Michael Arias is a director and producer of animation whose projects have brought him worldwide recognition for excellence. As a producer of the ANIMATRIX he helped to extend the reach of Japanese produced animation to mainstream American audiences. Originally involved in special effects cinematography for films like James Cameron’s THE ABYSS, Arias was able to transition into specialized visual effects software which brought him in contact with anime powerhouse Studio Ghibli. His first feature-length animated film, TEKKONKINKREET, won the 2008 Japan Academy Prize for Best Animation and was released stateside by Sony Pictures.

Anime After Dark host Dekker Dreyer talks with Michael about animation as part of the Rasmussen College Insiders Interview series.

DD: With TEKKONKINKREET Being your first animated feature what were some of the most challenging aspects of the production for you?

MA: I guess the real challenge of directing an animated feature was less related to animation and more about directing in a general sense. Just having to convey one’s ideas to a large staff, and then make sense of and manage the contributions of the various artisans collaborating on a film is a pretty crazy undertaking.

DD: Speaking of the staff, how did you build your creative team? Were there key people that you wanted to have with you on TEKKON?

MA: I had intended to work with Shinji Hashimoto as my animation supervisor – he supervised animation for the ANIMATRIX episode KID’S STORY and I love his free form rough style and thought it would be great for TEKKON. But there were some scheduling issues and I started looking at other animators. It was a habit of mine to wander Studio4C and look at what animators had on their desks – a good way of scouting talent I guess you could say. One night I stumbled on a sheaf of drawings – actually they were just stacked on the copy machine – and until I looked closer I thought they were actually sketches drawn by Taiyo Matsumoto, the author of the manga TEKKONKINKREET. No, they weren’t exactly like something Taiyo would draw, but they did have something in common – the expressions, the poses, and the general lack of consistency in the figures. I didn’t know whose drawings they were but they really spoke strongly to me. As it turned out, they were sketches drawn by Shojiro Nishimi for another project at Studio4C. He was finishing up work on MINDGAME at the time – director Masaaki Yuasa and he are mates from high school. Interestingly, he started out in animation at Telecom with Hashimoto (my original choice), so there was some kind of shared DNA there after all. So I lobbied Eiko, my producer, quite hard to get him on as animation supervisor. He was very resistant at first – he’s a pretty shy character, incredibly humble – and was a bit scared of taking on a feature film I think. But he was also a fan of Taiyo’s work and eventually came around. I’m so glad. I really think he’s a genius, and he’s become a great friend.

Getting Shinji Kimura on as art director was largely Eiko’s inspiration. I think she’d been trying to lure him back to 4C since STEAMBOY moved away. He also had a very strong connection with the original manga of TEKKON. I think he was also very excited by the potential to do something really colorful and whimsical with TEKKON. I really think he’s the best art director in the business and feel so lucky to have worked with him. He was a real mood-maker in the studio, pushed and inspired everyone to work harder. Just a fantastic artist. And he managed to assemble a very warm team of background artists. Akemi Kono (she had worked on STEAMBOY as well) and a couple others, all of them art directors in their own rights.

After I had those guys on it was largely a matter of calling friends up, trying to grab people who were coming off other projects (STEAMBOY and MINDGAME were both finishing at the same time). It was a very good time to be starting TEKKON.

DD: One of the talking points of TEKKON on the anime circuit is that you’re an American-born director working in Japan. Was that ever an issue until the film was released here?

MA: Interestingly, the fact that I am not Japanese was only brought up when the movie was released outside of Japan. No one here gives a shit – at least I was never conscious of being the “American born anime director” until I took the movie outside of Japan. It seemed somehow that the American audiences in particular needed to imagine the director as some kind of Zen monk who carries a sword and speaks in riddles to accept a movie as “anime” or “Japanimation”. Satoshi Kon fits the image much better than I do of course.

DD: What originally inspired you to want to work in animation?

MA: I grew up watching tons of animation – everything: Looney Tunes, Will Vinton, Trnka, Renee Laloux, all that amazing Canadian Film Boards short animation. But I never imagined working in animation. Even after I’d already been working in special effects, doing motion control miniature photography and that kind of thing, animation seemed the territory of real “artists”. Perhaps because I’m not a natural draftsman – can’t draw at all. I did end up working around animators, first operating an Oxberry downshooter at a small animation studio when I was in college, and then later supplying computer graphics software to Ghibli and Dreamworks animation. And I felt very much at home working with animators. Really fell in love with the idea that these guys were drawing entire movies one frame at a time. By the time I started thinking seriously of doing TEKKON, animation seemed the only way to pull it off.

