I’m going to be displaying some art pieces at the Super Happy Tokyo Love event, sponsored by Intermixi, at the Royal/T Art Space in Culver City, CA on May 8th, 2010. Fringe will also be giving away Tentacle Grape merch to attendees.
The event runs from 8pm to 1am and features DJs:
Keith Myers
HYJNX
DJ Sherrycat
Count Ninjula
Tons of other artists will be showing awesome stuff like my friends Pinguino and Stephanie Sheh.
I’m not sure right now if I’ll be able to get to this event due to some print deadlines and travel schedule, but if you’re in LA please stop in and check it out.
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.
Let me disclaim this post. I’ve never been to an anime-only convention before yesterday. I know a lot of the press, some of the exhibitors, a few attendees and some of the organizers of the New York Anime Festival and I appreciate them having me down. As one of the proprietors of Anime After Dark, I have to be careful not to make this sound like some kind of an indictment of the genre fans or event organizers. It’s not. It’s really just a series of observations from an (inside) outsider’s prospective. Also, NYAF is my only experience with an anime convention, so some of my observations may be skewed, but I really think they will hold true for any event of this nature.
There’s a strange emphasis on cultural fetishism. I’m a lover of Japanese animation as well as certain design aesthetics. I never knew that there were so many fans who translate their love of animation into a strange fascination with the culture and heritage of the Japanese people. I saw martial arts demonstrations, musical acts, weapons for sale, people were eating sushi and drinking tea. It’s an odd sensation walking around in what I thought was a convention about animation and comics but is actually a cultural fair for Japanophiles. I was chatting with Michael Arias (of animatrix fame) not too long ago and a quote comes to mind.“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.”
The age range for this event is skewed very young. I wandered in to a room where they were showing a DVD projection of some property in which several girls were sitting and talking in a jacuzzi. The crowd erupted in laughter when one of the girl’s breasts began jiggling from the bubbles. It was a kind of laughter I hadn’t heard since I was young and Beavis and Butt-Head ruled all media. It was the laugh of sexual inexperience and sheltered upbringings.
I was drafted to assist with what people told me was the “hallway cosplay contest”. I’m not certain if that was the actual name or a style of contest. I’ve heard it used as a style, so that’s why I’m unsure. Anyway, the lesson I walked away with was that there were some great costumes and some not so great costumes. I’m familiar with a few websites that take pleasure in making fun of people who are wearing costumes that are a little bit off or not appropriate for their bodies. More directly, I heard some scathing comments from people hugging walls at the convention hallways. Standing in the judging room and listening to these costumed attendees speaking made me realize that many of these kids have crippling esteem issues. These people seem like they’re very unsure of themselves, but they love their anime and they love seeing their friends. These kids are not the top of the food chain in normal society. As that contest unfolded I realized exactly what kind of pathetic monsters both post and run sites that rip these kids apart. There’s no glory in pointing out how awful an actual awful costume is. It’s even worse when you’re doing it to people whose lives and sense of identity revolve around being able to come to events like this and feel accepted. It makes you a bully and what’s worse than that is it makes you about fifty feet lower on the totem pole from the people you ridicule. Imagine how awful your life must be to take pleasure in picking on people like that. It’s a cheap shot and I pity the people who get off on it. If these folks really feel so superior to these kids that means they are compassionless shells of people and no good will ever come to them. We’re all entitled to our opinions, but when you make the choice to boadcast your thoughts to the world you are granting an open invitation for others to challenge your idiology.
Performance art. It seems like there is a greater emphasis on music and performing at anime conventions. Skits, dance groups, musical acts… these all seem to be perpetually occuring. I’m curious as to why so many of the fans I saw attending are so eager to perform in some capacity. It’s a little more understandable that they would like to see bands and what-not, but even when the stage was clear you’d see a constant string of makeshift performances.
I’m not a convention-goer by nature. As far as “fan” conventions go I’ve been to one installment of Vulkon back in Central Florida as a lark and spent most of the time drinking at the lobby bar. When I started in genre entertainment a few years ago that was the impetus to attend New York Comic Con and Comic Con International. Due to a bout of illness I had to neglect going to Balticon, so that made my third convention (since becoming a professional in this aspect of entertainment) DragonCon. Each one of these conventions has been interesting in its own right, but by far this anime convention experience has been the most relaxed, but it’s also been the one that has made me feel the most alienated.
Anime After Dark is most likely not going to appease the type of people who attend these conventions. I think it’s a bigger draw for people like myself who love animation and cinema. I hope that these kids give it a try, but it’s nothing like these events and that’s what makes it so special.
Anime After Dark is expanding. We still have our original show in Boston on October 18th, 2008 and tickets can still be purchased @ animeafterdark.net, but now we also have a show confirmed November 28th – 30th at the Golden State Theatre in Monterey CA!
