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Julian
"Freedom" is an OAV series sponsored through product placement by Nissin Cup Noodle, with designs and storyboards by Katsuhiro Otomo, director of Akira and Steamboy. It's about a teenage hoverbike racer in a 23rd century lunar colony, who uncovers the secrets behind the abandonment of Earth. One episode has been released so far, and a fansub is available from the usual sources for fansubs.

Click to view attachment

This anime is the closest that cel-shaded CGI has come to looking indistinguishable from hand-drawn animation. Backgrounds for this production are mostly hand-drawn, and the characters and vehicles are 3D models that capture the style of Otomo's artwork very well. The lighting is able to prevent the cel shading from looking too obvious by keeping the shadows subdued and the light source angled only very slightly away from being parallel to the camera direction. All of the characters have a shadow on the bridge of their nose that I think might be an image map. The presence of the shadow itself is an interesting artistic choice: X-Men Evolution used to have it on their characters too, but they abandoned it in their last season.

Official site (with a cumbersome Flash interface): http://freedom-project.jp/

The video clips shown on the official site seem to be from a workprint; the cel shading in the final product looks sharper than that.
Kricket
Interesting, will have to check it out!

edit: All the product placements for Cup o Noodle were hilarious, but still, it was very entertaining to watch. Definitely want to see more. They definitely captured the artists style even tho the animation was very iffy.
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