Animation

It's like building a cathedral, in which only a few seconds of animation are completed each week. ~ Jim Bresnahan

Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world. ~ Walt Disney

Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation. ~ Walt Disney

With animation because you can draw anything and do anything and have the characters do whatever you want the tendency is to be very loose with the boundaries and the rules. But what's great about all these different [cartoon] shows that are on now is they all have their own rules and they stick to them. And in my opinion the ones that don't make it, the ones that fall by the wayside, are the ones that aren't aware of that idea, that you have to have your own rules and boundaries. If anything is possible then I think the audience doesn't care. ~ Matt Groening

It's computer animation. It's a new industry. It has limitations: It doesn't do skin, hair and clothing real well. Take away skin, hair and clothing and you have crabs and insects. ~ Tim Johnson

First, although women make up about half of the world’s population, women are largely underrepresented in anime. Second, female (vs. male) characters are more likely to be portrayed in a sexualized manner. Third, main or central female characters (vs. secondary or peripheral) were more likely than expected to be curvaceous and to be dressed and act in a provocative manner. Our fourth prediction, that central male characters (vs. secondary or peripheral) would be more hypermasculine in a manner parallel to that of female characters, was not supported by the data. Finally, men were more likely than women to use a weapon as an indicator of physical violence and aggression, a result consistent with stereotypes about men (Eagly & Steffen, 1986). Together, the results largely support the notion that anime as represented by several of the most popular series often contains sexist content. ~ Stephen Reysen, Iva Katzarska-Miller, Courtney N. Plante, Sharon E. Roberts, Kathleen C. Gerbasi

We had to be able to animate them so that they felt like flesh and blood, but most importantly you had to believe that they had souls behind their eyes. ~ Lee Unrich

The trouble with animation today is that we’ve forgotten the basics. Every animator at Pixar can still draw. Good animation is driven by the craft not by the tools. ~ Steve Williams

Anything can be done live-action if you have unlimited time and unlimited money. But it wouldn't have looked like the book and it wouldn't have kept the same emotion as the wonderful paintings that Chris illustrated. So I don't think it would have been as true to the book if it was done live-action. ~ Robert Zemeckis

Animation is the process of creating the illusion of motion and shape change by means of the rapid display of a sequence of static images that minimally differ from each other. An animation usually has hundreds, maybe thousands of frames (measured by FPS, Frames Per Second,) depending on the animation length.

Quotes

• Three of the 10 feature films in the running for top prize at the world’s most important animation festival in Annecy in France – which ends on Saturday – are from Japan.
  The country is the only real challenger to Hollywood’s dominance of the labour-intensive genre.
  • Agence France-Presse, “Japan’s anime industry in crisis even as global popularity soars”, (16 Jun, 2019).

• Yoshiaki Nishimura, a former Miyazaki stalwart who produced the Oscar-nominated The Tale of The Princess Kaguya, said the industry was struggling to “face up to a lack of animators, bad working conditions and perhaps a lack of creativity”.
  • Agence France-Presse, “Japan’s anime industry in crisis even as global popularity soars”, (16 Jun, 2019).

• Ayumu Watanabe – whose beautiful The Children of the Sea was shown out of competition at the festival – worried about visual “standardisation” and lack of originality, not helped by the fact that “fewer and fewer animators can draw well by hand”.
  • Agence France-Presse, “Japan’s anime industry in crisis even as global popularity soars”, (16 Jun, 2019).

• Japan will just no longer be the center of world animation. Maybe in five years, Taiwan will be such a center.
  • Hideaki Anno, Evangelion Creator Predicts the Death of Anime, Brian Ashcraft, Kotaku 5/25/15.

• The costumes, character design and extreme violence without consequences that you still see in cartoons are holdovers from black-face minstrelsy.
  • Samantha Bee, "The Racist Roadshow", Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, (Feb. 7, 2018); as qtd. in Tracy Brown, “Samantha Bee reminds us that everything you know and love from your childhood is racist”, Baltimore Sun, (Feb. 8, 2018).

• 'It's like building a cathedral, in which only a few seconds of animation are completed each week.
  • Jim Bresnahan Interview with Director of Rio 2, Entertainment.ie, 3 April 2014

• Do you watch The Simpsons? Did you see the episode about Poochie the Dog? There's every network executive in there. You have creative people sitting in a meeting, and then you got some network executive come in. The executive will say, "Let's have the character be a little more with-it, a little more hip, a little more today, a little more contemporary, a little like "Hey dude, hey wow!'" [These are] executives at other networks, like the Big Three networks, and to a smaller degree, Fox. This is the thing that plagued animation writing when I started, which was the early '80s. You had all this shit on TV -- it was like Smurfs, He-Man, She-Ra. I actually worked on some of those [shows], and it was just all these life-draining, soul-numbing meetings with these executives who come in, and they just say, "We want this character more fun, more appealing to girls, more this, more that." In their way of thinking, animation is supposed to be something that's not interesting or fun to look at, or God forbid, you should laugh at. They want it to be comforting for kids, so a kid will watch, smile, and stare happily like a little drone, in between Fruit Roll-Up commercials. That's basically what they look for, for shows like that.
  • Paul Dini, "Batman: The Animated Series", Animation Arena.

• Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.
  • Walt Disney as quoted in OpenGL Shading Language (2006) by Randi J. Rost, p. 411

• Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.
  • Walt Disney as quoted in "COSI exhibit explores world of cartoons" by Jeffrey Zupanic in The Review (2 August 2007)

• If you were to concoct a plan for entertainment-industry success in the digital age, Condry notes, it would probably not involve the painstaking development of hand-drawn cartoons.
  “It’s incredibly difficult, and not very lucrative” for the artists, says Condry, who visited dozens of anime studios, workshops and artists while researching the book over the last eight years. “It’s one of the most labor-intensive forms of media there is.” Entertainment companies do not necessarily make huge profits off anime, which was an issue motivating Condry’s study; as he puts it, “How can things that don’t make money go global?”
  The answer is that anime producers create many series and watch closely for what catches on — and then, once the characters in a series become a “platform” for audience participation, may cash in through toys, games and other forms of entertainment.
  “What distinguishes anime,” Condry says, “is the degree of openness the copyright holders have to give the fans a chance to re-work the characters” and other elements of the original cartoons. He adds: “The ‘Gundam’ producers, when shown work created by fans, just said, ‘That might be the way it is.’”
  • Peter Dizikes, “Why are Japanese cartoons a global hit?”, MIT News Office, (January 29, 2013).

