Nerding Out on Anime - Harris

If I don't write more than a page and a bit, Master Kalbir will get mad at me... here goes...

I'll start with a brief history of anime. It abbreviates from the term animation and originated in 1917. It's style has been used in many media mediums such as films and games. Only recently has it become popular in western culture.

Animes begin as manga drawings. They are comic books read from right to left in black and white. When turned into an anime, colour is added along with motion. We plan to keep ours in black and white colours to fit our film noir genre. However, to add a neo film noir element, some items in the animation will be of a bright outstanding colour to contrast the black and white.

We plan to use some anime elements and about 20 seconds of animation in our trailer. To do this we are choreographing a scene and capturing the motion. I then have to draw each frame of the motion in an anime style which will equate to about 320 still images to draw. This is extremely time consuming and tedious. I then have to send those images over to Kalbir so that he can shade them to give a 3-D feel.

Animes have no singular drawing style and some just look plain tacky. We, well I, decided to base our drawing style on animes such as Hellsing and Death Note. These are both realistically drawn mangas that have been converted to animes with a good flowing motion.

Since the majority of our animation scenes will be of fighting, we decided to add more effects to it by having a trailing aura of colour surrounding the black and white characters. This concept was taken from a promotional video for a game called Street Fighter 4.

Our plan changed from the beginning where we wanted a silhouette fight scene. This was because silhouette fights can only be shown as a medium - long shot and won't do justice to the action we have in mind. Directors such as Quinten Tarrantino also take anime culture and add it to their movies. An example of this is Kill Bill, where Lucy Liu's character's past is shown through an animation scene.

Editing cannot begin without the animation scenes done, which will take an approximation of 3 weeks. Therefore, filming must begin early to ensure we reach the deadline. Also a HD Camera will be necessary as drawing over grainy pictures will be harder to do and more time consuming.

Since I haven't wrote as much as Kalbir wanted me to, I'll just give reference to any mangas or anime that I have taken ideas from to choreograph our action scenes.

1. Naruto
2. Bleach
3. Ane Doki
4. Death Note
5. To Love Ru
6. Fairy Tail
7. Full Metal Alchemist
8. Hajime no Ippo
9. History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi
10. Soul Eater
11. Kimi no Iru Machi
12. D Gray Man
13. Code Breaker
14. Air Gear
15. Hellsing
16. Devil May Cry
17. Samurai Champloo
18. Kiba
19. Dragon Ball
20. Pokemon
21. Final Fantasy

I basically have no life during holidays...