DD: Animation has always fascinated me and I’ve envious of the people who can diligently do it. My father was an in-betweener (briefly) and I just can’t wrap my head around the level of work involved.

MA: Yeah. Not to be tried at home. I don’t care what anyone says, there are few more demanding tasks.

DD: During production on an animated feature what does the director do day to day? Can you walk me through all that’s involved?

MA: Let’s assume that storyboards are done and the production is in full swing. My typical day usually went something like this:

1. Wake up (on cot next to desk)

2. Change, make coffee, check mail

3. Start going through the “pile”. I had a large set of shelves alongside my desk divided into various inboxes: Layout, Animation, Background, CG, Comps… each representing new material at various stages of the pipeline awaiting my approval or comment. The basic method of “asset management” is quite simple – artwork is put in big colored envelopes (brown for backgrounds, yellow for layouts, etc. etc.). And I’d just wade through as much as I could, often discussing stuff with my animation supervisor, assistant director, or producer. Sometimes I’d wait for all the shots in a particular sequence to reach the same stage and try to tackle them all at once (makes it easier to insure continuity). Some shots my AD would ask me to look at before others. Anyway, whenever I checked a shot I’d sign my name to it, date it, and then put it on my AD’s shelf for him to check. He’d pass it, in turn, to one of the animation supervisors. And so on and so on – each department head has to sign off on each shot at each stage of its production. Assistant producers would go around at night and keep track of which shots were on what shelves and give us weekly reports summarizing our progress.

4. Meet with animators. There were about 1600 shots on TEKKON and these were split up among 50 or so animators. Several animators took on the bulk of the movie – perhaps 50% was done by a core team of ten men and women (including my animation supervisor, two assistant animation supervisors, and two second assistant animation supervisors). The rest was executed by all the other animators, often divided up quite piecemeal. An animator might be on the show for only four or five shots. Whenever we started with an animator and a particular set of shots, the first step was for me, the animator, my AD, my animation supervisor, an assistant producer, and often the computer graphics team leader to sit around a table and go through every detail of the shot(s). We’d often watch stuff already completed or look at layouts my animation supervisor had drawn himself. We would discuss the performance itself, much as a director might explain a scene to a live actor.

5. Watch dailies with my AD and the CG folks.

6. Check backgrounds – this was a weekly thing involving all the main staff. We’d all inspect background artwork before scanning it.

7. Continue with the “pile”.

8. Getting late now. Go to a local public bath and wash up.

9. Have dinner and drink with my animation supervisor.

10. Sleep (on cot next to desk)

DD: What kind of movies excite you the most? 

MA: I like movies that allow us to see things through a child’s eye. I love sci-fi — perhaps less for the futuristic or unfamiliar technology or invented details, but more in the same way I like movies from other cultures. Have you ever watched a movie from overseas with the sound turned off? It’s a profoundly mind-altering experience, not at all like watching a movie passively. You really have to do some work to fill in the gaps. So I like movies that leave enough out that you have to pay attention, do a bit of work to make sense of it, use your imagination…

DD: You have a new movie on the way.

MA: HEAVEN’S DOOR is a Japanese live action feature film I’ve directed, based on the 1997 German film KNOCKIN’ ON HEAVEN’S DOOR. It’s less of a remake than a re-imagining of the original. It’s a road movie (shot all over Japan) about two unlikely friends dropping out a getting a taste of freedom. Music by Plaid (who also scored TEKKON). It will be released widely in Japan early in 2009, though I’ve no idea what the plans are for international release.

It’s been quite interesting for me to work in live action. Just the thought that one can make a movie in 6-8 months as compared to 3 years in the case of TEKKON. So I think I’ll try and do another two or three live action movies before going back to animation. I’ll be lucky if I ever find a story that gets the juices flowing as much as TEKKON did.

DD: Coming from a background that’s very visual, how important was your relationship with your DP?

MA: My DP and Chief AD really hold the keys to the production. Of course with my DP we spent a great deal of time just watching movies together, looking at books of photos. He was there with me on all my location scouting. By the time we started shooting he had a very clear sense of what kind of pictures I wanted (and I’d storyboarded a large part of the movie as well). I was lucky to get a very young veteran – he’d been around for a while, worked on a ton of features, but was still young enough to be able to relate to me, first-timer that I was.

Be sure to watch for TEKKONKINKREET at Anime After Dark. Special thanks to Emru Towsend of Frames per Second Magazine and Rasmussen College.