Anime recommendation!
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! (映像研には手を出すな!)
I’ve only recently started to watch this fantastic animation——Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!
The painting of this animation is a little rough(This is my personal feeling lol), which is not exquisite compared with some classic Japanese animation. The proportion and dynamics of the characters are more exaggerated. (The vibes of this anime just reminds me of Masaaki Yuasa, I just feel the style is very him! And then found the director of the anime is really him as expected XD!)
The story is about three students taking their high school as the centre to start animation production. In this animation, I get the pleasure of the protagonists creating the world with their brushes!
“First year high schooler Midori Asakusa loves anime so much, she insists that “concept is everything” in animation. While she spends her time doodling endless ideas and settings in her sketchbook, she hasn’t taken the first step to creating anime, insisting that she can’t do it alone. After Asakusa’s money-loving best friend Sayaka Kanamori notices her genius and drive, and when it becomes clear that their classmate and charismatic fashion model Tsubame Mizusaki wants to be an animator, the energetic trio start an animation club. Together, the three aim to realize the “ultimate world” that exists in their minds, and come to see the power that fiction and imagination have on their lives and the world around them.” ——Plot summary from Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_Your_Hands_Off_Eizouken!
At the beginning, the trio only had some broken bits of understanding of the animation process, but in the end, the small team gradually formed, and become more and more professional. The audience witnessing the whole process also have a feeling of growing up with them. As a person who is learning animation, I feel more empathy.
This animation not only gradually introduces the steps and some necessary tools of making animation, but also bring us into the process of brainstorming. Usually characters are in a daily ordinary scene, and they will suddenly enter an imaginary world and begin to develop interesting concept settings and start their heart-stirring adventure stories.
Speak of which, here’s another anime I would like to recommend: SHIROBAKO(シロバコ).
Although this one and the above-mentioned animation are both related to animation production, but this one is completely from the perspective of the workplace. It shows us all the processes that Japanese animation companies have to go through in making an animation and the problems and conflicts they may face.
It’s interesting to know a bit about basic process of animation making in other countries. Tbh there are different working systems according to different culture backgrounds. I personally think that animators in Japan are quite under a big pressure. (Especially people who draw in-betweens, I heard that situation for keyframe artists is much more better than in-between artists. )
Anyways I feel we all have a long way to go as animators no matter which country we’ are from. But we’ll finally get there! ^^