Tokyo Godfathers, the world of animation. To make characters stand out in the elaborate backgrounds of Tokyo Godfathers, the acting and face expressions
are richly detailed. By using cartoon-like deformation and elongation and contraction freely, realistic traits of characters and the realistic world
of Tokyo Godfathers are created. Hints of characters' facial
expressions and body movements come from a huge number
of pictures and videos. This cosplay photoshoot
was conducted to capture the chara
cters' detailed movements
because it's hard to draw them... ...as they're heavily dressed. Looking at live acting
is the easiest way to be accurate, so we shot them in real costumes
while they were acting. It is the director, his wife,
and the producer, Toyoda. The director was
like the character itself. He immediately became Hana
once we started shooting, so it was fun. We made this bicycle scene
a year after the cosplay shooting. The super animators, Toshiyuki Inoue
and Shinji Otsuka, drew thi
s scene without
any difficulties. Because they were
simultaneously working on other bicycle-oriented animation, we consciously used bicycle scenes for the highlights of the film. In three of Mr. Kon's works, running scenes are used as an important element. In this film, also, we could shoot and see
how each character runs, so it was very helpful. The elaborate storyboards by
Director Kon include layouts, dialogues,
and characters' facial expressions. And each picture was scanned to add movements
, which is called,
"storyboard shooting." Director Kon added
temporary dubbing to these to instruct the staff on the
characters' movements and breath timings. It was the sound director,
Mr. Mima's idea to add voiceovers, so that we animators could refer to it to grasp the overall image
of the film. When we only partially
participate in films, we don't always consider
the whole image of the film. With these storyboards and voices, it's easier for us to understand
what we are actually making, so i
t's better to have
something like this. Characters are created based on the storyboards. This is a video made
with the keyframes using the Quick
Action Recorder. This is the first
video created by Mr. Shinji Otsuka. So, it was the
first time for us to see the three
characters moving. The pictures were described
in so much detail, and each character was moving
as it should be, so we could see it, like,
"Oh, that's what he's like!" So characters became even more
realistic than what was on the stor
yboards. This QAR video by Mr. Otsuka
was shared with animators at a meeting as a sample to show what the film was like. When I saw this for the first time, I was amazed and I laughed. I expected something more realistic, because I think this is more like a manga. I was assuming something
more realistic, but when I saw this, "Yes! Let's do this!" "This is what it's supposed to be." If you see this much quality even before we start... ...it raises our expectations and we all start aiming higher.
Then you think about
what you should do. "If Mr. Otsuka does this, what should I do?" We may come up
with different ideas though... Our image of Gin was Shigeru lzumiya. But once we started working on it, to express how he moves, we just needed to draw him
as an old man. So, I believe each animator drew the character of the old man with their own image in mind. I think that was good enough. And it looked perfectly like Gin. Ando was in charge of Hana. He and I are rivals. We used to work for Stu
dio Ghibli. I'm not as good as him though. He was in charge of this scene. He did a great job though, And of course, I, as an animation director, drew Hana and he perfectly replicated it. I mean, he matched it perfectly. He was even helping me in my directing work in the end. His contribution was remarkable. That's how he was working this time. This character, Miyuki, was the only character... ...that we could draw pretty. So, as an animation director, I enjoyed drawing her. The features on her
face are ugly, and although she isn't
exactly pretty... I personally thought she should get prettier, and I wanted to draw her pretty. So from the middle of production I started drawing her pretty, the way I envisioned her to be. Mr. Otsuka drew keyframes mostly without in-between animations. Normally, in-between animations are created based on keyframes, so the number of animation frames depends on the number of keyframes. So, drawing all of the frames is a tremendous amount of work. I think, o
nly Mr. Otsuka could manage this. This animation consists of 218 frames. For him, the number of keyframes is the same as the number of animation frames. So, he drew 218 keyframes. I really didn't need to edit them at all. Sometimes, his deformation was extreme, and the eyes were sometimes too large, so they needed to be adjusted a little, but they were basically good as they were. I mean, since they were all keyframes, they couldn't be edited. Because if something needed to be edited, the whole
218 keyframes had to be edited. So, to adjust the size of the eyes, we had to decide if we'd go through over 200 frames. Then we would just compromise as the way they were. We were allowed to use deformation from the beginning anyways. But when we came to the editing stage, we sometimes had a hard time making decisions on Mr. Otsuka's works. Ms. Suzuki worked on many cuts. Other than this scene, she worked on Hana's singing scene as well. There were several
female animators this time, so this fi
lm is greatly supported by them. And she was one of them. Her keyframes were marvelous, so I enjoyed checking her works. Her touches are very powerful when she draws keyframes. My lines are pretty thin. Her lines are pretty thick and aggressive. I feel like I'm such a sissy, while she is more masculine. She is a nice lady though. I scouted Mr. Matsumoto for this film. About this scene... It wasn't ready and only the layouts were cut. So, Mr. Matsumoto made the rest of it. Mr. Matsumoto is now on
e of the best animators who everybody admires in this industry. So, I left them to him. I felt pretty bad about that, but it was no big deal for him. He probably joined us thinking, "I can give you a hand!" I did appreciate his help. Ms. Kawana worked on this party scene and that eccentric minister in the first scene. It was the first time her keyframes were seen. And I liked her energetic drawings. I was even amazed. I respect someone who can draw energetic keyframes. I had never met a female a
nimator like her. So, it was fun to see her keyframes. You can say, Kon's works mean Hideki Hamazu's. They've worked a lot together. He contributed even more than usual. I think he worked on the most impressive scenes. As you can see, he's done a great job on adding acting to the film. The best thing about Mr. Hamazu is his wide capacity. He always amazes us in any works... ...dramas, actions, or serious ones. It's fun to see his keyframes. He is one of the best animators I really admire. This s
cene of Gin hitting Miyuki's head at the garbage dump is drawn as planned, but this cut made me laugh because I saw how energetic they were. When we discussed the scenes with the layouts, I sent comments like, "How about this?" Then he responded to my comments with something more than I expected. So, it was fun. The pictures by Mr. Shinji Hashimoto are very unique. And I wanted to take advantage of his senses, so his pictures were utilized, and his vibe remained. Even though I discussed a lot wi
th Director Kon, his characters and his pictures were the foundation. And how I drew depended on his pictures, after all. As I was in charge of the final part of animation, I had to make sure it matched with his images. I still tried to stick to his concepts, but my ideas were probably also reflected. But I basically wanted to be "Director Kon." Mr. Honma's keyframes were very new to me. I'd never seen that type of pictures. His style is powerful and rough, which results in good pictures, so he
is more like an artist. Especially, theatrical animations require more elaborate and realistic keyframes. Mr. Honma has a wider point of view, or I mean, he introduced me to a different drawing technique. I think he impacted me the most this time. Needless to say, Mr. Toshiyuki Inoue made this action scene which lead to Hisashi Mori's scene. They are very good at making action scenes. I have nothing to say about the scenes. As the animation director this time, of course, I edited face expression
s or movements, and I even added some keyframes. One thing I tried was to keep watching animations because I didn't want some cuts to ruin otherwise great scenes. Throughout the film, I wanted the movements to be well-balanced and the animation quality to be higher than average. There is someone who checks the animation, so an animation director doesn't usually do animation checking. I should be editing the pictures and
movements if I have time to watch them, but checking animations was importan
t to me as part of my job as an animation director. I worked as an animation director at that stage as well. As I was able to supervise the whole thing, I think... ...watching through the whole process was effective after all. For a film, focusing on acting like this, drawings are important as they contain both action and acting. With high quality keyframes, everything will go well.
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