Dive Into the Future of Anime With 4K HDR Short ‘Sol Levante’2 min read

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Anime’s diverse and fantastical stories, vibrant styles and delicate lines are an art form that has evolved from its creative home in Japan, and grown in global popularity, variety and sophistication over the last 50 years. Today, Netflix is proud to showcase the stunning world of Sol Levante; an original anime that is a culmination of art, technology, and curiosity.

Since 2017, Netflix has been invested in Japanese anime. They’re passionate about the genre now more than ever. By working with top talent, they have been forging the way to become a home for creators and anime fans around the world.

Given the rapid adoption of HDR capable devices in consumers’ homes, they wondered what it would take to increase anime’s resolution to 4K and introduce a wider colour palette of high dynamic range (HDR) to artists’ toolsets to offer members a more compelling visual experience in the long term. They quickly learned, increasing the resolution meant hand drawings needed to be completed on a much larger piece of paper than the standard A4-sized paper, or scanned at a very high resolution. Either were not viable solutions, hence, drawings had to be done digitally on a tablet. The challenge was, most anime artists lack training and equipment to go digital.

In the two years they worked on Sol Levante, they navigated the complex traditional anime production model that involves numerous stakeholders and subcontractors, all with varying levels of often outdated technology that did not support the additional brightness and colour gamut available to them in HDR.

During pre-production of Sol Levante, Director Saitoh had to carefully balance shots with simple lines and shots with finer detail. Upon drawing characters, animator Hisashi Ezura had to adjust the pen pressure to create the correct thickness for character outlines. Even small adjustments to skin tone could easily change the character’s overall appearance.

Watch Sol Levante on Netflix with any HDR configured device with your Premium subscription.