Computers and traditional animation

The methods so far describes the techniques of an animation process who originally depended on cels in its final stages, but painted cels are rare today as the computer moves into the animation studio, and the outline drawings are usually scanned into the computer and filled with digital paint instead of being transferred to cels and then colored by hand. The drawings are composited in a computer program on many transparent "layers" much the same way as they are with cels, and made into a sequence of images which may then be transferred onto film or converted to a digital video format.
It is now also possible for animators to draw directly into a computer using a graphics tablet, cintiq or a similar device, where the outline drawings are done in a similar manner as they would be on paper. The development of paperless handdrawn animation is likely to replace the traditional pencil and paper not too far into the future, just as cels and traditional paint was replaced when digital ink and paint was fully introduced in the 90's. For instance represents the Goofy short How To Hook Up Your Home Theater Disney's first project based on the paperless technology available today. Some of the advantages are the possibility and potential of controlling the size of the drawings while working on them, drawing directly on a multiplane background and eliminating the need of photographing line tests and scanning.

Though traditional animation is now commonly done with computers, it is important to differentiate computer-assisted traditional animation from 3D computer animation, such as Toy Story and ReBoot. However, often traditional animation and 3D computer animation will be used together, as in Don Bluth's Titan A.E. and Disney's Tarzan and Treasure Planet. DreamWorks executive Jeffrey Katzenberg coined the term "tradigital animation" to describe films produced by his studio which incorporated elements of traditional and computer animation equally, such as Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas.

Interestingly, many modern video games such as Viewtiful Joe, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and others use "cel-shading" animation filters to make their full 3D animation appear as though it were drawn in a traditional cel style. This technique was also used in the animated movie Appleseed, and was integrated with cel animation in the FOX animated series Futurama.