Weekend Musings:
-So I'm guessing most people are aware Shingo Yamashita did the Birdy Decode S2 climax fight (the one that inspired MoS's stuff). He talked about it a bit at the panel at Animazement. He normally would have cleaned the sequence such as erasing sketch lines but didn't have enough time. He just drew and drew. He doesn't remember using an eraser once. One part of the fight had Birdy and the friend/villain(can't remember his name) fighting as part of a building fell. The original version of that particular cut was that they were fighting in a room but Yamashita asked the director if he could modify that cut into what you see in the final version.
-Yamashita had a month to do the SSY ED. It took him three weeks to read the novels so he did the ED in a week. He did the early animation and storyboards in a single day. As already known, he did everything for the ED such as coloring and backgrounds.
-For Naruto ED 15, the ED director wanted the ED to be one long fight sequence and thought it would be cool to have different animators work on it while still being seamless. It turned into a sort of competition.
-I think Kameda won hands down. Sorry, Yamashita.
-Animator Support Group autograph section was awesome, partially because nobody showed. First day I got 4 sketches, two from Yamashita and two from Tanagawa. Tanagawa put in work for everybody's sketches (everybody requested Gundam Reconguista sketches). Yamashita had a ton of difficulty drawing Birdy, especially around the mouth.
-Hidaka and Inoue's autograph session on Saturday was a shitshow. Watanabe's was just as bad and what's worse is that Watanabe is a slow signer so out of the 200+ people there, I doubt more thab 60 to 70 got autographs, I didn't stay to confirm though.
While I was going through my LWA blu-rays, I started reading the pamphlet/booklet that came with the BDs. Inside was a series of interviews with all the major staff. If you own the BDs and have the booklet, I highly recommend reading it as it works as a good companion piece for the LWA Making-Of video. I'll type up some pieces of information I picked up, for the people without BDs:
-Akko got her name from a common nickname for young/early female animators in the industry. So there are many 'Akkos' floating around.
-Suzy was supposed to be more of a loser in the original version, so as to show Akko was hanging out with the losers. However they changed it to the smart-ass version.
-In the early scripts, there were scenes with Akko actually studying to get into the magical academy. Yoshinari was worried though that would create a plot hole of Akko then not knowing Shiny Chariot's perception in the magical world.
-LWA takes place in England and the school itself is in some sort of alternate dimension that allows them to use magic freely.
-Diana is obviously English and she flew from England to Japan to see Shiny Chariot's show. Diana at the show was a change by one of the animators, Sakamoto (I think).
-Yoshinari feels the book series 'The Worst Witch' was a bigger source of inspiration rather than Harry Potter.
-Otsuka was a fan of the Mirai project for a long time as it reminded him of his work at Gainax where he helped to foster talent. Obviously Trigger was, and is, broke so they couldn't really afford to foster talent in that manner so Otsuka liked the government money component. Otsuka had seemingly been tinkering with the idea of making Yoshinari a director but was worried that if they suggested him to a production committee, he would be shoeboxed into making an action series due to his status as an action/effects animator.
-Otsuka brought it up to to Yoshinari, who at the time was working on KLK. Imaishi obviously wasn't wild about losing his best animator but thought it would be good for Yoshinari.
-Yoshinari had wanted to try his hand at being a director and agreed after taking some time to think about it. He brought back two concepts quickly as the submission deadline was coming up. One was a supernatural action animal thing that Otsuka described 'just as one would expect of Yoshinari' and the other was girls attending a magical school. Guess which won?
-Yoshinari kept the designs simple because he thought the animators would focus too much on the designs and not other aspects.
-As for selecting the animators, Otsuka said they wanted young animators but not too inexperienced. "You can't expect a junior high student to complete a high-school level curriculum."
-Yoshinari is extremely blunt in his criticisms. Told one of the animators, "Your skill doesn't match what you want to do". Even later mentioned one of them would work better as a director rather than as animator.
-Yoshinari wanted a Tim Burton-esque atmosphere. This shocked Otsuka. However Yoshinari either changed his mind or what he had in mind wasn't close to say, A Nightmare Before Christmas. I think Otsuka was relieved.
-Yuji Kaneko ( note that the book only names Kaneko but I doubt they would have let the younger animator do the SBs) did the storyboarding and did it in color, which is very unusual.
-Takafumi Hori also learned some stuff from Yoshinari. There was some example about using actual film to do an effect/animation.
-Yoshinari tried to facilitate the animators' styles rather than 'correct' them. He notes there isn't one right way to draw and so it was important to get their basic skills up, like eye level or body language.
-Yoshinari wasn't sure if they were going to finish in time because one of the restrictions of the Mirai project is that you can't bring in outside help later. The usual production method is that you have an initial staff and you hire/bring in more animators later when the deadline looms.
-Yoshinari is happy he did the project as he had a large amount of creative freedom and didn't have to worry about sales, but wants to forget it. He's not happy that Akko didn't really struggle or have doubts. In short he thought it was too simple.
There were some good interviews with the animators and they detail some of the elements that Yoshinari corrected them on. Like Sakamoto had difficulty drawing the crowds in the opening.
Oh and a minor entertaining moment happened at the Support Group autograph session. I have a
Gurren Lagann poster that I'm toting around. So I brought it up for Yamashita to sign (as he did some key animation for TTGL) and he immediately knew it was Yoshinari before I even finished unrolling it and initially refused. I guess he was worried that I was trying to make him sign Yoshinari's work. I'm pretty sure he said something along the lines of "Yoshinari will kill me". It seemed like the other two animators were taking jabs on him that he was trying to pass it off as his own. I had to convince him that yes I know it's Yoshinari's and I'm getting Yoshinari to sign it. Yoshinari really does have a sort of reverence in the industry.
lol