• Even though you may see characters of color represented on screen, you can’t see the faces of the people hired to do the voices. Historically, white people did all the voices including those horrible imitations of what Asians, blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans were supposed to sound like.
  • Rudy Gaskins, in "Has Hollywood's diversity discussion reached voice acting?", by Saleah Blancaflor, NBC News, Apr.03.2018.

• With animation because you can draw anything and do anything and have the characters do whatever you want the tendency is to be very loose with the boundaries and the rules. But what's great about all these different [cartoon] shows that are on now is they all have their own rules and they stick to them. And in my opinion the ones that don't make it, the ones that fall by the wayside, are the ones that aren't aware of that idea, that you have to have your own rules and boundaries. If anything is possible then I think the audience doesn't care.
  • Matt Groening, 'Futurama' ends: The Matt Groening interview, Part 2, Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times, 24 July 2013

• Animated porn has a long, international history—from the erotic woodblock prints of Japan’s Heian period to some of the earliest animated erotic cartoons of the Roaring Twenties (because of course once the moving picture came along, porn came with it). So if hentai and anime communities still thrive online and there are sites dedicated to Disney-inspired porn, it seems a shame that more people don’t talk about what makes this type of erotica so great.
  Clinical psychologist David Ley, PhD, author of Ethical Porn for Dicks, says that “animated erotica has been underground for a long time, largely because it’s often misunderstood.”
  Not only are cartoons something we regularly associate with childhood, but the style of a lot of pornographic cartoons is such that some characters featured may appear to be under the age of consent. “Though I might question how exactly you determine the age of a fictional animated character,” Ley added in an email to Glamour.
  • Nicole Guappone, “Why Animated Porn is the Only Porn Worth Watching”, Glamour, (July 10, 2017).

• To some people, even acknowledging these desires is a kind of taboo act, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t totally healthy and appropriate ways to do so. Writer and therapist Dr. Meg-John Barker says that if we want to explore those types of fantasies, “It’s important to find ways of experiencing them which aren’t unethical or non-consensual.” You can satisfy desires of all sorts because—one more time!—people and scenarios in animated porn are not real. You are not actually looking at a guy being fucked by a unicorn because not only is that not a real guy, but unicorns don’t even exist! (Sadly.)
  A friend of mine once told me that she’d never been triggered by a cartoon, and it got me thinking. Could animated erotica be a way to offer arousing stimuli to someone who is negatively affected by most live-action porn? Dr. Ley thinks so. “I’ve had several patients with trauma histories where this was their erotica of choice,” he says. “It’s a good example of the diversity of human sexuality, and the ways we each adapt our sexuality to fit our needs and personalities.”
  OK, and sometimes it might just be about seeing our favorite childhood characters having sex. Which is totally fine! “For a lot of people,” says LCSW and Certified Sex Therapist Melissa Novak, “their first memories are of being turned on by Beauty and the Beast or Snow White, and with animated porn you actually get to [as an adult] play out those childhood fantasies that you didn’t understand.”
  • Nicole Guappone, “Why Animated Porn is the Only Porn Worth Watching”, Glamour, (July 10, 2017).

• In Shrek, we had to animate an ogre, a gigantic dragon, a talking donkey, a very human like princess, a gingerbread man, a puppet and so on... In ANTZ, most of the characters were ants. The big challenge was to jump from different characters and still be able to make them all perform together. Sometimes it could be hard when you're animating a human character and then the next day you might have to work on a dragon. For each character, it took us few months of testing and practice until we felt totally comfortable with the character. The fun part was when we all felt like we knew the characters and we could look at an animation test and said "That's not Shrek. Shrek would never do that." or "Yes, that's definitely Shrek."
  • Raman Hui in "Raman Hui (ANTZ, Shrek) Interview" by Joe Tracy, Digital Media FX.

• I also think the very fundamental elements like drawing and sketching are still very important. One thing that I found very helpful is to appreciate things around me more often. You can be in a bus looking around, you see this child talking to her mother. If you think about animating a character to move like that child, you will realize life is amazing. You have all these natural, spontaneous character movements in front of you everyday. To capture that is a lot of hard work when you animate. Remember that plastic bag in American Beauty? We sometimes look at people around us and studied the movements and charateristics. Please try, you'll realize it's amazing.
  • Raman Hui in "Raman Hui (ANTZ, Shrek) Interview" by Joe Tracy, Digital Media FX.

• After graduation, Tezuka became a full-time cartoonist and hit the big time with Astro Boy, about a robot boy who is rescued by a sympathetic doctor. In 1963, Astro Boy became the first homegrown animated cartoon to air in Japan, giving birth to the billion-dollar anime industry. Tezuka had created one of Japan’s most enduring post–World War II cultural exports. But in the late 1960s people started to complain that cartoons were rotting kids’ brains and teachers began enforcing a “no comics” rule in the classroom. Tezuka’s cutesy animated television shows, so novel in the 1950s, became laughable during the 1960s. Tezuka responded by creating some of the most outrageously racy, controversial, morbid adult-oriented comics, ever.
  • Anne Ishii, “Medical manga comes to America”, CMAJ. 2009 Mar 3; 180(5): p.542 doi: 10.1503/cmaj.090168 PMCID: PMC2645453 PMID: 19255082

• It's computer animation. It's a new industry. It has limitations: It doesn't do skin, hair and clothing real well. ``Take away skin, hair and clothing and you have crabs and insects.
  • Tim Johnson, Of Ants, Bugs, and Rug Rats: The Story of Dueling Bug Movies, Michael Fleeman, laprensa-sandiego, 2 October 1998

• Animation in itself is an art form, and that's the point I think always needs clarification. True animation exists without any background, or any color, or any sound, or anything else; it exists in your hand. And you can take it and flip it. [...] What makes animation is the fact that you have a series of drawings that move. You don't even have to have a camera, you see; animation exists without it. If you want to broaden your audience, or make it more colorful or add music, then you put it under a camera one frame at a time, and then you run it at the same speed as you flip it, and then you have animation. If it depends basically upon soundtrack, or basically upon music, or color, graphic design, or anything else to sustain itself, then it is not unique to animation.
  • Chuck Jones Joe Adamson, Witty Birds and Well-Drawn Cats: An Interview with Chuck Jones [1971], in Chuck Jones: conversations, ed. Chuck Jones and Maureen Furniss (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2005), 63.

