This is an interview with one of Studio Live’s main animators, Hiroshi Watanabe. For more on Studio Live and Hiroshi Watanabe, I recommend reading my previous post on Minky Momo. This interview goes into his start in the industry, the hardships of being an animator in Japan, and some technical tidbits. Although conducted in mid 1980s, most of what is mentioned here still holds waters today, and it’s interesting to see what changed and what didn’t from that time. First published in スタジオライブの本・らでいっく (1) (Studio Live’s Book Vol.1). Translation by me. I’m not the most experienced translator nor am I excellent in Japanese, and although I think I managed to properly translate this since it’s not that hard or complicated of an interview, I’ll provide the original interview in case someone wants to check my translation for errors, for which I’d be pretty thankful actually. Sorry for the long intro, here’s the original interview in Japanese. -Moderator: Today we will be hearing animator Hiroshi Watanabe’s story since joining Studio Live up to the present day.-Ashida (Toyo, Live’s Predsident): My, aren’t you serious.-Moderator: It’s just kinda an official thing isn’t it *laughs*. Anyway, let’s start. First, can you tell us something from the time you left Kumamoto to Tokyo to join Studio Live?-Watanabe: I was making anime by myself beforehand, but I had no idea how to draw in-betweens. Joining the company and using the tap for the first time made me see how real work really is different. At that time, 1000 drawings was the normal output of an in-betweener, but after all my effort it took me around 3 months to draw that much.-Moderator: 1000 drawings in 3 months, how good is that? -Ashida: Fairly fast I would say.-Watanabe: Yet Matsushita (Hiromi) drew that much in one month and a half… so at that time my abilities weren’t really good enough, and there was the tough in-betweens check; no matter how many times I redraw it doesn’t get approved. Lines are a bit dirty, erasing remains are visible… really small stuff. I had my own thoughts of course, and with that happening I felt like the people on the other side just couldn’t understand. It’s really frustrating, but you still need the money to eat so you keep on drawing… such situations are pretty tough.-Moderator: “I drew those in-betweens that way because it’s the way I do it” or something like that?-Watanabe: Right. I didn’t want to admit that I lacked the skills at all. That was definitely the case, but the fact that I had the mentality of “it’s my way of doing things” was… frustrating. -Moderator: Back then, and even now…-Watanabe: No, thinking about it now, I’d say that period was normal. Yet back then, all I had in mind was “I’ll make them accept what I’m making”. And then I looked at what the key animators made and thought how different it was, which made me wish even more to become a key animator myself.-Moderator: The thought of wanting to make an anime with your own sense…-Watanabe: Back then, all of Live’s projects were adult shows. That’s why they seemed to lack the power. Although such projects are actually harder, I wanted to swing the camera more and move things around. Thus I wanted to become a key animator as fast as possible, and worked hard to achieve the goal of 1000 drawings.-Moderator: Is it the same for everyone?-Ashida: Not really, but I’d love if all of Live’s staff were like that. It’s a matter of future prospectives. Do you want to do in-betweens forever? Or become an ordinary key animator? An excellent key animator? An animation director maybe? Everyone is different.-Moderator: And Watanabe wanted to become a key animator quickly.-Watanabe: Correct. That’s why I, although not directly related, was so motivated to draw the 1000 sheets and become a key animator quickly and make the company acknowledge me, which enabled me to do just that.-Moderator: So how long did you do in-betweening for? -Watanabe: I joined the company in April and did in-betweening till October. “Cyborg 009”’s first episode was my first time drawing key frames.-Moderator: Not too long, huh?-Ashida: It was actually a little too fast? But then, he was our prodigy. It’s not about drawing nicely, it’s more about instinctively knowing what anime is.-Watanabe: Why did I want to become a key animator back then? Ashida-san wanted to show youngling’s power, pent-up emotions and new strength and abilities in “Cyborg 009”. I was there anyway so it was more like “we will give you a chance then” type of thing. -Ashida: As I said, the longer you do it the harder it becomes. At first, doing what you want is fine, but in 3 years time a wall will come, overcoming that will give you another 3 years before the next wall, until you reach a point where the wall comes every year.-Watanabe: At that time, maybe because of being young, but I had the power to do anything. Everything I did was fun. In “Cyborg 009” or “Blue Bird” I overdid even the simplest scenes. It was all pretty interesting back then, be it anime itself or key animating itself… Then came “Arale-chan”, and after that came a time when I started paying attention to character consistency (looking the same), but getting full of myself I always thought what I did was fine and didn’t put in the effort to make them look consistent.