Cel shading - Definition

An example of cel-shading from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Cel-shaded animation or cel-shading is the art of turning computer graphics into cartoon and comic book style art and attempting to mimic a more stylistic cartoon style, such as charcoal, watercolors or etching. Cel-shading is a sharp contrast to photorealistic graphics. It is a relatively recent addition to computer graphics, most commonly turning up in console video games. Though the end result of cel-shading has a very simple and retro feel, reminiscent of older hand drawn animation, the process is complex.

Process

The cel-shading process starts with typical 3D modelling under the hood. The difference occurs when a cel-shaded object is drawn onscreen. The rendering engine only selects a few shades of each color for the object, producing a flat look. This is not the same as using only a few shades of texture for an object, as lighting and other environmental factors would come into play and ruin the effect. Therefore, cel-shading is often implemented as an additional rendering pass after all other rendering operations are completed.

Appearances

Cel-shaded art has appeared in the following places:

• Cel-shaded video games
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
  • Jet Set Radio series
  • Viewtiful Joe series
  • Killer 7
  • XIII
  • Sly Cooper series