Sunday, September 12, 2010

A update on Hiroyuki Yamashita.

I wrote a bit before about Hiroyuki Yamashita and his distintive style in the Naruto Shippuuden series. However, Yamashita has been risen a bit more within the ranks on this project since then. He was credited with doing some Puppet Designs for Naruto Shippuden: The Lost Tower-- which is directed by Masahiko Murata who's done quite a bit of notable episodes on the series himself. And now it's been confirmed that he's going to actually be an animation director on the actual show.

Episode 178 preview:



The traits from Yamashita sans the triangle swords are all here to marvel at. Look at the mouths of Iruka and those three ninja. The shape and snappy timing of their lips flapping seems like they're drawn by Yamashita himself (perhaps he did or maybe he corrected a great deal of this scene). Naruto's arm while he's resting on Iruka is more squarish and flatter. In the same shot you can see that Kakashi's face is more slimmer than usual and the timing to his mouth movement is very similar to the previous scene I mentioned.

The only shots that can contain animation in this preview that don't look like the were corrected by Yamashita is the shot of Choji and Shikamauru and the latter one of the candle and Jugo talking. Yasuhiko Kanezuka is the co-animation director along with Yamashita--he's not too shabby himself, just not exactly doing exciting animation like Yamashita seems destined to do. Once the episode comes out it'll be interesting to see just how much of an influence Yamashita will have in his debut as an animation director.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Panty and Stocking Promotional Video.



Well, the PV is out and everybody has their thoughts made up already. The funny thing I'm hearing is how it looks too American. Kinda funny how it points out how fans are so allergic to anything new or different from the typical anime tropes in animation. The mixture of different animation styles from other countries that results in new styles is something that should be celebrated and not be the victim of knee-jerk vilifications.

People might be familiar with the staff since they worked on Gurren Lagann, but here's a hastily-put-together refresher for the main parts.

Director: Hiroyuki Imaishi- Needs no formal introduction. A great animator before he decided to direct and still is. However, he's brought his kinetic vision that's inspired in most part by Yoshinori Kanada as a director too. Panty & Stocking marks a return to the crude humor of Dead Leaves with more overt American influences that makes it stand out even more among the mass number of boring art styles currently being offered.

Character Design: Atsushi Nishigori- character designer for TTGL. I honestly haven't dedicated myself to knowing much about his career aside that he seems to have started at Gainax as an in-betweener on FLCL. Good place to start if I ever saw one with the myriad of talented animators they got on there (Tetsuya Nishio, Keisuke Watabe, Hideaki Anno, Masayuki, etc.)

Co-Director: Masahiko Ohtsuka- while he's been at Gainax for over 15 years, he's only been a series director once (Petite Princess Yucie). Started out at Ghibli as an assistant director for Pom Poko and Yoshifumi Kondô's Whisper of the Heart, along with being an episode director on Eva.

Concept Art: Yoh Yoshinari- Brother of animator Kou Yoshinari. It would take way too long to list every one of his memorable works, but on Gurren Lagann (spoilers ahead) he animated the sequence in the 1st OP where Gurren Lagann pins down the gunmen with its drills and the subsequent zoom-out and explosion. The opening scene in episode 1 where we see the future Simon and the zoom-out revealing the entire ship. And the last fight sequence in ep. 27 where Viral throws Lagann. Again, those are just a few of his memorable works.

Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt will air on October 1st. Any R1 company with a brain and the money to do it has to pick this one up ASAP.
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