The Magic of Backlight Animation - The Index: Episode 12

[@venturelord32]

I always thought the light in old animations had a different quality to it. But I had no clue that that feeling produced was done by a quite literal difference in lighting. The fact that this process was done for every light of that kind I've seen is filling me with awe as I type this. Amazing. I feel like knowing this would surely change an animator's mindset if they knew. Good knowledge to have brought back to the collective consciousness.

[@ViewpointProd]

Amazing to finally see people talk about this kind of work, i honestly wish i could replicate the feeling of backlight animation, what people don't realize is that's not just some kind of effect, it's actual light, usually from a bulb under the animation desk. I'd do anything to be able to achieve that kind of "life" with anything i work on. it's horrifying to think techniques like these are just pushed aside, forgotten just because you can do it with a laptop nowadays.

[@sethhat9620]

The running man short from Neo Tokyo has some absolutely incredible backlit lighting effects.

[@enemyofbohemia]

Yes! I actually forgot to show a clip from that in this video. The panning shot that shows the entire racetrack with all the lit up signs is really incredible.

[@tyson7417]

I have struggled to find a clear explanation for this process and why it has the effect it does. It is the number one thing that strikes a nostalgic chord for me when rewatching movies from my childhood.

[@michaelcooney9368]

Had been doing bright glowing stuff in Blender 3d. Glow effects like in after effects look sterile because no lens effects. A backlight is basically a shaped lens flare. So I use a "ghosts" or simulated lens reflections keyed off my artwork but payed over very subtle. Something like the flashy glows in Tron, it seems more real because light is actually bouncing around in a lens and simulating that helps a lot.

[@enemyofbohemia]

Very interesting.

[@WoooFr]

Cool. Totally agree with you. The glow of after effects even with some plugins doesn't look very natural. I tried Blender too and the results of the glowing stuff looks actually good.

[@RetroStuff7341]

Thank you so much for shedding more light on this! I've been looking for this information everywhere, but I never knew what exactly went on in the process.

[@cruzgonzalez7061]

I had first found out about backlit/under lighting animation when I saw the intro to an anime called Srungle back in 2017, really wanted to know how they created that shimmer/glow effect. Really makes you appreciate and see animation in a new light lol. Anyway, fantastic video man!

[@johnprudent3216]

I can only imagine then sense of satisfaction these artists must’ve felt once the whole thing was said and done. I’m sure they also had that “damn! I wish I could’ve done this or that better.”

[@jmalmsten]

There was that anecdote where one of the Tron roto animators walked up to one of the bewildered actors and said "YOU! I HATE YOUR NOSE!" Because he had been tasked with making holdout mattes for that particular actor for months on end.

[@thekaijumaster200x3]

Great video. This was a nice look into an artform of a bygone era.

[@standepain]

I heard a rumor when I was doing animation in art school that they actually used Christmas lights for some effects in Japan. It was so much fun seeing all the methods they used back then From the warped glass for underwater scenes to using ceiling light panels to get different patterns for the backlight effects.

[@iroc]

Planting algorithm seeds for animation nerds to find :)

[@caleb1413]

Thanks so much! I've been trying to understand this process for awhile and you helped make it much clearer.

[@arichutfles]

I have been trying to learn how this was done for about a year and a half. Thank you so much! And thanks for the link to the 1701A Rebuild video.

[@8_Bit]

Great explanation; I've read bits about how this was done on Tron but this explanation was much better. I've also heard that on top of all the things you discussed, the film stock they used for shooting parts of Tron were somewhat faulty/uneven, causing some frames to be much brighter than others. They couldn't reasonably fix it or reshoot, so they just took advantage of it, adding a sound effect whenever it happened to make the glitchy flash of light; it became just another part of the atmosphere of the world.

[@WarriorTier]

What a great video

[@slavestudios47]

check out the television version of Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy for some interesting process's.

[@gibsonflyingv2820]

Painfully under appreciated channel! Nobody goes in depth on this kind of stuff.

