I
n traditional cel animation, lights and shad-ows are symbolic in that they imply an artis-tic interpretation of the characters and scene. For
example, lighting plays an important role in suggest-ing a scene’s mood, while a character’s shadow shows
where the character is standing. Highlighting also
describes various aspects of the characters and objects
in the scene. The highlight exam-ples shown in Figure 1 were made
with traditional cel animation tech-niques. In Figure 1a, we see a high-light on the swords, portraying that
the swords are flat and shiny like
plane glasses, and that they are so
sharp that the heroine might be
wounded in the next frame. The
highlight on the monster’s claws in
Figure 1b suggests that the claws
are very hard, and that they can
hurt someone easily. In Figure 1c
the highlight on the rear window of
a car shows that the window is
somewhat rounded, since the high-light area is not a simple rectangle,
but a little bit deformed. This high-light could be a kind of environment reflection or refrac-tion, rather than the brightest area on the rear window.
In addition the highlight just shows the area where
something is reflected; we don’t see what is actually
reflected on the window