Part 3 - Day 1: The Animation Factory

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Note: You are reading Part 3 of Kengaku no Nikki, please scroll down to read the earlier parts of the story!

Please click on the links on the left to access other sections of the Junior Manga Challenge blog.

The Animation Factory, located on the 6th floor of the Creator's College.

Presenting Japan's new generation of aspiring anime creators! There easily about more than 40 budding 2nd year junior animators housed in this class alone!

Hard at work, full concentration, dedication and passion!

Nippon Kogakuin's students are required to come up with their own anime short or even mini series as a final year project! There are no computers in this particular room, meaning all animation taught and applied here, are strictly traditional as in manual!

Example of model sheets. The college also liases closely with reputed anime studios in Japan such as Gonzo and JC Studio to give their students additional exposure to the animation industry in Japan. Animators here are hired right after graduation and are highly in demand for the local industry...or so they say...

The sensei who teaches animation! (I forgot what his name is lol)

Sensei here is a part-time lecturer and also works as a professional animator in another studio. He's rather shy and declined to have his photo taken...so I sneakshot one from behind one of the aisle, much to the amusement of his students. They teased him quite a bit...especially the girls. ;)

Still, that did not stop one of our tenacious SingPoly girls to insist a shot of just him and her anyway and guess who was the photographer... XD

The class admitedlly was a lot more distracted and become livelier with our presence too.

Sensei showing how its done.

Our translator was unable to specifically translate the specialty of this gadget being unfamiliar with the animation production process. Since I trained a little on animation before at work, I was able to roughly comprehend what it does.

This is a special photo capture come scanner device, that snaps a shot of the storyboards or animation drawings directly into computer. Once that's done, sensei can playback the drawings to test and check the animation fluidity, or just playback a storyboard in animatic style! Cool!

And finally, me having a quick group photo shot with the fun and bubbly bunch of animator students of Nippon Kogakuin! Here's to Japan's anime industry!!! We looked forward to seeing new anime! URYAAAAA~!!!!
日本 の アニメタア!!!!