Proposal

Essay – Proposal

Thinking of my future seems to be the one of the hardest tasks I have to do since I am still confused about my true dream and I do not have a definite dream.

My opinion often becomes like a balloon, it floats in my head for long or short period of time rising up and down. Then suddenly pops and disappears depending on the things going on around me or the experiences that I've had. My absolute honest condition that I am in right now is that, I am genuinely confused with my future.

What I know for definite is that I always enjoyed drawing since I was young, making short stories and drawing them out in a notebook. This has never disappeared from my heart and during the pre-production stage of the animation I enjoy making storyboards and character designs the most.

For the project for this term I would like to concentrate on 2D animation and I would also like to create my own short story. Recently I have discovered a 2D animation that has been created by one Japanese comedian, who isn’t a professional animator called Tekken (鉄拳). He has created the animation which recently became one of the famous 2D animation on Youtube. His animation is all based on people’s life style, how it can be happy but difficult at the same time and I got inspired by his work. I always enjoy reading or watching emotional stories based on people’s life both fictional and non-fictional, so I would love to create an emotional short piece of 2D animation based on people’s life.

To achieve this I will be using either flash or flipbook to create the animation, the reason for this is actually simple, 2D animation requires a lot of drawings and I would prefer to get them organised digitally. For the storyline ideas I would like to use the non-fictional story as the base line and add fictional details inside, so I will start off by listening to my family’s history of life to get some ideas.

Also in terms of an animation career if I could work as either a storyboard artist or character designer I would enjoy these the most.

To become a storyboard artist or character designer I will definitely need more life experiences, the idea for the storyboard could be gathered from a variety of places such as our daily life style, looking into something that you see it every day in depth may look interesting since you never look into things that you see on an every day bases in depth. Also getting influences from outside will be important, meeting people and observing their actions, poses and emotions would help to create an interesting character. I also believe that looking into an environment would be a big benefit, researching and actually visiting the places could possibly give me more ideas. Visiting new places and meeting new people, animals, plants and their environment would definitely increase the possibilities of the ideas that I could put into the storyboard or Character design.

I will also need to develop my general drawing skills, starting off with life drawings so that I could learn the anatomy of human which is one of the most essential skills that a Character designer would need. Also observational drawings, drawing from simple object such as the object that you could find at home to something complicated such as drawing animals.

Being Japanese and bilingual I could make two big choices, one is to go back to Japan and concentrate on Japanese animation. If I chose to concentrate on a career in Japanese the first large 2D animation company that comes to mind is definitely Studio Ghibli. Studio Ghibli work has always been my favourite animation since I was young, what inspires me the most is that their animation can be enjoyed by all age groups. For the young people they would enjoy their unique sweet style of drawings. A good example would be Totoro from My neighbor Totoro (1988). When I was young I used to enjoy their art work more than the storyline. But now I can understand the story better and I enjoy the film in different way. The Japanese art work has unique style, they often look for the appearance that is pretty, attractive or something that catches audience’s eyes. Japanese style of drawings really inspires me, one of the possible reason is because I grew up in Japan with Japanese animation. Another reason that I love Japanese animation is that their animation is simpler and quieter, for example Disney animation has a lot of movements at one time but most of the Japanese animation only has one or two movement since they keep the animation as efficient as possible. Personally I like the efficient environment since noisy environment is confusing.

Week 3 - Storyboard artist

Becoming a storyboard artist is actually a hard task, since the storyboard artist has the responsibilities to link the work between Director and Producer. If the storyboard didn't go into the right way, the whole production may fall into the wrong way.