[@michaelcooney9368]

Is this the same technique used for vfx animation. I read an interview with a guy who made a scene of somebody being electrocuted in a old movie called Buckaroo Banzai. He drew sparks as black ink on clear cells, but it was filmed not kodalith or counter matte, but just 35mm high con b&w film. It becomes a clear negative on the film and background becomes black, and they just rephotographing with color gel and diffusion. Things like lightsabers and star wars laser guns were kinda done like that.

[@enemyofbohemia]

I've seen the same clip you're talking about! That would be a variation of the effect. The use of Kodaliths is extremely rare.

[@michaelcooney9368]

@@enemyofbohemia it wasn't a clip but I thing a reddit AMA. The cover counter matte trick in Thief and the Cobbler is a expensive laborous process but you do get it all on the original negative for maximum quality. The filming rotoscoped cels on high con for effects is what was called an "optical". Faster and cheaper, but it's making a copy of the image. They normally did it in 65mm for big movies. I just assumed for cheap anime and some animation. Movies, it saved money to film cels on high con film and do your laserbeams and lightning bolts that way, than a expensive multipass exposures on original negative.

[@enemyofbohemia]

@@michaelcooney9368 Yes, you're right! I wish I'd remembered this but thanks for sharing! I actually saw some test footage for the Buckaroo Banzai effects uploaded on vimeo by the animator himself. This was also how the id monster in Forbidden Planet was given its glow.

[@jmalmsten]

I think the kodalith method was an exception mainly only used in Tron. As I understand it, most was done with optical printers for live action and for animation they'd use regular animation cells with mostly black and clear bits for the glow. And going to even lower budgets, you could poke holes in the film itself after it's been processed (for 8mm reveral film for example) and you could then let the projector provide the glow during playback to make gun flashes and scratch the film to make lasers.

[@BansheeNeet]

Was reading an interview with Hayao Miyazaki where he mentions backlight animation, and so I looked it up to learn more and found this video. Great presentation and explanation of the technique, really helps put into perspective how much of an undertaking these movies were.

[@worthlessendeavors]

Excellent

[@PaulFriemel]

Is there a way to contact you? I’m working on a project and I have to somehow retro engineering some backlit animation and there is literally zero actual procedural info on how to work with this medium in a digital age

[@enemyofbohemia]

I understand, it's really hard to find info on this stuff. I do have a twitter, @ArchiusLattanzi, you can contact me there and I'll be happy to provide any materials I can dig up.

[@PaulFriemel]

@@enemyofbohemia Thanks!!!! Will reach out.

[@mcateerdesign]

looks much better and more true to the style in 3D software than after effects

[@mosiroar]

That was really neat! Thank you!

[@Alyxandr]

You have no idea how hard it's been trying to find information on this particular technique. The closest I was able to find was in the book _The Art of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind_ and it referred to it as "transparent light graffiti", which brought up no relevant results on Google, and there was very little written information about it in the book. I saw it in so many old anime and wanted to learn how to recreate it. Thank you for bringing to light this beautiful technique. I thought what they did was cut out a small hole in the background art and shine a backlight through the hole so that the light and the cel+background art shines into the camera. I didn't know mattes were involved! I would love to learn more about this. :D

[@cloudbloom]

Fascinating

[@mrhypnagogia]

INCREDIBLE VIDEO

[@mmmdananananone]

Thank you for this brilliantly made i to something I'd only previously wondered about in passing. I'm going to have to watch Tron again now!

[@Flugmorph]

fantastic video!

[@VARSITYVARSITY]

Are there any behind the scenes videos of the process of backlight animation being done ?

[@DanteTube]

1:42 credit to LogicSmash for this one

[@jmalmsten]

06:32 - I just did a spit take and excitedly pointed at the screen like DiCaprio.. :D

[@AluminiumRabbit]

Just out of curiosity, can you achieve this effect entirely in camera? I was thinking about getting a 16mm film camera for animation and I'd like to know if it's possible without having to use an optical printer.