• ̇ It’s wonderful. It takes a long time, but you have all of this luxury of choice, which you don’t have in live action. You can design your own movie stars. Especially if you’re anal like I am, for someone who is a control freak, animation is torture and heaven at the same time. I worked as production designer on Epic as well, so I got to carve weapons out of nutshells and toothpicks. It’s like getting to make the coolest toy soldiers ever. And they’re paying me.
  • William Joyce, Spotlight Interview: ‘Epic’ Author/Filmmaker William Joyce, Dina Gachman, ssninsider, 24 May 2013

• After seven years of consecutive growth, the anime industry set a new sales record in 2017 of ¥2.15 trillion ($19.8 billion), driven largely by demand from overseas. Exports of anime series and films have tripled since 2014 -- aided in part by sales to streaming giants such as Netflix and Amazon -- and so far show no signs of slowing.
  • Emiko Jozuka, “Japanese anime: From 'Disney of the East' to a global industry worth billions”, CNN, (28th July 2019).

• The strengths of Japan's animation industry boil down to the overlap between manga and anime, according to Ian Condry, the author of "Anime: Soul of Japan."
  "Creators used comics as a testing ground for their stories and characters. That's often been the secret of anime's success," said Condry in a phone interview.
  • Emiko Jozuka, “Japanese anime: From 'Disney of the East' to a global industry worth billions”, CNN, (28th July 2019).

• In the early 1980s, it was largely American and European children from military and expat business families based in Japan who circulated boot-legged videotapes of anime to their peers back home, according to Mizuko Ito, the editor of the "Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World."
  • Emiko Jozuka, “Japanese anime: From 'Disney of the East' to a global industry worth billions”, CNN, (28th July 2019).

• After Japan's once-miraculous economy went bust in the 1990s, the nation sought to rebrand itself from a global business superpower to an exporter of a unique artistic culture.
  The country pivoted from mass-marketing high-technology offerings to spreading the word on everything from Hello Kitty to sushi.
  In 1997, Japan's Agency of Cultural Affairs started supporting exhibitions on manga, anime, video games and media art.
  • Emiko Jozuka, “Japanese anime: From 'Disney of the East' to a global industry worth billions”, CNN, (28th July 2019).

• What one might consider as limiting (working at only Walt Disney Animation Studios) has actually been incredibly expanding for me. Because of its stature, Disney has attracted so many of the best artists in animation within its walls ever since I’ve been here. The animation world is actually a rather small family and so many animators I know at other studios have come from Disney or are going to come here. There is a constant influence from outside of our studio walls. Disney itself is ever evolving and continually re-inventing itself. The studio of today is nothing like it was in the 70’s and nothing like it will be 10 years from now.
  • Glen Keane, Interview With Disney Animator Glen Keane, Line Boil

• Disney did not have a monopoly on using animated folklore films for marketing purposes. During the heyday of Soviet animation in the 1970s and 1980s, cartoons that seemed to follow folktales were altered slightly to convey messages in keeping with Soviet ideology. They not only criticized capitalism, but also depicted women as sexless and self-sacrificing,and urged cooperation,neighborliness, and nonviolence. National minorities within the Soviet Union were portrayed as backward and in need of the guidance of Russia,the leading Soviet republic. Ukrainians, for example, were shown as cute and quaint, living in a bucolic land. Colorful clothing and tasty foods were attributed to them, as well as the ability to sing and dance. However, they were also seen as a people who keep costs low believed in spirits and did not understand modern life. The fall of the Soviet Union and Ukrainian independence have not changed the situation, at east when it comes to animation produced in Russia. Folklore films still show Ukrainians as bucolic and musical. Women still sacrifice for the sake of others. Any animation critical of Russia, even if based on folklore, quickly disappears from the market.
  • Natalie Kononenko “The Politics of innocence: Soviet and Post-Soviet Animation on Folklore topics”, The Journal of American Folklore , Vol. 124, No. 494 (Fall 2011), pp. 272-294

• The 1970s and 1980s saw the heyday of Soviet animation. Wonderful cartoons were produced, which were of the highest quality, and many won international awards. IuriiNorshtein's Shazka skazok (Tae of Tales 1979), for example, won awards in Germany, France, and Canada shortly after its release. As MacFadyen has shown (2007:183), the film was called "the greatest animated film of all time" at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, and an international committee in Japan declared it the second greatest film" with another Norshtein creation, Ezhik v tumane (Hedgehog in the Fog 1975) coming in first. Both of the acclaimed Norhstein films declare a relationship to folklore. Hedgehog in the Fog does so in its opening credits, where it states that it is based on a folktale, and Tale of Tales does so in its title.
  • Natalie Kononenko, “The Politics of innocence: Soviet and Post-Soviet Animation on Folklore topics”, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 124, No. 494 (Fall 2011), pp. 272-294

• Two decades ago, there was hardly a Brazilian animation industry to speak of. Ten years back, a small handful of stalwart directors were struggling to gain international notoriety and impact TV, festivals and box offices domestically and abroad with low budgets and a lot of hard work. Today, Brazilian animation is thriving on all fronts, and in some cases, is even outpacing live-action in budget and ambition.
  In 1951, Brazil’s first-ever animated feature, “Amazon Symphony,” was released; since that time 43 other toon features have joined its ranks. One feature every year-and-a-half is hardly anything to write home about, but according to Marta Machado of Brazilian animation house Otto Desenhos, 19 of those pictures have come in the last five years, and another 25 features are currently in production.
  • Jamie Lang and John Hopewell, “Brazilian Animation Shows Exponential Growth in Budget and Ambition”, Variety, (2018)

• “Most institutions,” explains Leila Bourdoukan, former executive manager at Cinema do Brasil, “the culture secretaries, Brazil’s minister of culture and the state governments, have specific supports for animation. Animation is a labor-intensive activity which provides work for young people.”
  • Jamie Lang and John Hopewell, “Brazilian Animation Shows Exponential Growth in Budget and Ambition”, Variety, (2018)

