “a hyper-realistic GameCube Zelda in favour of a cel-shaded version”. The game shipped as The Wind Waker.

Fear Effect

Kronos’s Fear Effect (Eidos, 2000) is often listed as an early cel-shaded game. Edge’s April 2000 review praised its “manga-style characters” and “a new graphical style”, and said “No other game looks like it” — but never called it cel-shaded, and no source held here does.

3D with cartoon style