[@enemyofbohemia]

Yes, doing it in camera is the usual method, the optical printing is done usually if there were some other element that had to be added, like isolating the foreground from a separately shot moving background, etc. But if you shoot the regular cel on background, then rewind the film precisely and then shoot the matted cels with the backlight it will work in practice. Stuff like exposure levels might need to vary on the second pass.

[@iananimator]

Right but after the matte with only the transparent light effect, how is that lighting put onto the animation? It's sort of not possible to isolate an animation of lighting and drop it onto the original. What were the layers like? Was it the backlight, the matte, the BG, then the animation cells? The light bleeding through the BG? "recorded it back over the film' is vague and I can't parse what this means.

[@enemyofbohemia]

The light is shown through the matte from underneath. They photographed everything normally, but the elements on cels that would be backlit would be painted black so that area went unexposed on the film. Then the counter matte has everything black around it, except for where the light is going to shine through. It's not all filmed at once. The film being rewound simply means that the same footage is being exposed twice but in different ways. That's how you superimpose things. They use black mattes because the brightest spot of the light would simply be see through if they just did a double exposure without matting off that area on the first pass, the first time they expose that shot. I know it can be confusing, I tried to put it all there in the video.

[@iananimator]

​@@enemyofbohemia Thank you for your quick response. The way filming on film works through exposure can't be replicated easily today on digital then, can it? That's what is frustrating me right now is I'm trying to see if there's anyway to do this physically on digital. I just don't understand how film works so when it says 'wound back and refilmed', the concept of superimposing exposures wasn't something I know about. So does that mean pure black on a film cell = transparent? Is that why they use black matte on the first go? Or you're saying the exposure is so bright they have to use black? How would filming a black matte on top of the original film not add the black matte to the original? Why only the light? It is confusing because I just don't understand how film cels work.

[@enemyofbohemia]

@@iananimator There are ways of doing this easily digitally. it's a matter of using different opacity filters if you have a light element on a black background. But you got it, anything that's pure black is basically still unexposed film. You wouldn't want to have that area show any background, because then the background would show through the backlighting since the backlighting is what gets exposed second, it's superimposed. Sometimes they do want things to be transparent, which means they don't use an initial matte for the first pass. But that's rarer and usually the light looks the best when it has a solid brilliance at the center. So it's important that the mattes line up so that light is the only thing being exposed on that part of the film. The glow that halos around the light source doesn't need a matte because it should be transparent anyway, and fade off.

[@iananimator]

@@enemyofbohemia Different opacity filters, so you mean a sort of keying effect? So you would film the animation then film the lighting seperate then in an editing program drop the lighting on top of the original and key out the black with some sort of filter? Or am I getting that wrong? I see what you mean about the transparent thing, you showed both examples in the video and after reading this I understand it a lot better. I rewatched the 2 minute mark part of this video like 10 or 15 times trying to figure it out. Thanks again for responding.

[@enemyofbohemia]

​@@iananimator You're very welcome. Since practically no one does this analog anymore it's hard to find solid info on the process. And yes, you could key it, or use a filter that would make only the dark areas transparent, I'd play around with it to find the best option.

[@IATap-bk8ko]

How do I animate those backlight digitally or traditionally at this time and era? ToT please help

[@enemyofbohemia]

For digitally there are probably some glow tutorials. As for traditionally, haha that's gonna be a bit more difficult. Finding a place that can make kodaliths for masking, (or tracing and painting in your own masks on cels) as well as a film camera and the right setup, might be difficult, but not impossible. There may be new methods open now that weren't around back then. It'd be interesting to see someone try and make it work analog now with the different resources available.

[@IATap-bk8ko]

@@enemyofbohemia I really really want to do it traditionally!!!

[@enemyofbohemia]

@@IATap-bk8ko Then Godspeed to you.

[@bored_person]

1:22 where is this from?

[@enemyofbohemia]

That's actually from Tron, it's a bit of cel animation of a grid bug.

[@CannibaLouiST]

you shoulnt use tron. all you need are comparing 80s to 90s cel anime and post-90s full cgi anime