Otaku's Voice - An Animator's View on an Otaku Society
An Animator's VIEW on an Otaku Society
by Brian "Ranmah" Mah
Recently I attended the Big Apple Anime Fest. Nice convention, but it
seemed rather dull compared to most cons I've been to. The guests were
pretty well known in the Anime Industry (i.e. Rachelle Lillis, Kunihiko
Ikuhara, Yūji Moriyama). The con was very well organized for its first year
of conception. So any way after the con I went to a local restaurant with
some Otaku. They seem to rant and rave about certain parts of some the
Anime they have seen. They were comparing the difference between sub and
dub, CG and hand drawn animation. As they were talking I was silent the
whole time just watching and hearing their comments and thinking to myself;
"I wonder if any of these Otaku has ever made a demo reel or worked on any
kind of animation?"
I understand the process of doing animation (i.e. story development,
storyboarding, character design, and animating) because I graduated with a
BFA in Animation. Studying animation is extremely difficult and time
consuming. I had to memorize terms, such as voice track. I worked on the
different Animation Cameras (i.e. Oxberry Camera). I also had to practice
drawing cycles (i.e. walking, falling, etc.). As the years went on I became
to truly understand the process of animation and animating.
A lot of critics and fans talk about animation, but I have yet to see one
critic or fan produce one minute of animation. To most animators believe in
order to truly understand the mechanics and process of animation, you have
to experience it first hand. Now most Otaku will disagree with me and yell
at my editor about my rant, but that's ok. I can understand that some of
you have strong opinions about this subject and everyone is entitled to
their opinion.
But if there are some Otaku who will agree with me and would like to pursue
a career in animation, I just have some words of advice: keep pursuing your
dreams, don't give up, keep a sketch book and draw, draw, draw. You also
must have the drive to do something that will take most of your time and
energy. It will be all worth it when you see your work on the big screen
and you hear people applauding at the end of the credits, it can be very
addictive. It doesn't have to be an hour movie; it can be a 2-3 min short
that has limited animation (i.e. South Park).
There will be some Otaku will say that I can do everything on the computer
and I don't need to draw everything cell by cell. All I can say is the
computer is just a tool like the pencil or the pen. You need to know the
basic principles of animation (i.e. 24 frames equals one second) to animate
something and you need to be creative. Whether it is a bouncing ball or a
bouncing Pikachu. The computer is very linear and stagnant, while hand
drawn animation is more 3-Dimentional and conveys emotion. That is just my
opinion in terms of animating.
Like the old saying goes, "You can walk the walk, but can you talk the
talk?"
My modern saying goes, "You can talk all about anime, but can you actually
create one?"
Well I'll get out the way I can hear a group of wild Otaku coming this way.