• The temptations and pitfalls are to go too far -- to exaggerate too much and just put things on the screen because you can put them in. To me, the most important thing is the characterization: to know them, to understand them and appreciate them. The effects are just to allow you to depict the characters as WELL and vividly as possible.
  • Stan Lee, Nothing cartoonish about Stan Lee's comic book worlds, Louis R. Carlozo, Chicago Tribune, 3 October 2006,

• We were completely aware of how different X-Men:TAS was regarding women. First, the series existed because Fox Kids Network president Margaret Loesch willed it into being. Second, everyone on the creative side had been working in the TV animation business for years, and we were tired of putting up with its many stupid, constraining rules, one of which was that in “boys’ adventure” series, the audience is almost all boys and they won’t watch female heroes.
  • Eric Lewald in “INTERVIEW: X-Men: TAS story editor & writer Eric Lewald on X-Men:TAS Book” by Taimur Dar, The Beat, (10/02/2017).

• "I think [adult studios] are afraid of CG coming into the market because it will affect them, and they aren't able to do it themselves because they do not have the creativity or the skills," says Darron. "If they do hire someone, they're not willing to put up the budget or give it the financial backing required."
  • Regina Lynn, “Animated Porn Makes Moves”, WIRED, (12.01.06).

• Their first feature, Sex Agent - 0069, took almost a year to complete. But these days, the brothers say they can make a feature in about four months – the same time it takes a studio to put together a live-action DVD.
  "We've been doing environments for many years, and we can create any environment someone wants in a couple of days," Tahl says, matter-of-factly. "The more we practice doing the animation, the faster we get."
  • Regina Lynn, “Animated Porn Makes Moves”, WIRED, (12.01.06).

• Shingo Adachi, an animator and character designer for Sword Art Online, a popular anime TV series, said the talent shortage is a serious ongoing problem — with nearly 200 animated TV series alone made in Japan each year, there aren’t enough skilled animators to go around. Instead, studios rely on a large pool of essentially unpaid freelancers who are passionate about anime.
  At the entry level are “in-between animators,” who are usually freelancers. They’re the ones who make all the individual drawings after the top-level directors come up with the storyboards and the middle-tier “key animators” draw the important frames in each scene.
  In-between animators earn around 200 yen per drawing — less than $2. That wouldn’t be so bad if each artist could crank out 200 drawings a day, but a single drawing can take more than an hour. That’s not to mention anime’s meticulous attention to details that are by and large ignored by animation in the West, like food, architecture, and landscape, which can take four or five times longer than average to draw.
  • Eric Margolis, “The dark side of Japan’s anime industry”,Vox, (Jul 2, 2019).

• According to the Japanese Animation Creators Association, an animator in Japan earns on average ¥1.1 million (~$10,000) per year in their 20s, ¥2.1 million (~$19,000) in their 30s, and a livable but still meager ¥3.5 million (~$31,000) in their 40s and 50s. The poverty line is Japan is ¥2.2 million.
  • Eric Margolis, “The dark side of Japan’s anime industry”,Vox, (Jul 2, 2019).

• Anime’s structural iniquities stem back to Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Boy and the “god of manga.” Tezuka was responsible for an endless catalog of innovations and precedents in manga, Japanese comics, and anime, onscreen animation. In the early 1960s, with networks unwilling to take the risk on an animated series, Tezuka massively undersold his show to get it on air.
  “Basically, Tezuka and his company were going to take a loss for the actual show,” said Michael Crandol, an assistant professor of Japanese studies at Leiden University. “They planned to make up for the loss with Astro Boy toys and figures and merchandise, branded candy. … But because that particular scenario worked for Tezuka and the broadcasters, it became the status quo.”
  Tezuka’s company made up the deficit and the show was a success, but he unknowingly set a dangerous precedent: making it impossible for those who followed in his footsteps to earn a living wage. Diane Wei Lewis points out in a recent study that women, who often worked on animation from home, were especially vulnerable to exploitation and paid even less.
  Nowadays, when production committees set the budget for shows, there is a long-established precedent to. The revenue is divided up among the television networks, manga publishers, and toy companies. “The parent companies make money from the merchandising tie-ins,” Crandol said, “but the budget for the rank-and-file animators is separate.”
  “These prices are so ridiculous because they’re still based on what Tezuka came up with,” said Thurlow. “And back then, the drawings were very simple … you had a circle head and dot eyes, and maybe you can draw an in-between in 10 minutes. I could earn some money at that pace … but Japanese anime, [now] one drawing is so detailed. You’ve worked for an hour for two bucks.”
  • Eric Margolis, “The dark side of Japan’s anime industry”, Vox, (Jul 2, 2019).

• I worry if we continue to animate in the same way with multiple movies coming out year after year from studios that there will be a “sameness” to it all. I worry audiences won’t find them fresh. We embraced the snappier style of animation to what I did on the last Ice Age movie.
  • Steve Martino, Snoopy and Charlie Brown: The Peanuts Movie – interview with director Steve Martino, Cassam Looch, HeyUGuys, (30 October 2015).

• You have to understand that many of the scenes we're building just couldn't be done without the use of digital rendering.
  • Rick McCallum, Anticipation: The Real Life Story of Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace, by Jonathan Bowen p.7

• It's no secret that the majority of animators and writers prefer to work on shows aimed at an older audience. Abby Terkuhle, president of MTV Animation and creative director of MTV, was North America's first pioneer in the area of adult animation. His network continues to produce and showcase the kind of programming that has made this genre feasible both domestically and abroad. On the topic of creative process, Abby points out that, "For us, producing adult animation is in some ways akin to the creative process experienced in music. It gives our writers and animators an opportunity to experiment with their art and to come up with new techniques and formats. Going back to the early days, it started with something as simple as splashing paint on the MTV logo."
  • Sean Maclennan Murch, Mainstream Business of Adult Animation “, Animation World News, (July 1, 1998).

