#anime production material

[empty-movement]

JadeSabre nabbed this incredible piece of production material, the key cel douga and accompanying individual frames of Anthy's eyes as she stabs Utena in episode 38. They're in beautiful condition and Jade was kind enough to get them scanned. I made this GIF to show them off, and you can check out the gorgeous originals below! Thanks so much @jadedofmara!

[armzsoup]

Satoshi Kon's detailed storyboards for Paranoia Agent (2004)

[swampjawn]

Assorted key frames from Dungeon Meshi Episode 23, compared with their final versions:

From this original Twitter post

[fullmetal-scar-simping]

Average fma fan talking about 03 positively: Man, it's such a miracle that the 2003 anime is written even halfway decently! After all, the writers who, as we know, have never written anything in their lives before [citation needed], they had to work while locked in individual underground cells [citation needed], only fed scraps of fma lore by Arakawa herself [citation needed] while her story was actually fully formed by the first printing of her manga in Monthly Shonen Gangan [citation needed] but they were adapting the initial first volume of manga and oopsy-daisy shot past it [citation needed], so they made up every plot beat, character arc, storyboard, and lore change completely on the fly and very randomly [citation needed]. Even though they tried to 1:1 adapt her story [citation needed, contradicted by existing sources], they fumbled the job and butchered her story, characters, and lore. Arakawa sagely forgave them [citation needed]. But somehow it's a cohesive story?! Wow! Even though the story is sad, dark, scares me, makes me cry, violent, gorey, and my fave ships aren't endgame, so -50 demerits. Still, good job team! A treat! A treat for the monkeys working the typewriters at Studio Bones circa 2002-2004! #fullmetal alchemist brotherhood

[wiz-kaleb]

ARMITAGE III

[cyphyree]

By the way is anyone here in love with anime production material / settei too? Storyboards, color design, model sheets, keyframes etc etc--- WELL

There's a community making an archive of that stuff accessible! There's a VERY wide variety of anime in their collections, and their scans are pretty high quality and well-curated. It's a fantastic resource if you need character design refs, insight into the anime industry, or just like cool sketches and art.

As per the website's terms, "Please do not print and resell [their] settei for your own profit." All images shown in this post are from the link above.

[silvadour]

[werebutch]

ok completely different subject but seeing a 'squishmallow alternatives' post is so wild to me. i know you guys like those things but theyre so soulless its horrible to me. the fact that you cant boycott a company unless you have some other company to give all your money to is so crazy.. dont you have any other hobbies. this is like funko pops all over again its horrifying

[animationscout]

The Art of Coraline

UPDATE: The Art of Coraline (unofficial) is now a free PDF courtesy of Amination Obsessive

We never got an official Art of Coraline book, but can still find bits and pieces of what it could have had.

[galactica-phantom]

i've seen two people on this very website now liveblog haibane renmei and get irritated at how open-ended it is, and i've seen a good handful of disparaging reviews on youtube calling it pretentious

but i think what takes the cake for me is seeing some guy on twitter drop it after the second episode because "it's just another waifubait moeshit anime"

[berrychanx]

Production cell vs final piece

Tokyo Mew Mew 2002 - episode 32

Scanned and owned by @MyuMyuCheerCh on Twitter

[empty-movement]

OLD SCHOOL ANIMATION NERDS, I SUMMON THEE TO ASSIST

Hey! Vanna here! So I recently, in a rage at the loss of the end-of-series lot of production materials, bought a cheaper lot I had been curious about, and I kinda struck animation history gold with it! Try as I might to pull the whole context together, I need y'alls help accurately naming and identifying what I have!!! There are MANY MORE of these, all from the same episode, an Utena one, a LOT of Nanami, and a group shot even, all following this similar formula. But let's be honest, Vanna and Yasha wanted that sweet Touga smugness. Analysis and questions below the cut! These aren't ALL the sheets, there are ones for the face shape and sleeve also but to demonstrate. Also, fucking amazingly, I also have the storyboards for this episode, so I can even tell you the shot number is 287 ISNT THAT COOL

So Utena fans. You may or may not know, but episodes 6 and 8 had very chaotic productions, and did end up getting swapped in the end. Per Ikuhara's directory commentary in the Nozomi Blu-ray:

He makes explicit reference here to Akemi Hayashi, credited as the animation director for the episode. I can't recall where I saw it now, but I know the difficulty of drawing Touga on model is mentioned somewhere in all the production stuff I have.

