Sensei's 2015.04 Update: Just in time for Thanksgiving

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Re: Sensei in 2015: First Look

Post by sensei »

Thanks, JD. Yes, one thing I've trying to do is get and pass on a clearer sense of what went on behind the scenes in working up the animation for anime, which I'm finding is often a much more complicated story than at first seems. Even in a somewhat uncomplicated cut, there are oddities and unexpected details, and they imply a story, even if I don't always have enough information to tell it in full detail.

To look more closely at Cut 208, it shows seven steps from the earliest version to the final image. Here's how this works out for the "1.5" key (which became the "1" key, the first visible image in this cut, when the original "1" image was left on the cutting room floor).

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The layout image, very simply done and a little "cartoony" in impact. I can't tell who did this drawing, as the layouts, even from one episode, show a lot of difference in style. Anyhow, it's just a point of departure.

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Light Orange's first correction. That moves Karada back a step and shows her just barely inside the frame. The perspective has been improved and the posing of her arm as she moves in is more natural. But the face is still very "cartoony."

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Light Green's first correction. It's just the face, but the eyes look more natural and, in ways that are hard to define, she "looks like Karada" for the first time.
This supports my supposition that Light Orange is the junior animator Ryoichi Oki, and Light Green is his supervisor, character designer Ikuko Itou.

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This leads to the genga, which cleans up and elaborates Light Orange's sketch of Karada's body and adopts Light Green's revision of her head and face. A very nice piece of work. But there's an odd feature of this sketch, that only becomes clear when you handle it and especially when you try to scan it.

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Look at the edges: they've been roughly ripped off on the left and on the bottom. This genga sketch of Karada was larger and has been roughly trimmed down to size. Even so, this sketch is 3/4 inch wider than the previous two sketches. I only assume that the genga artist drew Karada's whole body, to be sure that the part that will show in the animation will be correctly proportioned. But it's odd that the sketch would be trimmed by physically tearing off strips of paper like this.

Then another puzzlement:

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Here's Light Orange's second correction. It's nearly a complete sketch, and at first glance it seems to be identical with the genga. No wonder when I saw some of these sketches in my previous bunch of additions, I assumed that, for some reason, Oki had been asked to do a revised rough, which the gengaman had cleaned up in that sketch. But when I flickered the genga and this sketch:

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You can now see quite a few subtle changes. The most obvious are in Karada's clothing, especially in the back, where the animator made quite a few changes. But actually the whole face, hair, highlights and shadows, and the placement of the eyes, has been adjusted, though very subtly. And comparing Light Orange to the douga, you can see that these changes were adopted in the final stage of the image.

So I was wrong (and will need to revise my previous AnH uploads to match my new option). The second Light Orange correction is not pre-genga but post-genga. I'm still not sure why Oki did such a full revision, when much of the genga was "good enough." Perhaps Itou-sama asked him to do this, as a kind of master's class on how to turn "good enough" animation into "stellar" work.

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Anyhow, the rest of the story is straightforward. The second Light Green correction just works on the eyes (Oki and Itou seem to have had a long dispute over the shape of Karada's eyes, Oki making them oval, Itou constantly correcting them to make them rounder.)

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And finally the douga, a simple enough seeming image of a carefree girl, but now the more impressive as you've seen just how much work went into making it "just right."

Ick. I'm putting off the yucky but necessary work on that celotape. :tongue
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Re: Sensei in 2015: First Look

Post by sensei »

Sorry, I've had some pressing stuff 'roll to deal with, some of it personal, some of it professional. I have a bunch of snapshots of taking off celotape to process, but that's going to take time, so I'm pressing on to the other sketch sets in my new AnH hoard.

The set for Cut 210 comes in soon after the one just discussed, and it too shows nine steps of animation development: layout, rough, rough shuusei, genga, genga shuusei 1, genga shuusei 2, douga. Again the alternation of light orange and light green paper, so I'm pretty sure Episode Animation Director Oki is "light orange" and Senior AD Ikuko Itou is "light green." So no big surprises here.

But there are oddities :shrug that are worth pausing over:

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A nice enough layout ("just not Karada...") -- but look at the background the artist is working on. How long do you think it took to draw all those individual nick-nacks in the shop window to the left of Karada's head :coffee: ? And how mad was this animator when they decided to draw Karada from a higher-up perspective so that none of the shop window was visible :puzzled ? (But I did re-watch this scene, and I was amused to see that the nick-nack window, still full of glittery bling, does show up fleetingly in some of the cuts of this scene.)