• I think animation has a tendency to make you a little arrogant. You create everything in a world, think you have answers for everything, etc. So, I think it’s the ultimate challenge for animation directors – jumping to live-action where you don’t have that control.
  • Kevin Munroe, Director Kevin Munroe revisits Imagi’s TMNT franchise, Josh Armstrong, Animated Reviews, 19 August 2014

• While the South African animation community is large compared to other countries in Africa, it is still small from a global perspective. There are about 20 established animation and vfx studios in the country, according to estimates, mostly small (two to three people) or medium in size. A few larger studios, with staffs of 30 to 35, dominate the commercial, vfx and long-form character animation sectors, but smaller studios can be profitable by specializing in commercials or motion graphics.
  • Karen Raugust, “Animation in Africa: Going Beyond the 'Low-Cost' Option”, (November 20, 2008).

• Egypt also hosts a significant animation production business, with more than 50 animation studios, according to Mohamed Ghazala, an animator, animation historian and faculty member at Minia University in Egypt, one of the relatively few institutions in Africa that offer animation programs. His films include Carnival (2001), Crazy Works (2002) and HM HM (2005). Ghazala also is director of ASIFA Egypt, which was established in Cairo in October 2008 as the first ASIFA chapter in Africa.
  • Karen Raugust, “Animation in Africa: Going Beyond the 'Low-Cost' Option”, (November 20, 2008).

• Outside of South Africa and Egypt, animation production is limited mostly to a few small studios and independent animators in countries such as Mauritius and Kenya, working primarily in 2D animation, along with some Flash and Maya work. Much of their output consists of a small number of short films and commercials, with very little long-form entertainment content. "We do a lot of work for Kenya, Nigeria, Malawi, because there are very limited animation resources available in these countries," says Forrest.
  • Karen Raugust, “Animation in Africa: Going Beyond the 'Low-Cost' Option”, (November 20, 2008).

• In modern-day France, a long-term interest in Japan has mingled with the strong culture of bande dessinée, or French and Belgian comics. “The current popularity of manga [there] is generally traced to the proliferation of anime on French TV in the mid-1970s and 1980s,” according to Gueydan-Turek. This was largely limited to blockbuster manga and encouraged “a simplified and distorted view of Japanese culture”, where aspects like kawaii (the culture of cuteness) and certain violent aesthetics prevailed “over the artistic and literary nuance of more multilayered graphic works such as Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen”. One manga series beloved in France has been the cat-centric Chi’s Sweet Home. However, Gueydan-Turek points to the la nouvelle manga movement as a less mainstream alternative, which brings together Japanese mangaka (manga authors) and Franco-Belgian bande dessinée artists in a hybridised approach to the multiple cultures.
  • Christine Ro, “Did manga shape how the world sees Japan?”, BBC, (12 June 2019).

• If manga has acted as a vehicle for continued international links in France, and as an alternative to the French cultural presence in Algeria, it’s provided a counter to perceived American values in Russia, where Sailor Moon has become hugely popular. Manga spread in the post-Soviet era, allowing certain educated youth to seek refuge from both the constraints of communism and the money-seeking excesses of capitalism. It was a key part of the geeky new otaku subculture (Japanese men who love manga, anime and computers) that provided a ‘protective niche’ for Russian young people.
  • Christine Ro, “Did manga shape how the world sees Japan?”, BBC, (12 June 2019).

• Any story can be told in animation…I’m hoping someone will try to tell a story that’s brand new…not one that’s similar to every other story we’ve seen.
  • Tom Ruegger, "Tom Ruegger", Laura, Animation Insider, (3 September 2015).

• Animated drawings were introduced to film a full decade after George Méliès had demonstrated in 1896 that objects could be set in motion through single-frame exposures. J. Stuart Blackton's 1906 animated chalk experiment Humorous Phases of Funny Faces was followed by the imaginative works of Winsor McCay, who made between four thousand and ten thousand separate line drawings for each of his three one-reel films released between 1911 and 1914. Only in the half-dozen years after 1914, with the technical simplifications (and patent wars) involving tracing, printing, and celluloid sheets, did animated cartoons become a thriving commercial enterprise.
  • Scott Simmon, "Notes on the Origins of American Animation (1900-1921)”, Library of Congress.

• Work hard. That’s the thing that most people who love games and animation may not realize about what they’re seeing. It requires an ugly amount of work. You have to dedicate your life to it, but I believe almost anyone can learn how to make games and animate at a competent level. I don’t believe in following your dreams and going into too much fairy dust about the arts. Sure, it’s fun, but there are many times it’s not fun and you still have to do it.
  • Doug TenNapel, "A Conversation with ‘Armikrog’/‘Earthworm Jim’ creator Doug TenNapel", Ben Mitchell, Skwigly: Online Animation Magazine, (30 September 2015).

• The process of outsourcing animation began in the 1970s, when the three major American networks—ABC, CBS and NBC—aired Saturday morning cartoons like Scooby-Doo] and Fat Albert. These shows were hugely popular, and American production studios struggled to meet the demand for more episodes. “They had no other choice but to outsource production,” says Nelson Shin, the founder of Seoul’s AKOM Production, which has animated The Simpsons for more than 25 years. Korean artists proved themselves to be technically astute and fast, and by the 1990s, Animation World Magazine estimated that 30 percent of the world’s animation production was done in Korea.
  Today, the Korean animation industry is a complex web of around 120 studios, creating work for Fox, DreamWorks, Nickelodeon, and the Cartoon Network. “Not many people know about the close relationship between Korean and American animation production,” says Shin. The only tell, he says, comes if you pay close attention to a show’s credits.
  • Kate Torgovnick, “A New Age of Animation”, The Atlantic, (May 20, 2016).

• Kuwahara showed them how drawing on-screen would allow in-betweeners to create consistent line quality every time. He showed them how going fully digital would ease the revision process, making it so that anyone—in Korea or the U.S.—could open a file and make adjustments. He demonstrated how the eyebrow problem could be fixed in mere seconds.
  Still, in meeting after meeting, Kuwahara got the same response: Korean studio owners couldn’t justify the expense, given that most clients weren’t asking for the change. “How do you move a big show like The Simpsons into a different production pipeline?” Kuwahara says. “When you’ve done so many episodes a particular way, it’s tough to adjust all the moving parts.”
  Korean studios have faced technological change before. Animators here—like their American animation predecessors—once drew on translucent cells, which were then painted by hand. In the 1990s, Korean studios moved to doing “ink and paint” digitally—they started scanning line drawings and coloring them via software. Today, changing a color in a scene means a few clicks rather than redrawing everything. “When people were on paint, it was like, ‘Why should we stop painting?’’’ says Kuwahara. “Now, no one can conceptualize having to go back on paint.”
  • Kate Torgovnick, “A New Age of Animation”, The Atlantic, (May 20, 2016).

