:: Introduction of anime production :: »Character design(*1) and Character Designer(*2) "Anime production" is a project which needs good team work. Besides a great script, a talented and well experienced director, attractive and charming characters are also an important factor to attract the audience. As we mentioned in "Planning", there are two kinds of anime projects, "Gensaku(comic/novel)" and "Genan(original story/concept)", so the character design phase will be different based on this. When we produce "Gensaku" anime, even though the character design has already done by the comic artists(*3), we still need to hire an anime character designer(*4). Why this? First of all, we need to simplify the character design. The comic is a static work, the number of frames are far less than anime. To highlight each frame, comic artists can draw more lines or patterns on clothes to deepen the visual impact. If we "loyally" use the characters just as in the comic, it will take a lot of time to animate(*5) those numerous lines and patterns from the comic figures (you can see the difference from the image on the right). That is quite impossible in TV series due to time and budget limitations, so we have to hire an expert to "remodel" the original character. Secondly, there is the painting(*6) issue. Black and white comic figures are not intended to be colored later so the comic artists can use rough, random sketch lines. To work well with the much faster digital painting process, it is necessary for anime character designs to connect each line properly so the painting software can automatically color (fill) the target area (as you can see from the sample on the right). Based on the reasons above, anime character designer have to use their drawing skills to create "attractive", "close enough to the original artwork" and "time efficient" characters. The character design work for "GenAn (original concept)" is more challenging because designers have to create many very original figures. Usually character designer will have a meeting with the director and producers. All guidelines he/she will be given are just the scenario and a verbal description from directors (such as, "this girl is young and cute, a little bite shy...etc"). After that it all depends on the character designers imagination and creative abilities. At the same time the designer has to give consideration about the minimum lines to keep his character "efficient" enough (budget and schedule) regarding the rest of the production team (key animation and inbetweeners). After the first character design meeting, character designers will submit a few rough sketches of the main characters to the director and producers after few weeks. After usually a few modifications, the final version of the character design will be decided upon and the designers go on to design the minor characters. As you can see from the character page on "Zeorymar", one character will have at least four pages of model sheets. One character design includes turnarounds (front and back), normal facial and different facial expression. If required, clothes and little items (gloves, wings, toys.. etc) will have to be drawn, including instructions for the people in the later stages of the production process. How does one become a character designer? According to a senior designer in AIC: "It's not difficult. You just keep practicing and drawing." It is however not that EASY as these designers who have more than 15 years careers in this field make it sound like. When we are choosing the character designers, we will go through the portfolios of many candidates to choose one whose style fits the story and world view. Those candidates are all good at imitating anything with their own style. To be as good as that, it is important to keep practicing and portrait many human beings. If you are good at drawing almost anything and meet the requests from various anime projects with a unique style, plenty of good offers will be the result of your efforts. After script and character design are finalized, the production process will move to the "story board" stage and we will give you a rough review of what this phase consists of and what story boarders do in the next chapter. »» Next: Storyboard, storyboard artist and episode director (*) Terms in Japanese- *1 Character Design = =KyaRaKuTaa DeZain, Kyarakutaa Settei, Kyara Settei, Settei *2 Character designer = =KyaRaKuTa- DeZainNa- *3 Comic artist = =MannGa Ka *4 Anime character designer = = ANiMe KyaRaKuTaa DeZainNa- *5 Animate = =UGoKaSu :verb.It is commonly used in work site. *6 Painting = =ShiAGe © AIC. All rights reserved. We welcome you to contact us if you have any question toward this website. If your questions are related to our anime work or this column, please send your question by e-mail to here.	Index Planning-1 (2003-07-01) Planning-2 (2003-07-11) Budgeting (2003-07-31) Scenarios (2003-08-28) Director (2003-12-18) Character Designer (2004-06-03) Storyboard, storyboard artist and episode director (2004-07-01)