Under "things an animation art collector hates to see" ...

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Ouch! :bawl That sketch was ripped across on the top below the registration holes and then celotaped to a new registration strip. Three strips of tape on the front and one big long one all the way across the back. That's gonna be trouble, though I'm glad to see that none of the tape is covering any of the art. Pretty genga, though. It will be worth the trouble.

Under "things that an animation art collector loves to see" ...

Flipping through the roughs and shuusei roughs from this set, with interest but a bit of disappointment as so many of them are partials. And then you flip over one more and ...

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Oh, baby, baby, baby! :OMG Complete shuusei rough by Ikuko Itou, the kind she very occasionally does when she wants a moment to really "pop." :flower Whoa baby :flower ... it's time to pop the Dogfish Head :buds: . This is gonna be a memorable update, not just a lot of stuff.
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Re: Sensei in 2015: First Look

Post by sensei »

OK, so now it's time to do a celotapectomy on my new sketches. I've got a patient:

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Who's got three strips of tape on the front, one in each corner and one in the middle

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and one big nasty strip all across the back

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Tape on both sides of the sketch is nearly impossible to remove, but I can give myself a break by gently slitting the strips on the front

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That lets me get in between the sheets a little ways, and get solvent on both sides

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So I get out my operating tools: a little bottle for the eucalyptus oil solvent (easier to manage than my big bottle), a very dull craft knife, and a cotton swab.

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And a big cardboard operating table for the paper "patient"

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First I "outline" the two corner strips on the front

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Then I saturate the backside with solvent, including the part in between the sheets

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Then I "outline" the big strip on the back, not all the way across, but about a third way from either end

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Saturate the other side and let it sit for a few minutes

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Now the adhesive is softened and the tape should come away from the paper easily

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But watch out: some of the adhesive sticks to the paper rather than to the tape. This particular kind is like rubber cement and balls up if you rub the craft knife gently over the place the tape was

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OK: the tape is off both the left and right sides but still in place in the middle. I hang it up over a vent to dry for about fifteen minutes.

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Now the sketch is ready for two little strips of filmoplast, an archival-grade paper tape used to repair rare books and artifacts.

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One little strip on the left and one on the right: and be careful to make sure the two separated strips of paper lie flat when you put it on. That will ensure that the sketch and the registration holes will stay in the exact same connection with each other when you get the tape in the middle off.

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And it's back to the "operating table" to go after the tape in the middle

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Once again, saturate the side opposite where the tape is and let it rest a few minutes

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And with a little help with the dull craft knife (always be careful when you have artwork under tape, as a peel can deface your sketch permanently) the tape comes off

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Finally, the sketch gets hung in my office for the rest of the day so the solvent clears completely. As usual, a couple of other sketches get the same treatment.

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Tape's off and the sketch is ready for a backing board (because removing the tape leaves the join looser than before) plus a sheet of microchamber paper, and its ready for long-term storage.

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Thankfully, there was not a lot of tape in this batch of sketches, and all of it "the good stuff," relatively easy to loosen and remove and relatively stable.
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Re: Sensei in 2015: First Look

Post by JWR »

Nice to see all the work and care you put into perserving your collection in the step by step pictures.
A lot of work but well worth it.
"Like the wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we are, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment." Harlan Ellison
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Re: Sensei in 2015: First Look

Post by sensei »

Tired of work. I realized that the reason I was sneezing so much and so violently was because there was something in the sketches I still had to process. The last cut was a long, complicated, and not very dramatic set. It's interesting, simply because it sets up the psychological motives for the big moment. But once when I flipped a sheet, I picked up just the hint of tobacco smoke. That might be why I'm sneezing.

Anyhow, I decided not to scan and present this cut in full. It has nine keys of the main character (plus two of her boyfriend, who's only partially seen in the corner), and when I did a trial run (just the layouts) I could not get them to run together into anything watchable. But I was taken up a bit short by this sketch, the A7 rough (by Ikuko Itou, I'm sure)

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Pretty: but what's up around the eyes? Yes, if you look closely, Itou-sama has drawn and erased those eyes so many times that the paper has worn thin at that spot and begun to pucker.