• We had to be able to animate them so that they felt like flesh and blood, but most importantly you had to believe that they had souls behind their eyes.
  • Lee Unrich, "Toy Story 3: interview with director Lee Unkrich", Daily Telegraph, (8 July 2010).

• The trouble with animation today is that we’ve forgotten the basics. Every animator at Pixar can still draw. Good animation is driven by the craft not by the tools.
  • Steve Williams, "Steve "Spaz" Williams", Sheridancollege.ca

• You have to make all the same decisions that a live action director would have to make. Everything from where to put the camera to what the emotional tone of the scene is going to be, in addition to answering all the questions about costume design and weather and color and all the numerous elements that go into making the scene. We're there every step of the way from the very first crude character designs and early storyboards to how loud the footsteps of the Beast should be as he's walking across the marble floor. We shepherd the process from beginning to end.
  • Kirk Wise, "Interview: 'Beauty and the Beast' Director Kirk Wise", Big Movies Zones, (February 2002).

• Animation is unlike other media industries in that it is, to use a sometimes vaguely applied adjective, global. The highly labor-intensive process behind animation production means that work is very often shared across countries and even continents. Animation, which is easier to dub and has much less local context than live action drama, also travels easily. The key target audience of under-nines happily watch cartoons wherever they originate. These underlying strengths of the genre remain, but it has become an increasingly tough industry for producers as more intense competition in the broadcasting marketplace has transformed their funding model. The corporate structure of companies active in the business ranges from the largest media conglomerates in the world (Walt Disney, Time Warner and Viacom Inc.) to small companies amounting to little more than a designer with a PC and the latest software package.
  • Tim Westcott, “An overview of the global animation industry”, Creative Industries Journal, Volume 3, 2011 - Issue 3 ,Pages 253-259 | Published online: (03 Jan 2014).

• About 15,000 young Jamaicans will benefit from training, digital work opportunities and seed investments to boost the digital and animation industries in the country as a result of a US$ 20 million loan for a Youth Employment in Digital & Animation Industries Project approved today by the World Bank Board of Directors.
  “This project facilitates Jamaica’s linkage into one of the fastest growing sectors in the global economy,” said Jamaica’s Minister of State for Science, Technology, Energy & Mining, Julian Robinson. “It is our strongest national thrust to date to mobilize the considerable creative and entrepreneurial talent among our youth towards earning our way to a brighter future.”
  Global animation is a growing industry currently valued around US$ 220 billion per year. International companies are increasingly looking at Jamaica as a country of choice for outsourcing animation production. As part of its “Vision 2030 Jamaica” plan, the government is looking at the information and communication technology (ICT) sector as playing a central role in the transformation of the country over the next two decades, moving Jamaica from being a consumer to also become a producer of digital platforms and content.
  "Youth unemployment in Jamaica is about 30 percent. This initiative spearheaded by the Government is about providing opportunities for new talents to get new skills, find jobs or become entrepreneurs,” said Sophie Sirtaine, World Bank Country Director for the Caribbean. “For the technology sector to become an engine for growth and employment, it requires the right environment with training opportunities and the right partnership between Governments, private sector and young people”, she added.
  • World Bank, “About 15,000 Jamaican Youth to Benefit from Digital Employment Opportunities “, (July 18, 2014).

• The film industry is one of the important cultural and creative industries in Uzbekistan, including animated films. Animated films are recognized as a complex industry playing a critical educational role. Numerous sociological studies claim that modern cartoons and animated films are capable not only of influencing the child’s behaviour, but also influence the formation of his/her worldview.
  • UNESCO, "UNESCO supports the development of animated films in Uzbekistan", (19.11.2018).

• Anything can be done live-action if you have unlimited time and unlimited money. But it wouldn't have looked like the book and it wouldn't have kept the same emotion as the wonderful paintings that Chris illustrated. So I don't think it would have been as true to the book if it was done live-action.
  • Robert Zemeckis, "Tom Hanks and Director Robert Zemeckis Discuss "The Polar Express", Rebecca Murrary, About Entertainment.

Fred Patten, “The Anime "Porn" Market”, Animation World News, (July 1, 1998)

