#sakuga study

[lonionjon]

Study from life action

[selsdraws]

working on figures with baseball ⚾️

i need to revisit my fundamentals

[sakugapod]

It's been a bit since I posted to this site but I'm gonna start again since this is a good place to hop on as we are talking about MHA season 3.

[swampjawn]

Character Acting > Action Sakuga (sometimes)

There's nothing like a sudden burst of 24-fps action sakuga insanery to convince people that the animation in a show is good,

but Dungeon Meshi Episode 23 shows that attention to detail in the subtler character acting moments can be just as, if not more important to telling a compelling story because while there is some great action animation too, the most crucial moment in the episode is a dwarf eating some soup:

This bit is done by the mysterious animator just credited as "Haruki," also known as Haruki Sakamoto, another relatively young talent like Ichigo Kanno, and in fact the two apparently studied together and collaborated on this project as students:

Haruki trained at Kyoto Animation and you can see the influence plainly in his style which, much unlike the flashy, snappy, grandiose style of his friend Ichigo Kanno, is characterized by very smooth motion and attention to realistic detail in nuances that might otherwise go overlooked.

Even starting from the anticipation (and here I mean that in the normal sense, not the technical animation sense) the attention to detail is on point from the incredibly consistent shapes of the spoon and bowl which each rotate toward and away from the camera, to the subtle rotation of his head not only when he actually lifts the spoon to his mouth, but also even earlier as he brings the bowl up to his face, to the little half blink as his expression goes from worry to determination, there's SO much nuance in the series of facial expressions

Senshi has generally been depicted as the most cartoony of the bunch; a stoic but goofy little teddy bear who's often silent and almost always has almost his entire face obscured, so it's all the more powerful to see his face with so much detail and expression in this cathartic, emotional moment that finally solidifies this group as his new family.

And there's more where that came from, you sick fuck. This post is an excerpt from this video where I broke down the whole episode, so go watch it!

[canmom]

Hello! I absolutely love your blog, everything from your festival recounts to animation analysis and programming (one of tumblr's recommended posts was the one where you made your own rasteriser, and I liked your attitude in what I've read so much that I'm gonna attempt to conquer my 3-year-long grudge against using opengl during college and do something similar now that I'm a bit older and have no deadlines :D).

But anyway, I have 2 questions (sorry if there's easily accessible answers, tumblr search is not helping): 1. During your animation nights, does the screen stay black while everyone watches their own video while you provide commentary? I haven't caught any yet but maybe someday! And 2. do you have any youtube channels or just one-off video essays that you like that also cover animation/directors? Or, even programming lol.

Sorry for the long ask have a nice day!

hiii! i'm very touched that you like my dorky eclectic blog <3

For the Animation Nights, I just stream the video over Twitch from local sources on my computer, typically by playing the video in mpv and recording it in OBS. This is obviously not ideal from a video quality perspective, but it's the easiest way to watch video in sync without making everyone download files in advance. Then we all chat in the Twitch chat box (in large part to crack stupid jokes, it's not that highbrow lmao). I've gotten away with it so far!

As for youtube channels, I can recommend...

anime production/history (i.e. sakuga fandom)

SteveM is likely the most sakuga-fan affiliated anituber. He makes long, well-researched and in-depth videos on anime history, usually themed around a particular director or studio.

Pyramid Inu might be my fave anituber - very thoughtful analysis of Gundam, obscure mecha anime and oldschool BL and similar topics. tremendously soothing voice too.

The Canipa Effect does excellent deep dives into the production of specific shows, both western and anime. I appreciate the respect he gives to the Korean animators of shows like AtlA in particular!

Sean Bires's 2013 presentation on sakuga is pretty foundational to this whole subcultural niche, and a great place to get an introduction to the major animator names to know and significant points in the history of anime. unfortunately a couple of the segments got slapped down by copyright but the rest holds up!

animation theory (for animators and aspirants)

I'm going to focus here on resources that are relevant to animation in general, and 2D animation. if I was going to list every Blender channel we'd be here all week :p

New Frame Plus is one of the best channels out there for game animation, describing in tightly edited videos how animation principles work in a game context and analysing the animation of various games. highly recommend

Videogame Animation Study is similar, examining the animation of specific games in detail

the 'twelve principles of animation' (defined by Disney's Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas) remain the standard approach to animation pedagogy; there are various videos on them, but Alan Becker (of Animator vs Animation) has quite a popular series. I haven't actually watched these but many people swear by them! Dermot O'Connor expands the list to 21. Note that some of the terminology can be a little inconsistent between different animators - c.f. 'secondary motion'...