And why are all these B-level dougas in the set? They're all just two little dots. Ohhhh ... they're eye highlights. And I see from the timing sheet that they "glimmer" all through the last part of the cut.

But they don't glimmer! I've seen that cut a couple dozen times now. I'd have noticed if they glimmer. Let's screen it again.

Nope, no glimmer.

But maybe I missed it. Back it up.

No, there's definitely no glimmer.

But if no glimmer, why the dougas, why the directions in the timing sheet? Lessee ... if it's there, it's just the lower right side of the eye. Back it up one more time. And ...

Damn! They do glimmer. Just in that little corner of the eyes.

Now how many viewers would ever notice that? At least consciously?

Well ... time to stop scanning and get the stuff ready to upload.
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Re: Sensei's 2015.01 Update: Nils, Asatte, MKR, TnN, more

Post by sensei »

It's no secret that Sensei is not getting his updates up as quickly as before, and sadly there's no blue pill that makes the cel-scrubbing, tape-removing, scanning, researching, and writing go more quickly. Nevertheless, the update that the last round of entries kept teasing you with now is up, checked for markup errors (there probably still are some), and ready for traffic.

The big winner this time around is The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, an interesting 1980-81 "golden age" series that was the first offering of the newly founded Studio Pierrot. Based on a Swedish geography textbook written for the country's public schools by Selma Lagerlöf (soon to be the first female Nobel Prize winner in literature), it did well in Japan and especially well overseas, particularly in the Middle East (there are Turkish, Israeli, Arabic, and Farsi dubs). And it made enough good noise that France's DIC Audiovisuel teamed up with the same production crew to create The Mysterious Cities of Gold, which proved a gold mine for the studio.

Briefly, it's about a bratty little boy who gets shrunk by a gnome and runs off with the family barn goose to join a flock of migrating geese. (He learns a lot about Swedish geography in the process.) I've added:

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Flockleader Aka giving Nils a ride home from an adventure, this nice distant image and a closer one from the same cut showing

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Nils conking out pleasantly from a hard day.

Plus a set showing

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Dunfin, the wild gray goose they help and who becomes Nils's companion's Sweet Baboo.

And a long and dramatic set showing

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Nils and Carrot rising on the barn goose's wings.

That one comes with

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An especially nice reanimation.

But Asatte no Hōkō (last year's "Gallery of the Year") also gets some eyeworthy additions. I learned that Ikuko Itō did indeed take on the animation of a number of cuts, from layout to genga correction, and so we get some nice sketchwork showing

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Karada's first day at school

But the best part was picking up a related set of sketch sets from an especially dramatic moment, where we see Shōko, the bitter adult who's about to switch ages with Karada,

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sizing up the situation

And when Karada, excited over the gift her onii-chan (and Shōko's former lover) has given her, runs up to say

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“How do they look?”

she replies,

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“They look nice!”

(Only in a not-so-nice way. And ya never know when those impish kami are listening to you, do ya?)

And the update has a bunch of interesting one-off additions, including

From Tenshi ni Narumon:

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Yuusuke Climbing to the Celestial Stairway.

(I have the gengas for this cut, and cels for three of the five keyframes. If I can only find the other two keys, I can summon the Tennimon Dragon. This wasn't a key, but I was happy to add it to the others.)

From Magic Knight Rayearth:

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SD Umi sprouting bunny ears (or is that just Mokona jumping on her back and scaring her?)

From Andersen Monogatari (the landmark 1971 Mushi anime that created the "Masterpiece Theatre" genre):

Image Rudy, the hero of Andersen's "Ice Maiden," has breakfast

That's not one of the Danish tale-spinner's better-known stories, but it translated well to Japanese audiences, as the villainess is a supernatural entity much like the Yuki-Onna and is like her, implacably fatal to those whom she attracts.

And most notably, thanks to Princess Nadia (and Cutiebunny's Secret Santa art exchange this year):

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Daisaku Kusama, the human protagonist of the 1992-98 Giant Robo OVA.

Silly me, I hadn't run across this series before (though I had watched a lot of The Big O, which was done by many of the same artist). But on researching this dramatic cel, I find that Giant Robo has a lot of supporters. Something to learn around every turn.