The lineup has been expanded to include 35mm prints of the Miyazaki classic, Princess Mononoke.
Jessie, myself and some surprise guests will be hosting the film festival.
The Golden State Theatre is truly an amazing venue to be showing these animated treasures. Newly restored and featuring digital projection, The Golden State boasts a 1300 seat auditorium with functional balcony.
“When it opened on August 6, 1926, the Golden State Theatre was the last word in movie presentation, “The Showplace of the Peninsula.” Designed by the Reid Brothers and seating 1600 people, it was the largest theater between San Francisco and Los Angeles.”
Tickets will go on sale soon and an official press announcement will be released on Monday.
Japan is getting credit for our home-grown invention of animated smut and frankly I’m offended! I learned about a new strange and small ripple in the moral fabric of America from The Beat this morning. Apparently someone is actually trying to condemn sexualized Japanese (and Japanese inspired) art as *gasp wrong.This article on MSNBC sends shivers down my spine. More about the sheer hilarity of the news outlet showing how lame they must be in the sack. Seriously, this is just really sad filler.
“Within the adult realm of otaku culture, cuteness is fetishized (hence the Hello Kitty sex toys) and gender is often bent or dissolves altogether.”
Really? Really? Well, if they’re talking about crossplay or other niche within a niche Russian dolls I guess they have a small point. But if you ever read “The 4Chan” you’d see that it’s just a bunch of horny teenagers expressing themselves in their own anonymous weird way. When I was their age the thing was “Big Johnson” tee shirts and local BBS boards.
I’m man enough to admit that cartoons are sexy. Hell! The good old USA invented the sexy cartoon. Does anyone recall a certain wild raving pervert name of “Tex” Avery?
Jessica Rabbit was so much of a sex symbol that Saturday Night Live did a phone sex parody ad or her!
Comic book women also have a long and seductive history. The point of the matter is that we created this fetish and I’m damned insulted that the Japanese are getting all the credit for it! I love anime, but let’s get real… we were making “Once Upon a Girl” and “Heavy Metal Movie” while anime producers were still cranking out flat-chested versions of Disney princesses (you heard me Sayla Mass).
The way I see it anime, or more aptly, Hentai, is just another example of Japanese innovation. As a society they’re excellent at innovating, tweaking and producing. This isn’t any different.
That said, I think we also need to own up to the fact that America is the proud creator of “Furry” culture too. I’d rather visit a maid cafe then a furry convention any day. No offense intended, but it’s really just not my scene.
So, the next time that MSNBC says, “Women are penetrated by octopi and young women in short school-girl skirts save the world. Men, on the other hand, are often passive worshipers of small figurines depicting sexy characters.” Just smile, nod and think back to the good old days when America was number one on the shortlist of freaky cartoon love. (sigh) Those were good times. At least I could enjoy looking at animated breasts without pretending to really like sushi.
Resonance Features and SF34: The Boston Science Fiction Film Festival present Anime After Dark, a twelve hour film festival event at Boston’s historic Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville on October 18th, 2008. It will start at dusk, 7:00 PM, and run continuously until dawn, 7:00 AM.
The festival will bring some of the best in new and vintage anime to the big screen, in many cases for the first time. Ticket holders will be treated to an array of cinema treasures by masters of the genre like Studio Ghibli, Satoshi Kon, Leiji Matsumoto, Kenji Kamiyama, and others in a program that will run from dusk until dawn and include rare 35mm prints. Special events and more surprises to be announced.
In the spotlight of the lineup is “Grave of the Fireflies” in a special promotional screening of its upcoming 20th anniversary pay-per-view release. Anime After Dark will be one of the first times that this masterpiece has been projected on an American screen. Roger Ebert has called the film, “an emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation.”
New features include the recently released “Tekkon Kinkreet” winner of the 2008 Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year. Other notable films in the lineup include Millennium Actress, Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society, and Project A-Ko.
The Somerville Theatre is located at 55 Davis Sq in Somerville right next to the Davis Sq Red Line T station. The festival will unspool in the classic 900 seat auditorium. Built in 1914, the theatre has become a landmark location for film festivals and concerts.
For a full schedule of films and special events visit the official website www.animeafterdark.net. Tickets go on sale Wednesday, September, 10th 2008 for the introductory price of $20.00. Prices will rise to $25 on September 20th and $30 if purchased at the door. Order now because space is limited.
Resonance Features is a licensing and distribution company based in New York City with theatrical, home video and pay-per-view agreements in several major markets. Headed by Dekker Dreyer (www.dekkerdreyer.com), Resonance Features strives to bring critically acclaimed entertainment together with the best in new releases.
The Boston Science Fiction Film Festival is the oldest event of it kind in the country. Every President’s Holiday for 34 year science fiction films screen, science fiction films screen fror 24 straight hours.
Special promotional consideration provided by Rasmussen College.
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