Dong Chang is an animator at Studio NUT, who produces a lot of fantastic, succinct videos on standard techniques in the anime industry, timesheet notations, etc. etc. Studio Bulldog, a small anime studio, are a good complement; they focus more on douga than genga and are generally a bit more traditional.

programming

big topic here, I'm going to focus on game dev and tech art since that's my field. but also some general compsci stuff that's neat

SimonDev - graphics programmer with a bunch of AAA experience, fantastic explanations of advanced optimisations and some of the more counterintuitive aspects of rendering

Acerola - graphics programmer who makes very detailed guides to a variety of effects with a very rapid and funny 'guy that has seen monogatari' editing style. When he's good, he's really good. His video on water is probably the best one I've seen (though I can recommend a couple of others).

TodePond - the most charming, musical videos about recursion and cellular automata you've ever seen. less programming tutorial and more art in themselves.

Ben Eater - known for his breadboard computer series, a fantastic demonstration of how to go from logic gates up to the 6502 with actual hardware. worth watching just for how clean he puts the wires on his breadboards like goddamn man

Sebastian Lague, Useless Game Dev - both do 'coding adventure' style videos where they spend a few weeks on some project and then document it on Youtube, resulting in a huge library of videos about all sorts of fascinating techniques. great to dive into

Freya Holmér - creator of the 'shapes' library, makes videos on mathematical programming, with gorgeously animated vector graphics. Her video on splines is a particular treat.

There are definitely many more channels I can recommend on these subjects, but I'll need to dig into my history a bit - unfortunately I need to rush out right now, but hopefully that should be good to be getting going with!

[mysteryanimator]

Myst rambles about animation longer then they should + their love for Nocturne whoops

I keep thinking about the animation industry as of late again, all the layoffs, all the animators looking for jobs. So I might just be speaking to a void right now. I have not experienced any of the drought so I just may look doe-eyed trying to break into a disaster zone but I’m just here to offer that newbie perspective, as naive as it may seem. I’m gonna try and keep this short (whoops a lie) but if you can see where this is going, this is just going to be me talking about the impact Nocturne has on me, aka rewriting the abhorrent Twitter thread/Instagram post where I free-formed without checking my grammar. 

As someone who is pursuing animation, I have watched A LOT of animated shows growing up, I swear it was the only medium I did watch growing up. I made scuffed animatics and animations of the current show I was watching, not realizing they counted as love letters to the media. Yet, the animation industry scared me. It was so elusive and mysterious. The bar seemed too high, even when I decided to choose to study it at university. It seemed so out of reach.

Until Nocturne. 

Castlevania Nocturne practically humanized the industry to me. These people were fans of their own creations. They breathe life into them. All the character sheets that popped into my timeline, the rough cuts, all the silly memes. Something that seemed impossible became possible within an instant. My skills at the time were not what they are now by any means, hell even now I could be better, but, I looked at that show and went “I can do that. If they can do it, maybe there’s a chance I could do something like that.” I think it helps I am at a stage of my life where I can consciously consume content and have the ability to break it down.

Also, let's be so honest, it's combined with the fact that I fell in love with Mizrak and Olrox's plot... you get a very insane person. Passionate but insane. Who spends their entire day going frame by frame reanalysing 10 minutes of an episode? ME. Despite this, I have learned so much more than all my years at university have given me. I have become a genuinely better animator and a better artist. My understanding of animation finally clicked. I knew I was built for animation but didn’t know how I fit into it. I’m constantly on YouTube, absorbing information from YouTube channels like Dong Chang, wandering around Discord Sakuga servers/twitter, and taking notes. I'm still worried about bothering other people in the industry/more technically skilled than me but I think I'm getting slowly better and going "Hey I love your work! How did you achieve x/y/z? OH!? Can you explain what this means?" because again, these are just people like you and me.

So every single Mizrak and Olrox animation I’ve made has not only been a love letter to the show, and crew of people who put their heart and soul into making this, but these animations have been a testament to my skills. Take it like a capsule of how I’m improving every month. I will admit I sometimes get weirded out of the fan content I make, albeit a combination of low confidence, and imposter syndrome, and now my animation style has just become very synonymous with the nocturne style. These ‘cons’ however do get outweighed by the pros of it all. Finally finding a style that I find goes hand in hand with my illustration style (and I can't wait to see how I can evolve it into my own) and the bouts of self-doubt are vast and temporary. I am super grateful that I can look at my work in times of doubt and go “Literally anything is possible, let me put on a show that explores this certain animation principle/story beat in a particular way, and let me study it!"