Looks to be a while before the next upgrade. I have a few things in the pot, but as I always refrain from auction browsing over Lent, I'll want to be patient and get enough for a truly worthy event. So until June (or July maybe)... Happy hunting and enjoy!
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Re: Sensei's 2015.01 Update: Nils, Asatte, MKR, TnN, more

Post by KinoLRB »

This is an exciting update, Sensei. After all that hard work and tape removal, you should be proud. The Asatte no Hōkō sketches are so delicately drawn, rendered with such emotion and care, they're beautiful. 'Nils conking out' is my favorite of your plastic additions. The image is so simple, but humanizing to the character. It makes me want to go to sleep--but in a good way. I know it's a ways off, but I look forward to your next set of updates, plus whatever tutorials you have in store for us. :)
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Re: Sensei's 2015.01 Update: Nils, Asatte, MKR, TnN, more

Post by sensei »

Thanks, Kino. Yes, it's work (and I still need to catalog in some of my stuff so I know where it is 9 months from now) but also a lasting mental stimulus and aesthetic joy. With (usually) a sound and peaceful night's sleep to follow. Nils is an interesting series (I've watched a couple of episodes in the German dub on YouTube). Maybe not up to the standards set by EVA or the landmark series of the 90s, but enjoyable in its quirky 80s way. Modern textbook authors could certainly take some hints from Lagerlöf!
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Re: Sensei's 2015.01 Update: Nils, Asatte, MKR, TnN, more

Post by Quacker »

Echoing Kino's sentiments, I am glad that all the effort & work of cleaning and preserving each item, be it paper or plastic, has paid-off as it really shows in this update.
The 'Asatte' additions are each beautiful standouts while there is a simple grace to the Dunfin cel. Overall this was another enjoyably eclectic update with items ranging across the spectrum along with the customary illuminating commentary & observations.
Shall look forward to your next mid-year update to see what further undiscovered or little-known treasures you may uncover & share with the rest of us.
My Cel Gallery can be found here:

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A growing collection of Escaflowne, Evangelion, FMP, Fate/Stay Night plus other cels that are among my Favourites. No cheap & nasty stuff here.
Come, check out the cutesy female & Mecha madness!!
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Re: Sensei's 2015.01 Update: Nils, Asatte, MKR, TnN, more

Post by sensei »

Thank you, Quacker. I see that my enthusiasm over Asatte has had this much effect: the steady supply of sketches that held over most of last year has rather abruptly stopped. I'm guessing that the seller is beginning to realize that this material is more valuable that s/he thought. Or maybe a private deal by a Tutuphile for the unsold inventory?

A shame, as I was hoping that we'd next see some art from the big age-exchange scene at the end of Ep. 1. But no matter: I've gotten some new storage boxes from Bags Unlimited, and promptly filled one to the top with my Ep. 1 sketch sets. I've gotten some of the nicest roughs I've ever seen, and learned volumes about why AnH is such a visually effective series, which I knew instinctively at first watch and now know more intellectually.

Nils is one of those intriguing series where the art is engaging but the episodes hard to find. (Though I now see that Eps. 1-15 are now on YouTube in the French dub.) About every 15 months a batch of new cel lots show up on YHJ. Usually the bidding is very competitive, but this time I somehow saw the new sets before the usual bidders. The big series of Nils flying on Marten is exactly the kind that usually goes high, and I was lucky to get it. I'd have bid on more if I'd known I was ahead of the game. (The second time they were listed, nearly all of them sold at once.)

So, next time, probably no Nils, no Asatte. But there always seems to be something worthwhile available. Certainly more YamiBou as another thread discloses, and also some more Tennimon (a genga from one of those scenes that you would not think so from the art, but is in fact one of the deeply moving moments of the last set of episodes).

Meantime, I'm spending Lent as I usually do: updating catalogs, rebagging cels, doing deferred maintenance. It is a happy time, even if it does not involve getting new stuff. Thanks again to everyone who looked in.
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Re: Sensei's 2015.01 Update: Nils, Asatte, MKR, TnN, more

Post by sensei »

Heh. After writing the above, I got wondering if there had been any action on YouTube since the last time I'd researched Nils there. Indeed: the whole 52-episode series is now available in the French dub. While my comprehension of French (spoken very rapidly and in high-pitched voices) is not good enough to follow the dialogue, a lot of the story is carried by the action. Anyhow, I was able to find my cels from Ep. 44 (Bataki pris au piège) and screencap them.

