Looking into the Animation Industry: Part 3 – Japan’s Anime Industry

I’ve spoken alot about anime, and I’ve spoken a little bit in regards to the overworked industry of Japan, so for this post, I’m going to look further into the current state of the industry.

The anime industry is notorious for being overworked in an ever-growing industry. As reported by the New York Times, some animators earn around $200 a month, despite the industry being valued at $24 billion in 2019. Cases of hospitalisation are more frequent than they should be, with animators citing very little sleep and crunch culture being major factors.

The anime industry seems to have a general pipeline. As outlined by Washiblog, there are several key roles: Layout artist, key animator, animation director, 2nd key animator, in-between animator and compositing.

Layout artists take the storyboard and work out where the drawings should be placed in the scene. They help work out framing and draw up rough backgrounds as well as rough character placement.

The layouts are then given to key animators, who draw the key positions of an animation, and include shading and other details. While a storyboard may already describe a movement, key animators have an opportunity to inject their own style at this stage, such as Naotoshi Shida who has a very rhythmic timing to his work. As Anime Whiz states, key animators get paid more, as they are the ones with more experience and are trusted to build the skeleton of a scene. The industry largely stays with hand-drawn paper as a standard.

Animation directors follow up on the key animators’ work. Their role is often among the highest positions, being in charge of making sure every bit of animation looks unified. They provide corrections over the key animators’ work and make timing adjustments. This is a higher paid position that requires more experience than key animators. A fun fact as shown in the video created by the Anime Man above (6:02), white paper is used for key frames, whilst yellow is used by the animation director. One of the animators interviewed here says he never went to an art school to learn how to draw, and learned from self-studying in order to improve to the standard he is at now.

At this stage, the key animation is tied down, or put on-model. Sometimes, this is by the key animators themselves, or in more recent times, a 2nd key animator is brought onboard. As outlined by Dong Chang, the tie-down phase gets passed along to another junior animator, using notes from the animation director.

In contrast, the role of an in-between animator is more of an entry-level position. The corrected keyframes get given to these animators, who fill in the frames in between to make an animation feel more fluid, using timing charts given by either the key animator or the animation director. As noted by Cloverworks’ CEO Shimizu Akira (7:24), this position is filled by new animators before they become animators, taking a keyframe test in order to become a key animator.

Following on from this is the colouring stage, which these days is done digitally. As Akira explains (9:53) this is where they scan in the hand-drawn cels and fill in the colour. The process can take longer if the lines applied to separate shading and colours during the animation phase, so in-between animators are relied on to fill in the gaps where possible so colour artists have an easier time.

Following on from this is the compositing stage, or the photography section. This is where the frames/cels are combined with backgrounds and FX works. As explained by Akira and Sakuma, Photography director of Cloverworks, After Effects is used for this process just like filmmaking. Sakuma notes he went to a vocational school of anime production before landing the job, and discovered the role of photography/compositing in anime production.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that there seems to be an abundance of outsourcing for some of the earli, especially from young and rising talent in the form of freelancers. Take for example the Boruto series, made by Studio Pierrot. I’ve seen a lot of animators get on the show, providing key animation or layout animation. Alex Kavaz, Gabriel Agbodaga, Vincent Chansard and many more international talent have had the opportunity to provide to the series in some capacity (which puts me to shame as many are younger than me).

Vincent Chansard in particular has provided an in-depth interview with “artist_unknown” about his experiences as a freelancer in the anime industry. A few key points of which I found interesting are as follows:

1. Almost all of his work on Japanese productions made very little money, it’s like a hobby since his French productions provide most of his income.
2. He was somewhat put off of the role of animation director, as previous directors he spoke with have little to no involvement with the actual process of animating in their productions. As a director for Boruto #204, he handled all the corrections.
3. When asked about the increasingly tight conditions of overproduction, Chansard wishes he could have had a chance to speak to one of the animators whose cut got changed mid-production, and wishes a discussion between supervisors/directors and animators could happen when these occur.
4. Animation directors don’t clean up all of the drawings, but rather pick the most important ones that stand out.
5. If you’re starting out, don’t go overboard, especially with colouring. Focus on notations (I’m guessing timing charts) and making sure it can be read.
6. When communicating with the Japanese industry, Chansard learnt to read kanji for notes, though a lot of the staff he speaks to either have a translator or can speak English. The bigger the studio, the more resources the staff have.

Japan isn’t a place I have a particular interest working in. It’s produced some of my favourite series and movies, and has real talent. But the culture, this obsession of animators treated like disposable tools puts me off, despite being the traditional frame-by-frame process that I enjoy. Yet there are people, knowing the risk, who still work very hard to get into this industry, who were inspired by anime who want to create the animation they grew up watching. Here’s hoping the industry gets better pay in the future.