-Moderator: “I don’t mind if they don’t look alike. It looks fine the way it’s” type of mentality? -Watanabe: I mean, Ashida-san was going to correct them. But I wonder if “Blue Bird” was the last project I did with my youth power. A bit after that I started feeling as if my power was fading away. -Ashida: Well, it wasn’t about losing power, rather more about having to do the same thing for a long period of time. If you can’t overcome that, then… You just can’t stay a promising young animator forever. -Moderator: What are your thoughts when you watch “Blue Bird” now?-Watanabe: Watching it now… Watching it now… *laughs*. I find the projects back from the period I had power pretty good. Some small details look rough, but really the things I did back then were impressive. -Ashida: It’s not knowing fear. Now that you know what to be afraid of, going about it the same way isn’t possible.-Watanabe: Right. I can refine the small details now, but achieving the same furiousness wouldn’t be possible. To this day seeing the dragon fight from “Blue Bird” (This scene) gives me goosebumps *laughs*. Why was I able to do something like that, I ask myself. -Moderator: Oh no, this is turning into an old geezers’ conversation *laughs*.-Watanabe: So, being completely helpless with character acting scenes, action sequences were my chance to go wild and forget about the storyboards. That’s why I did what I did. And that’s why I had that much fun. Then it became bitter, bit by bit, drawing key frames I mean, until one point in 198X where I just couldn’t draw anymore. -Moderator: Not being able to draw… what kind of situation was that exactly?-Watanabe: Not going to Toei anymore, spending all day on Pachinko machines, that kind of stuff.-Ashida: Truancy, basically.-Watanabe: Along the way I started gradually wanting to draw again, drawing became interesting again. Then I said to myself, why not do some animation director assisting jobs, and since I have been causing all sorts of problems and troubles for the animation directors, I was so happy to be in a position where I can repay them. Everyday started being fun again.-Moderator: What is an animation director assistant actually? -Watanabe: Key frames, prior to the animation director’s corrections, are terrible. Although my frames don’t get approved, looking at the frames that do get approved I see only the middle of the frame being drawn while everything else is left to the animation director’s assistance to fill in. Also stuff like character faces being completely off, all these things have to be at least “prepared for correcting” in this process. It’s more of a 2nd key animation role than an animation director assistant. It was nonetheless fun, and correcting characters like that made me feel like I made some progress.-Moderator: What about “Momo” (Minky Momo)?-Watanabe: “Momo” was fun. Although in 198X I was kinda mentally depressed, none of the key animation I drew for “Momo” was turned down or returned for retakes. So I just kept pushing on.-Ashida: This is the effect of the ultimate “Opening Strategy”. Let someone do the opening and have the fame at first, it was the same with the animation direction role. -Watanabe: That was again a fluke of luck. My first job as an animation director was an episode with Kaijus fighting. With such things you just have to make them move, make them flashy and catchy.-Moderator: Your speciality, huh.-Watanabe: It wasn’t something I excelled at as much as it was something I had fun doing. Also, when speaking with Yuyama (Kunihiko)-san, I see he has something he wants to create with which I can totally empathize. Doing the normal life scenes without any interest, for example. So it got to the level of being a hobby where I give all my effort, rather than a job I have to do.-Moderator: That’s how much you as an animator can get into in the project, right? -Watanabe: Of course, being at Ashi Pro means that things like drawings numbers don’t matter. Such situations exist, but at stricter places cuts are made at the storyboards or screenplay stages. Deciding to tune down here a bit or focus here a bit from the start means that all this is planned through, something we can understand and makes us feel like the whole thing is indeed worth doing. -Moderator: “Momo” was your first project as an animation director, how was it? -Watanabe: Doing animation direction is annoying. Fixing the key animation of other people requires all my effort, animation direction isn’t a job you can slack off at even slightly. That’s why it made me want to draw key animation even more. That being said, doing animation direction limits me, but whether I’d be able to draw key animation if I didn’t do animation direction… Also, character acting stuff was handled by Yuyama-san, and I handled things like character faces. Those being Live’s key animation, I’d say MatsuX (he means Matsushita Hiromi) drawings were completely off, while (Kazuko) Tadano-san’s drawings were even more on model than mine *laughs*. Man, no more talking about “Momo” please. -Moderator: *laughs* Well, that was the end of today’s interview. Thank you very much.
Apr 30, 2020 • Subscribe
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