Hiroaki Ando is a director who has made the integration of high-quality CGI his personal hallmark, regularly collaborating with Polygon Pictures. His approach seeks to convey the same tension and rawness of traditional drawing through digital animation, with a marked taste for dark science fiction worlds and visceral atmospheres.
The fusion between human strokes and digital rendering 🎨
Ando does not simply throw polygons onto the screen. His methodology prioritizes dynamic lighting and aggressive contrast to simulate the texture of pencil on paper. In productions like Ajin, the characters' movement maintains an intentional stiffness that evokes stop-motion, while in Gambo (Short Peace) he explores brittle organic textures. The result is a 3D that does not seek plastic perfection, but rather the expressiveness of the imperfect stroke.
When CGI becomes more human than some humans 🤖
The curious thing is that, while many studios try to make their 3D characters look like rubber or shiny plastic, Ando manages to make his digital creatures look hand-drawn with India ink and a bad mood. His monsters and semi-humans have more expression wrinkles than some flesh-and-blood actors. And all without the need for facial motion capture, just pure malicious geometry and grumpy shaders.