The Toonlight system is a Unity-based production workflow designed to batch generate normals and lighting data for 2D drawn elements such as character frames and sprites, producing a shading pass that dynamically reacts to the lighting setup in the scene.

For comparison, it functioned similar to a virtual production workflow nowadays seen and adopted in the likes of Unreal Engine, but it was specifically tailored for a non-pbr 2D animation pipeline years ago prior.

It not only allows users to take advantage of the real-time benefits of using a game engine as one normally would, but it enabled artists to be able to rapidly iterate on the art direction and color keys of the all scene elements as well; producing a gorgeous, 3D-like shaded look for characters, that operates completely non-destructively and allowed for easy, automatic orientation or alignment of elements against any camera movement. It was designed to support different forms of animation depending on the production: frame-by-frame, puppet-rig, symbols, or hybrid animation styles – you name it.

Toonlight was used in the look-development and digital initiatives for several intellectual properties across different formats such as: cartoon shows, movie teasers, web series, and animation specials.