[Reynoldbot]

Reading the reviews for the recent releases of Akira and South Park Season 12, I noticed that the reviewer mentioned a sort of "haloing" effect surrounding characters in the foreground, and attributed it as a flaw in the transfers. This haloing is a product of traditional hand-painted cel animation, and has nothing to do with the transfer. It is caused by the painted object on the cel literally casting a shadow when it is photographed, and can be very difficult to prevent or correct. Watch any Simpsons episode when it was still hand-painted and you will find scores of examples.

South Park, however, is completely digital. Only the pilot episode was made with cardboard cutouts, and since has been made using a combination of Photoshop/Illustrator and 3D powerhouse Maya. The appearance of haloing in South Park is done intentionally in order to maintain the illusion of crude handmade cutouts (though as the years progressed, the animation has become much more stylized and the various techniques less "realistically" applied).

I just wanted to clear this up so that nobody thinks these haloes are a fault of the transfer, instead of an innocuous by-product of traditional animation.