A Storyboard artist is often a freelance, they are typically get hired by art directors or film directors. Storyboard artist interpret scripts and sketch ideas to create the storyboard, illustrate the narratives and plan the shots often in the way the director planned. They also work with many people, obviously the Director to get the ideas of what exactly you need to draw out on the storyboard, then you pass on to the producer which they will be producing the animation based on the storyboard that you have created, also needs to follow the storyboard supervisor's advices and making sure the storyboard actually makes sense, whether its following the requirement of the production or making sure the notes are clear especially for the oversea studios.They work either individual or as a team.
Storyboard artists needs to know the dialogue of the animation well, also the character performance and the camera moves. Their work does not always have to be perfectly neat clean, for example, if the storyboard is for the Computer generated film then they are less likely to require the clean work since the production will go ahead with Computer, whereas if the storyboard is for oversea studios then the work needs to be accurate and clear, so that it will be easier for other studios to understand what is going on.
Storyboard artist has a huge responsibilities for following the schedule, the delays will affect the whole production since the producer cannot do much without storyboard so overnight working is often required. They also need to be aware of any relevant technical restrictions related to the production, they cannot just create a random storyboard that has nothing related to the whole production. In terms of producing the storyboard they may require some skills of the software that they might use for the production, the popular ones are Adobe flash, Adobe Photoshop, Corel painter etc. 
They need a good skills to be able to tell a good story, not just following the dialogue they needs to know the good skills to perform the story in good ways to make the work more interesting. They also need to have a good understanding of layout, composition, sequential drawings and editing. Storyboard will require a lot of editing so Storyboard artist needs to prepare for a lot of editing and drawings to get the final result.

To become a storyboard artist... many Storyboard artists have graduated from Animation degree course, who has the understanding of basic film theory and also has experienced producing the storyboard for the personal work or the graduation work. Often it is unlikely that people who is a new graduate will become a Storyboard artist straight away, they often needs an experience to become the part of the animation studio system since the storyboard artist are very important part in the pre-production pipeline.

Research of Studio Ghibli 2 (week 2)

A bit more of research from yesterday.

Meaning of GHIBLI

Ghibli is a name of the Arabic Mediterranean wind (Sahara desert). The concept of using this name is to "Blow the sensation wind through the Japanese animation industry".
Other reason is that the director of Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki is a fan of aircraft. During World War 2 one of the Italian military reconnaissance plane had a name of CAPRONI Ca309 GHIBLI).

In terms of "Blow the sensation wind through the Japanese animation industry" my thoughts is that back in around 1985 there weren't many long-length animation, so they probably wanted people (audience) to get 'into' the animation more by creating high-impact animation.

Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki is the main director of Studio Ghibli. He is probably the most well-known animation director in Japan. I would believe that if we hear the name Studio Ghibli the first person that comes up in our head would be Hayao Miyazaki.

Since he was a student he always had a passion towards to the art. When he was young he was never into sports or anything active, he enjoyed drawing the most and his natural skills were stunning.
He was into Japanese Manga, especially Osamu Tezuka's Manga books. Osamu Tezuka is one of the famous Manga artists (cartoonist) and back in that time Tezuka's work has inspired many people. One day Miyazaki watched the animation "Legend of the White Snake" (By Toei Animation) his interests towards to the Animation has grew dramatically.

Research of Studio Ghibli (week 2)

I have started off from researching Studio Ghibli's general information.

Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation studio that they mainly concentrate on the film-length animation (more than an hour long animation). Studio was founded in June 1985 by the directors Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and the producer Toshio Suzuki.

Studio Ghibli's Animations are all their originals, in the other word, they only produce their own work. This process are actually rare in the Japanese animation industry since a lot of the other Japanese animation industry produces animation for the Television series, then after a while when they became popular some of the animation has become into the film, often the films are the special version of the Television series. This happens a lot in the Japanese animation, the film is often been produced at the most once a year for each animation.
A good example would be the Japanese animation company called OLM, inc (Oriental Light & Magic). Their one of the most famous animation, Pokemon (Pocket Monster) which is the Television animation series that has been showing since 1997. They created the film animation every summer, they have created the total of 16 films including the new films that are scheduled to show in Japan this summer (2013).


*Resources http://www.ghibli.jp/30profile/000152.html

New term (Week 1)

New term has started, and for this term I will need to write my proposal, what I would like to do for my project and what I intend to do as a career, I will need to look into what I will need to achieve to get into the next step. For example, skills, qualification, education etc.

I will also need to write a report based on the company, artist or studio that I am interested and how they recruit, their brands and how they are running their company etc.

I will start off with researching my favourite animation that I have discovered recently, the animator is called Tekken (鉄拳）. His work has become popular on Youtube in this few years and the number of views on his video has Increased dramatically.

Also for the company I am going to research about Studio Ghibli. Since I was a small child I loved Studio Ghibli animation and I still do even I have grew up older. I have grown up with Studio Ghibli works and their work is so inspiring, their work always have a deep meanings, you can never understand the full story by watching the film only one time, you have to watch it multiple times to understand the story.

These will be my plans for this term, and hopefully I will be able to get some good information to create a good piece of report and proposal.