• A February 1, 1998 New York Times story on contemporary Japanese animation comments on its wide range, but emphasizes that "animé refers strictly to `adult' Japanese animation ... racy, battle-ravaged animé ... `pornimation,' as some of the steamier romps with Western-looking women, from college girls to the princesses of sci-fi legend, are sometimes called in the United States ... animé is all violence and sex ..." The article also refers to one of Japan's most popular children's TV cartoon stars, the robot cat Doraemon, as "scantily clad;" an innuendo equivalent to identifying Donald Duck or Porky Pig only as cartoon characters who go about in public without any pants on.
• Michael Johnson, president of Buena Vista Home Entertainment, said in Daily Variety, February 13, 1998, of Disney's forthcoming U.S. release of Hayao Miyazaki's 1997 Japanese box-office-record-breaking feature Princess Mononoke, "This is not anime ... it's not effects-driven or violence-driven." Mike Lazzo, vice president of programming for the Cartoon Network, assured the public in USA Today, December 18, 1997 that anime is not shown on American TV. "Japan animation is so different from what airs here ... It's far edgier, adult and violent. Anime isn't very story-based ... The story is hard to follow." When it was pointed out that the Cartoon Network shows Speed Racer and Voltron, both juvenile action-adventure TV cartoon series produced in Japan, Lazzo said that "neither show is in the style of anime."
• When the first anime-genre videos were released in 1990-91 through mail order and direct sales to the comic-book fandom specialty stores, it was understood by this market that these were animated equivalents of movies like The Terminator and Die Hard, full of explosions, blood-'n-guts, adult dialogue, and often a brief risqué nude scene. Around 1994 the anime videos expanded into the major video mass-market chains and became accessible to the general public, which tends to assume automatically that all animated cartoons are safe for children. This resulted in the necessity for warning advisories on the video boxes such as "Contains violence and nudity;" "Contains brief nudity and mature situations. Parental discretion advised;" and, "Recommended for Mature Viewers." But these did not yet include explicit sexual titles.
• Japanese animated explicitly adult cartoons developed along with the general animated Direct-to-video market. The first Japanese Original Animated Video (OAV) title was a science-fiction drama, Dallos, released in December 1983. The third OAV release, on February 21, 1984, was Lolita Anime I: Yuki no Kurenai Kesho * Shojo Bara Kei (freely translated, Crimson Cosmetic on the Snow * Young Girls' Rose Punishment). This half-hour video, first in the short-lived Wonder Kids erotic anime series, consisted of two 15-minute dramas of rape and sadistic sexual torture/murder of schoolgirls, whose spirits exact a gruesome supernatural vengeance. Of the seventeen OAVs released during 1984, six were "general" and eleven were pornographic. In 1985, after the viability of the direct-video market for action-adventure anime had been established, the total was 28 action-adventure titles to just another eleven porno titles. The Japanese domestic OAV market has grown accordingly, over the past decade, with 1997's output of 162 "general" titles and 62 erotic titles (including some multiple volumes of series) being about the average ratio.
• None of the anime distributors are willing to discuss sales figures, but John Sirabella makes a broad estimate that adult anime is about 30% to 40% of the overall anime market. "If the general market is $100,000,000, that means that the adult videos are selling $30,000,000 to $40,000,000 a year." This is disputed by CPM's sales director, Mike Pascuzzi, who estimates that the adult sales only make 15% to 20% of the general market. "Don't forget that there are several other anime video releasers such as Viz Video, Pioneer, AnimEigo and Urban Vision which do not have an adult label at all. They may have a few individual titles which require a Mature Audiences warning due to R-level content, but they are not really in the adult market." This may be a difference in perception as to what constitutes the "adult anime market" as distinct from the general market. Would a raunchy adolescent comedy full of college-fraternity style humor such as panty raids, peeking into the womens'-gym showers and foul-mouthed dialogue, but no explicit sex, count as an adult or as a general sale?
  Although the dividing line between general anime and adult anime may be vague, there is a definite adult market. All the anime companies producing for that market agree that sales are steady, and increase as a direct result of the number of titles available. There is no sign yet of any saturation level. As long as production in Japan turns out 50 or 60 new titles per year, there appears to be the potential for unlimited growth. Many, though not all, of the adult cartoon videos range from mild eroticism to explicit pornography. However, there does not seem to be a broad correlation between the anime pornography audience and the market for American-made stag cartoons and live-action sex films. The overlap so far is minor, and the American general erotic video/TV market does not seem to be interested in tapping into the lode of Japanese animated titles.
  • Fred Patten, “The Anime "Porn" Market”, Animation World News, (July 1, 1998).

“Anime and Philosophy: Wide Eyed Wonder” edited by Josef Steiff, Tristan D. Tamplin (2010)

• Since the 1960s, Japan has produced a considerable number of cyborg narratives in manga and anime, particularly in works targeting male children and adolescents. From early manga examples such as Kazumasa Hirai and Hiro Kuwata's 8 Man and Shotaro Ishinomori's Cyborg 009, and their subsequent anime versions, the protagonist is commonly cyborged against their will or desires. This positions them as victims, regardless of how physically powerful they are. Their sense of inferiority and vulnerability usually underpins these narratives, either subtly or explicitly.
  The depiction of female cyborgs adds complexity to the positioning of cyborgs in manga and anime, especially in terms of gender. Female cyborgs may be equipped with remarkable physical strength, combined with voluptuous, eroticized bodies (for instance Major Motoko Kusanagi in Masamune Shirow's original manga and Mamoru Oshii's anime version of Ghost in the Shell); and these powerful female cyborgs are also frequently ascribed roles as protectors or supporters of incompetent and insecure male protagonists. Although some female cyborgs may possess characteristics that indicate a transgression of the conventional boundaries of gender, this transgression is often limited and undermined by other elements of their depiction. As Kumiko Sato points out in her essay "How Information Technology Has "Not, Changed Feminism and Japanism", "female cyborgs and androids have been domesticated and fetishized into maternal and sexual protectors of the male hero" and thus "their functions is usually reduced to either a maid or a goddess obediantly serving her beloved male master, the sole reason for her militant nature."
  • Christie Barber, Mio Bryce, and Jason Davis; Ch. 2, “The Making of Killer Cuties”

• Although all cultural products, including anime, are inextricably linked to some philosophy, when the Japanese deal with Christianity in their anime, it is more for literary effect than for philisophical argument: symbols, more than syllogisms, are what most Japanese anime artists are concerned with. For instance, in Golgo 13, the protagonist is an assassin known as "Golgo 13", which refers to Golgotha, the hill on which Jesus was crucified, and the alleged day-Friday the thirteenth-when Jesus was killed; but beyond the common feelings of death, sorrow and loneliness which both Jesus and Golgo 13 felt or feel, there is nothing else in common between these two. Or again, in Rave Master, Shiba's sword is called the "Ten Commandments," which shares the idea of judgement with the biblical commandments but nothing else.
  One of the things that follows from this is that, agreeing with C.S. Lewis's claim in his essay "Christian Reunion: An Anglican Speaks to Roman Catholics," Catholicism is a "jungle of symbols and Protestantism is often a "desert" of bare platitudes (C.S. Lewis: Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, p. 396), when Japanese anime deals with Christianity, it tends to gravitate toward Catholicism.
• Besides being symbolically richer-and hence better to create a "spiritual mood"-than Protestantism, Catholicism is also more likely to be featured in Japanese anime because many of the western, biblically-inspired stories that the Japanese have drawn from and encoded in their anime were set in Europe at a time when there was no Catholic-Protestant divide and so have typically been thought of as Catholic.
• Moreover, the entire Gothic genre itself, with its sympathetic vampires and the like, was largely a product of the Romantic Movement, which, though it began in Protestant countries, combined the Protestant emphasis on freedom with Catholic imagery. This Romanticism, in turn, influenced countless anime, such as Vampire Hunter D. Indeed, when Japanese anime present unorthodox Christian views, these views are not always the product of Japanese pluralism but are sometimes Japanese appropriations of Romanticism's unique conceptualization of Christianity.
  • Adam Barkman, Ch. 8, Did Santa Die on the Cross?, "Why Catholicism is Better than Protestantism...for Anime".