The series seems to have been especially popular in France, which makes more sense that Pierrot's next project was Les Mystérieuses Cités d'or (same director and character designer).
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Re: Sensei's 2015.02 Update: May (just in time) Madness

Post by sensei »

Probably the last one for a long time, but with some welcome newcomers.

Again, cel lovers have an easy choice:

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Sakura victorious at the end of the first movie

I don't add many cels to my CCS holdings any more: it is, after all, even more than I ever dreamed it would be at the start (see CB's nice retrospective thread). But this one made me remember all the happy times in the last decade when I opened a flat box and unpacked that CCS cel. /kis

or ...

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Sakura tries to Terminate Kazumi

A welcome event, as Hyper Police cels haven't been plentiful for some time, much less set-ups with the original matching background. Plus Kazumi is an interesting minor character who only appears fleetingly in this single episode.

Now, people who enjoy pencil-on-paper art have a much bigger buffet to choose from. Let's start with the stars of the update.

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Full Moon wo Sagashite: Meroko

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Full Moon wo Sagashite: Mitzuki as Full Moon

WAAAAAAAAIIIIT A SECOND!! /omg Studio Deen notoriously had all the Full Moon artwork destroyed, and all that survives is some photocopy pieces, settei, storyboards, genga copies, etc. So where do these sketches come from?

Well, I'm not sure. The seller (twin_angels_xx) is a straight arrow, but it's true that neither sketch has the notations (episode, cut, level/sequence number) that would identify them as production art. But they are nice, and the second one does seem to fit with a specific moment in the first episode. Despite their dubious provenance, then, I thought them worth owning (thanks, crackpot) and worth doing longish sensified "fussy notes" on them.

Well, then, to art that is more documentably authentic. I've added four new items to my "Episode 12" Rozen Maiden gallery, plus united an original layout with the rest of the sketches from the same cut.

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The injured Shinku despairs.

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Jun to Shinku: “Stay there!”

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Jun runs through the forest

Plus two more from the little coda to the episode in which all the dolls move back in and get ready for the sequel (while Nomad is busy putting all of Suigintou's parts back together in the woods).

And some nice additions from Asatte no Houkou including

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Kotomi introduces herself (Actually, we see her in an earlier scene, where she's stalking poor Shouko-chan, but this is where we find out who she is, or who she says she is.)

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Karada and Tetsu meet again. (That's a moment that we know has to happen sooner or later, and when it does, in the opening cuts of Ep. 10, it is electric.)

And from Yamibou, the series with the intense yuri theme and the danged good artwork:

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Yamibou (Ep. 6): Milka sees visitors come to her island (This is the whole set that goes with the singleton layout that I got in a grab-bag lot earlier.)

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The fox-spirit Tamamonomae (I'm still not sold on the plot, but Sensei has a Thing for nine-tailed fox spirits.)

And finally, a whole cartload of Tenshi ni Narumon sketchwork. I like the series and the art, and I'm perpetually fascinated by the crazy-quilt way the series was actually put together. Some artists were undistinguished studio workers who did a lot of work on forgettable series by Pierrot and other studios. And others were hungry young animators with stronger credits ahead of them. Such as Ep. 20, with storyboarding by "Katsuyo Hashimoto," a pseudonym for a hardworking gengaman under contract with Toei, who was moonlighting from his Sailor Moon and DBZ chores. In 2006 he was ready to break out under his real name, Mamoru Hosoda, as the director of the feature anime film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, gaining a reputation since enhanced by his Summer Wars and Wolf Children.

Animation direction for this episode, one of three subcontracted to Animation Kyoto, was Kazumi Ikeda, who likewise had more significant things in her headlights. As AniKyo grew from a subcontract crew to a major studio (thanks to her associate, Tatsuya Ishihara), she became character designer/chief animation director of the Kanon remake (2006) , Clannad (2007), and, most recently, Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions (2012).

So it is interesting to get a glimpse at some of the communications that passed among the Tennimon animators. Thus, my latest "quirky tour,"

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Tennimon behind the scenes.

This tour looks at some of the odds and ends that show up for sale every so often, which often are not especially distinguished as art, but which give you a sense of how a series like this was actually envisioned and given visual form. So you get photocopies, layouts, roughs, and (a treat for me)

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an original art board with revisions and editorial comments presumably by the series art director, Chikako Shibata (later art director for Chobits, Fruits Basket, Getbackers, Honey and Clover, the Higurashi saga, and Rozen Maiden among others).