It's super embarrassing to admit but Nocturne has genuinely changed the trajectory of my life. I am genuinely a whole new person with such a different outlook on animation because of this show. Yes, I am creative through and through, you cannot separate that from my blood, but Nocturne solidified that “You are exactly where you need to be”. The industry is in shambles, with people now reaching a year+ jobless, and contracts are ending, yet, if Nocturne genuinely wasn’t released at the end of September, I do not think any of this would've clicked.

(Backed up by the very fact I am/was directing a short and running a genuine studio when Nocturne came out. I was very unconfident at the time and doubted myself a lot in private since it was my first time doing any of this. This show helped me solidify a new perspective on how to run things! How to be a stronger animator!)

Now again, this is such a crazy thing to say now. I'm watching people from the show I love have their contracts ending/being laid off since last year. I swear every second tweet on my tl is of an animator desperately looking for a job or on the verge of giving up. Me, Mystery, is an animator with no skin in the game, so I don't truly know what the Western animation industry looks like from the inside besides what I get from social media. Let’s be honest, for all you know, I just animate two characters kissing constantly. That is merely the surface of its impact. HEY, I MAY DELETE THIS B4 ANYONE SEES BECAUSE THIS IS KINDA EMBARASSING, the industry sucks right now. People are losing their jobs, so what I’m saying may not matter, but also I think it does maybe? I think this is just a unique perspective to where people are losing faith and hope in the animation, I re-sparked my thanks to Nocturne. Who knows, I may lose this spark as I go further into trying to break into the industry once I'm out of uni, but I’ll take what I have now and ride this new bout of inspiration and creativity. I want to tell stories. I want to bring life to still images. I know it's possible because Nocturne exists. These are real people who exist, who put their love and care into this show. Passion like that is inspiring.

I also somehow can't escape these people reading this, so if you have made it this far- thank you for making this show the way you have! Thank you to all the people both still in it and to others who have had to part with Nocturne. I will admit I have gone through the credits and made sure I could try and learn from everyone's work despite how unique/different each role is.

I hope my grammar is better than last time HAHAH, the technicality of English isn't a strong suit of mine but fingers crossed that the ideas/content are still passable.

[nijigasakilove]

Cute twink bf is back.

Another awesome episode. Didn’t have all crazy animation and Sakuga. Much slower and more focused on Tokiyuki and his new retainers, which I appreciated after the whirlwind the first two eps were. This feels like the proper start of Tokiyuki’s quest to reclaim his family’s territory and avenge all their deaths now that he’s got full faith in Suwa and his friends’ abilities.

Suwa might seem crazy, but he’s not just running on vibes. The issue is convincing Tokiyuki that he can actually win this war. The supernatural spin on Suwa was not something I expected, and I still want a little more explanation but him being a god would explain all the meta references and his confidence in Tokiyuki’s victory. I wonder if he’s a history buff god that came from the future just to witness Tokiyuki’s rebellion and the Hojo clan’s restoration?

I haven’t seen Assclass, but apparently the mangaka is really well known for his crazy reaction faces and memes and I’m loving them in this series. Suwa’s faces and Tokiyuki’s reactions have me in stitches constantly 😂 and a spirit bomb reference was so damn random

Suwa’s reveal of his god powers was probably the best animated moment of the episode and so cool. Stopping the rain and having thousands of people loyal to your cause gather out of nowhere is definitely enough to convince Tokiyuki to study lmao.

Loved seeing Shizuku, Kojiro and the rest of the squad taking on their first test as a team. The boar was a tuff first for, but using all of their abilities they were able to take it down. They’re going to make a great team and the dynamic reminds me a lot of Ars and his retainers from Kantei Skill last season. I loved the concept of recruiting people to join the cause from unconventional parts of society and it seems like we’re gonna have some of that on this show too!

Really good episode, can’t wait for the next.

[centrally-unplanned]

Something I struggle a bit with a sort of disconnect with the current leaders of "professional-quality anime discourse". We live in the sakuga era, where groups like Sakugabooru & Full Frontal Moe are doing really stellar work on peering behind the curtain at the realities of anime productions. They aim to give you the "animators look" at how it all happens, what people are thinking, what studio conditions are, the works. They command the heights from a respect standpoint in my opinion right now, and sort of "drive" analytical discourse.