Now. Here's the problem. I DON'T FUCKING KNOW WHAT THEISIWEUGWEYGF what do I callll these. My understanding is the the douga is the final line art, transferred onto the cel, and that is the only thing that you call a douga. A douga is the 1:1 match to its cels in a sequence. With an anime like Utena, it's pretty often going to be included with the cel, if you obtain one. These are douga, the final line art that creates the animation, scans donated by JadeSabre and edited into sequence. The frames are numbered in the top right, and there are no notes or anything drawn on the sheets.

Now. That is NOT what I have above. So none of these materials are douga, they are...genga? Help? (This will get wild with Nanami, where I even have a green sketch that is clearly like, VERY FIRST draft of the shot...)

What I have are the key frames, to my understanding. Meaning these represent a point much earlier in the production process. On first glance, the white sheets are significantly cleaner, but they are also so far off model they're flying along with the Voyager probes in interstellar space. They're very capably drawn, don't get me wrong, but they're clearly done by someone who is not on the Dorito face bandwagon. This is apparently pretty common? You get your initial key frame sketches (genga??) made, and then the animation direction (Hayashi??) grades your work by making messier, but more on model versions of the shots. These are the yellow 'correction' genga?

The douga of this shot are likely with the cels. There are 11 distinct cels of Touga's face (others for the sleeve), guided by the 4 key frame sketches I have here. Looked at individually, I can even see where the filled in frames struggle a bit more to be on model than the key ones, even in the final product.

So clearly, what I have are some pretty early process materials where there was a bit of a back and forth about how to draw the characters. The others I have are similar corrections, but this is the absolute most drastic one. It's like they said 'just do it like kinda shoujo and we'll iron it out later.'

The question I have is...can I safely assume these yellow correction sheets are actually Akemi Hayashi originals? Or would there have been another person in this process doing this correction work instead? Would there be a way to know who drew the original ?genga? That may not be possible to ascertain, but it would be really cool to try, since this episode was a Chaos Production, since I have the actual storyboard for it, since I now have a neat piece of context about what the Chaos might have meant. This shot always stuck out to me in the first arc, because it's true that for a lot of the first arc, Touga and Saionji look....far more like the first drafts here. The strict adherence to the Hasegawa style gets enforced later in the series, but this is an example of the exchange that needed to occur to get folks on board with what was a pretty unique art style.

PS. This is torture, the shape of these means I actually need to make two scans of each one and stitch them together, which is nervewracking when you want them to overlap properly and also you don't want to wreck your toilet paper ass production materials pressing them into the scanner bed. Also several are fucking taped together and lemme tell you, 25 year old 'clear tape' don't stay clear and don't stay sticky.

Basically, any context or knowledge anyone can impart I would appreciate a lot! I know I've got something really cool here, but I am struggling to get much clear information about it, because Google is broken.

[armzsoup]

FLCL (2000) Mechanical Design

[swampjawn]

Assorted key frames from Dungeon Meshi episode 12 compared with their final versions:

From this original twitter post from Studio TRIGGER

[heckyeahponyscans]

Check out @yanchamisc for a WEALTH of G1 My Little Pony production material, including animation cels and storyboards! An amazing archive!

[why-its-kai]

I've uploaded all the scans of the 1998 Trigun animation setting materials collection I recently received to my Neocities site! There are 75 sheets total, ranging from written notes, character sheets, height charts, early character designs, mechanical designs, props, location sketches, and more!

I do plan on posting them here on my tumblr as well but for now, you can check them all out over there!