Differences between CGI douga and actual show

[KuroiTsubasa4]

I don't collect many drawings from many CGI shows, but of the few that I have, I've noticed that the douga tend to vary quite a bit from what I actually see in the show (roundness of a face, angle/openness of a mouth etc). I assume this is normal, yes? Maybe rather than sticking to the douga lines, there is a person in the process whose job is to alter the lines once it gets to the digital stage? It just makes me uneasy purchasing sketches when I can't go to the show and make an exact match up with the scene, like you can with douga and cels from the older shows. So...

1. Have you noticed any significant differences between the final douga and the actual show?
2. Is there anything to look for that would signify a possible fake?

Thanks!

[Kasi]

I've never noticed any significant differences in my douga to screen capture actually. They've all appeared spot on to me. I do have one still shot though where the mouth is closed in the douga, but open in the screen capture, that's all that comes to mind. Perhaps I'll look a little closer to see if I can find any smaller details.
Do you have full sets? It could be possible they have correction layers to them?

[sensei]

Is it possible that your copy of the show has changed the dimensions of the screen? Most CGI series use "letterboxed" format, and when I've first seen fansubs of the show, the image has been compressed horizontally, so that faces look less round, more oval. Then in the commercial release the faces appeared in the dimensions in which they were originally drawn.

I have also seen cases in which the dougas were rejected and a second set done. In these cases I've gotten both douga sets, the reject and the final one. But I've never seen douga corrections in the same sense as genga corrections (shuusei).

[Kasi]

I'll have to retract what I said about my open/closed mouth douga. I just realised I only scanned the genga :p

[KuroiTsubasa4]

Take this for example: http://kuroitsubasa4.rubberslug.com/gal ... mID=341509

Everything is pretty spot on, but the highlights in his hair and the wrinkles in his clothes are quite obviously different.

[Kasi]

Looks like a genga drawing rather than a douga to me. In which case it's possible the shadows were corrected on a different layer

[sensei]

Agree with Kasi.

Both in cel-based and CGI anime there often are big differences between the genga (key animator's) drawing and the final douga (the sketch that actually creates the image that goes on the screen). I've seen some animation directors essentially throw out the genga and do a completely new sketch, which then becomes the basis for the douga and thus the final production image.

[KuroiTsubasa4]

Ah, ok. I was under the impression that most gengas were done on those yellow sheets of paper and were a lot sketchier. Those must just be roughs then. I'll have to look through and relabel my sketches.

[sensei]

Colored paper sketches are almost always corrections (shuusei). What we tend to call roughs (the AD's first shot at what the scene will look like) is usually traced on top of the layout (though it's often way, way better than the layout). So it sometimes is called a "layout correction/shuusei." It gets complicated when one artist does a shuusei and then a senior animator does a "shuusei no shuusei" (corrected correction). But the paper is always that thin, colored stuff so the artist can see the earlier version underneath it. Layouts, genga, and douga are always on white paper.

It's not hard to figure out once you get an image of how the studio process worked, and you can see the image morphing little by little into what you see on the screen.