And the occasional nice piece, like

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Mama reads the invitation, a glorious complete shuusei genga by Kazumi Ikeda.

But don't miss the translations of the more elaborate comments, provided by Beta heavy-hitter KuroiTsubasa4, which give a sense of the considerations and sometimes of the personalities involved. For the latter, be sure to visit the two little rough animations from Ep. 20 at the end, covered with snarky comments about the quality of Ms. Ikeda's first animation drafts ("I'm sorry but this is also not quite turning into what I hoped for ... "). While not sure, I think these remarks must be by the series senior animation director, Hitomi Kato.

Plus some other pieces well worth their own places in the sun. A series of related sketches, including

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Miruru watches a wedding

Encouraged me to split off my other related cels and sketches from Ep. 20 and give this nice episode its own gallery. Another treat was getting this great moment from the very end of the penultimate episode:

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Papa to Natsumi: “We are a family.”

That's one of those absurd images, taken in isolation, that turns out to be an immensely moving scene in the context of this episode.

And more around the edges. All told a wide-ranging set of additions that I learned a lot from processing and hope that I pass on this knowledge to you. Enjoy! And say "Ahhh ... I never knew that ..."
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Re: Sensei's 2015.02 Update: May (just in time) Madness

Post by cutiebunny »

Nice update, Sensei. I really enjoyed your Quirky Gallery Tour this time, largely because it was made more relevant after meeting Kato at SakuraCon.
sensei wrote: For the latter, be sure to visit the two little rough animations from Ep. 20 at the end, covered with snarky comments about the quality of Ms. Ikeda's first animation drafts ("I'm sorry but this is also not quite turning into what I hoped for ... "). While not sure, I think these remarks must be by the series senior animation director, Hitomi Kato.
After dining with the man, I'd believe this. Yes, Kato is passionate about animation and especially any project where the characters are his personal design, but he is incredibly blunt and is almost insulting. Assuming he was the same grump he was when I met him, Ikeda and all her female coworkers probably had to tread lightly. It's interesting to see that, even while TnN was in production, his well chosen words more or less told the animator that their work sucked and they need to redo it. Perhaps it's for these reasons that, despite being very talented in animation, he has not been involved as character designer for too many projects within the last 15 years. I imagine he's made many foes along the way.
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Re: Sensei's 2015.02 Update: May (just in time) Madness

Post by sensei »

Thank you for backing up my impression (and, of course, HIROMI (not Hitomi) Kato -- I was :coffee: bushed last night). I've had some other chatter among animators translated in the past, and found in other cases that criticisms or revisions were handled with much more politeness and "yoroshiku onigaishimasu" (a polite phrase that signifies "please do this" plus "let's be friends about it"). It really struck me that these comments (and the one made earlier about Mirror Muse) were more edgy than most of these.

You could be right that he had very high standards and a clear sense of what he wanted, even in relatively unimportant scenes like the baseball pitching. And in addition he came across as just a bit of a bully about it. Of course Kazumi Ikeda was just a journeyman contracted animator and not really seen as a "colleague" of Kato's. Being female, too, might have put her on the "newbie" list so far as Kato was concerned.

But -- golly! -- look at her roughs and shuusei gengas! They really show a finish and an elegance that's hard to beat (except by those by her sister Shouko in the sketches I have from Inuyasha). Even in the photocopy I uploaded, you can see just how good they are, compared to some of the much more impressionistic roughs by other Tennimon artists. So it makes me all the more intrigued by them, knowing that she was both a major talent on the way to important work AND someone who was still being given the back of the hand by someone who'd already made it.

(And, from what CB says, on his way down rather than headed for new heights.)

Just a hint of the human drama :ewhip: that produced the animated drama we all know and love.
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KinoLRB
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Re: Sensei's 2015.02 Update: May (just in time) Madness

Post by KinoLRB »

sensei wrote:But -- golly! -- look at her roughs and shuusei gengas!
They are terrific. Perhaps Kato was a bit jealous of an up-and-coming talent...

It's been a while, but this update was worth the wait, Sensei. The Sakura cel is gorgeous, and I love the detail on both Jun and the background in the "running" sketch from Rozen Maiden. The "Full Moon" sketches are also a great find, despite the lack of annotations.
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