• [I]t comes as little surprise that when we look at Japanese anime, we are bombarded by innumerably different presentations of gender and sex, including those having to do with major Christian figures, such as angels, demons, priests, cardinals, nuns and popes. For instance, in Earthian, the two protagonist angels, Chahiya and Kagetsuya, are not only partners in evaluating humanity, but are also shown to be gay lovers since both are in male form when they have sex. Or again, in Trinity Blood, the head of the Catholic church is a bishonen ("beautiful boy") pope, who is flanked by a female cardinal.
  Most of these encodings don't reflect orthodox Christianity, which as traditionally claimed that while sex belong to the body, gender belongs to the soul or spirit, and because the higher affects the lower, the soul or spirit determines the sex of the body. As a result, when orthodox Christians call God "He' and not 'She,' they mean to say that God is essentially masculine, even though He, of course, has feminine attributes. Or again, female bodies point toward feminine souls and male bodies point toward masculine souls, and even though females should have some masculine attributes and males should have some feminine ones, neither sex should engage in any activity, such as cross-dressing or homosexual love, that would confuse or blur the essential differences between men and women.
  Moreover, while angels and demons don't have bodies as we understand them and hence are sexless, it doesn't follow that they don't have genders since gender belongs to the soul or spirit. It's based on a theory of gender such as this, coupled with the belief that God made all things to function in certain ways, that most orthodox Christians have held beliefs such as the masculunity of God (John 3:35), male headship in marriage (Ephesians 5:32), the unnaturalness of homosexuality (1 Corinthians 6:9), the lack of sexual marriage of Heaven (Matthew 22:30), the importance of gender for church office (1 Timothy 2:12), and condemnation of cross-dressing and the like (Deuteronomy 22:5). As a result, orthodox Christianity would take issue with Earthian's gay angels and Trinity Bloods female cardinal, and would see potential danger in anime's general tendency to over-feminize men, for instance, masculine, spiritual authority is poorly represented by Trinity Bloods bishonen pope.
  Perhaps more than any other issue, this sort of treatment of gender and sexuality demonstrates that Japanese pluralism has penetrated deep into the minds of Japanese anime artists. The ultimate result of this is that when these artists produce anime, they encode their pluralistic interpretations of Christianity into their works. And because pluralism has little use for propositional truths or religious doctrines, when Japanese anime presents Christian teaching, it is almost always rendered inaccurately.
  • Adam Barkman, ch.8, Did Santa Die on the Cross?, "Gay Angels, Female Cardinals, and Bishonen Popes".

Stephen Reysen, Iva Katzarska-Miller, Courtney N. Plante, Sharon E. Roberts, Kathleen C. Gerbasi, "Examination of Anime Content and Associations between Anime Consumption, Genre Preferences, and Ambivalent Sexism", The Phoenix Papers, Vol. 3, No. 1, (August 2017)

• While a growing body of research is examining the effects of sexism in television and video games on sexist attitudes, there has been little research specifically focusing on this issue in the context of anime. Anime is an abbreviation for Japanese animation, and is often based on manga (Japanese graphic novels/comics). Some genres of anime/manga frequently contain sexist content, including sexual harassment, scantily clad women, and objectification of women (Brenner, 2007). In one study of perceptions of sexism in anime, Bresnahan, Inoue, and Kagawa (2006) asked male and female participants from the US and Japan to watch an episode of Dragon Ball Z, before rating their perception of the characters. Participants from Japan and males from both of the countries perceived the characters as exhibiting stereotypical traits, but those who held more traditional views of gender roles perceived fewer stereotypes. Both participants from Japan and males (across both countries) endorsed the notion that the characters would serve as good role models and liked the characters. The study suggests that participants were often aware of the sex stereotypes portrayed in the anime and viewed these characterizations as not only acceptable, but good examples for others. And while this is only one study, when coupled with other scholarly work (Brenner, 2007; Kim, 2002; Napier, 2005) and discussions within the anime fandom itself, there is reason to believe at least some genres of anime may contain more sexist content than others, and may be more closely tied to sexist attitudes as a result.
  • p.287

• These results largely support the notion that most popular anime series contain sexist content and are consistent with most of our hypotheses. First, although women make up about half of the world’s population, women are largely underrepresented in anime. Second, female (vs. male) characters are more likely to be portrayed in a sexualized manner. Third, main or central female characters (vs. secondary or peripheral) were more likely than expected to be curvaceous and to be dressed and act in a provocative manner. Our fourth prediction, that central male characters (vs. secondary or peripheral) would be more hypermasculine in a manner parallel to that of female characters, was not supported by the data. Finally, men were more likely than women to use a weapon as an indicator of physical violence and aggression, a result consistent with stereotypes about men (Eagly & Steffen, 1986). Together, the results largely support the notion that anime as represented by several of the most popular series often contains sexist content.
  • p. 290.

• Although anime fans’ degree of sexism tended to be lower than both college students and a community sample, we hypothesized and found that consumption of anime in general is positively related to both benevolent and hostile sexism. In other words, while anime fans generally do not support sexist attitudes, viewing anime is associated with greater sexism. We predicted, and found, that a preference for hentai in particular mediated the relationship between consumption and hostile sexism. Furthermore, we predicted, and found, that preference for action and mecha genres mediated the relationship between consumption and benevolent sexism. Two unexpected results were also observed. First, a preference for slice of life anime also mediated the relationship between consumption and benevolent sexism. One possible explanation is that slice of life anime often contains portrayals of relationships that may well include sexism in everyday interactions. Second, a preference for the drama genre mediated the relationship between consumption and both hostile and benevolent sexism, with drama negatively predicting both dimensions of sexism. It may be possible that anime in the drama genre more accurately portrays the sexes and the nature of their relationships (e.g., trouble or discord in a romantic relationship), although it is surprising that these results differed so considerably from the slice of life genre. Future research is needed to disentangle these results and better understand what, precisely, leads one to positive associations with sexism and the other to negative associations. Taken together, the results support the notion that consumption of anime is associated with sexist attitudes, though the relationship is specific to particular anime genres.
  • p. 292-293.

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