Hiromasa Yonebayashi and Studio Ponoc’s animated feature Mary and The Witch’s Flower, which debuted last month in Japan and will be released in North America by GKIDS, is the first feature to incorporate the free, open source animation software OpenToonz into its production pipeline.
Japanese publisher Dwango acquired the Toonz software last year from Italian tech company Digital Video, which has been producing the animation package since 1993, and has begun distributing it as free, modifiable software that can be further developed by individual users and studios.
Even though Mary is the first film to use the open source version, earlier versions of Toonz have been used extensively in professional productions, most notably by Studio Ghibli to produce films like The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, Howl’s Moving Castle, and The Wind Rises. Yonebayashi himself directed two films at Ghibli – The Secret World of Arrietty and When Marnie Was There – which used Toonz software, so it’s logical that he would continue working with the open source version in his post-Ghibli work.