But they aren't really what I find interesting. I love and need a ton of their work, but in the end the sakuga era is the animator's era; it centers anime-as-art, the people who create, their techniques, etc. That isn't actually my thing! I care about cultural history & casual history, "otaku studies", and consumers of media always outnumber producers of media a hundred to one. They of course exist symbiotically with each other, but the creators side is only ever going to be a part of that. And its not the load-bearing part of questions around why this or that media product succeeded, what it meant to audiences, how it reflects people's relationship with individual media & wider identity norms, etc.

And ironically I think the "peak" of this discourse in western spaces is coinciding with its decline in relevance in Japanese spaces. This is a whole other topic but in earlier eras the telos of technological progress, its intensity and directionality, created a parallel momentum in cultural identity - "new, better anime" seemed always around the corner and people responded to that via identity formation around the momentum. But now, even though technical improvements occur, from an audience perspective the telos is gone. Audiences would actually get a bit wrapped up in things like the digital revolution back then - now its more like trivia, it doesn't shape as much.

There is of course people out there who touch on the cultural & historical topics, I'm no island or anything. But its very diffuse, and other sections of the discourse space are struggling. Great YouTubers exist but imo overall this is not a great time for AniTube, the intensification & legibility of financial success has not inspired that kind of work. Obviously the blogosphere is bleeding heavily. Academic works have gems in there but media studies as a discipline is shackled with awful theoretical concepts and compositional norms, its like pulling teeth with their output every time. And also are generally interested in western fandoms as befitting western academics (and while I do use Japanese academic papers sometimes, the legibility barrier is...its tough).

Beyond just "feeling alone" its an issue because right now I am quite demotivated on this area; I feel in-between ideas, with any potential project seeming dim in its payoff. The default source of inspiration normally is the works of others! Every time I get politics-burned at some point someone else puts out a really good analysis, or even just a good question. Proposing good questions is underrated, its the fuel that powers research. Not to mention "shit keeps happening", you know? Fukuyama may hold an iron grip on the ruleset still but within his bounds the game keeps on playing, which results in flurries of activity that are inspiring. I really lack that for media discourse stuff right now. I can't remember the last time I read a work that I loved. Liked, yes, sure. But you don't get out of ruts with a like.

80% of this is explained by "I am going through a depression episode" lol don't worry I'm not an idiot. But hey, what is Tumblr for if not to rant...

[pgabachelorarfa2023yauuhan]

#33

Oct 2022

Ghibli style study with existing sakuga drawing from the studio.

I started off with drawing the construction lines to better understand the volume in these characters. I feel like this exercise helped me with getting more accurate lines.

[lonionjon]

[karlartreid]

Character acting - Kyoto Animation Character Acting Sakuga MAD REACTION By An Animator/Artist

Today we are looking into a fantastic artform known as "character acting" a beautiful study particularly of human motion, interaction, relationships and expression!

In this video there are beautiful examples of such!

So sit back Relax and Enjoy

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[sandt22]

Play and Discuss: Genshin Impact

Today, we had 2 minutes to present a game we played during the 2 day long gaming festival. Here on the Tumblr, I’ve taken the liberty to break that 2 min limit in order to go more in-depth however. 

I and Malin @designingaction​ chose Genshin Impact, since providing the accounts of both a new and veteran player would give a nuanced perspective. The game is free-to-play and is available on Windows, iOS/Android and PS4/PS5, but like many other video games, it’s unfortunately not on Mac.

Trailer from when the game was first announced. Voiceovers in Mandarin Chinese.

Find a couple of images that are the most representative of your play experience

Explain the game in one or two sentences

Genshin Impact is an action RPG set in an «open-world environment with an action-based battle system using elemental magic and character-switching.» The protagonist travel the world to reunite with their lost sibling, getting involved with the various affairs of Teyvat’s many distinct nations. The game is free-to-play where the player can obtain characters and weapons through a gacha* system, either through microtransactions or for free by completing in-game activities such as events, quests, minigames and overall exploration of the open-world. New content such as characters, weapons, regions, and events is added every two weeks. It’s primarily a single-player experience, but co-op unlocks around LV16 and is useful for dealing with tough monsters if your party/team of characters is on the weaker side.

Gachapon is Japanese for a capsule toy vending machine, where you spend money to receive a random reward. It can be compared to collecting Pokemon cards, where you want to get the golden card, but you cannot know what cards you’ve gotten until you’ve purchased and opened the package. In laconic terms, it’s a style of lottery machine where you receive collectibles. Here’s a demo of how gachapon works on tiktok.

Include how the games feels like and if something was inspiring to you

After a couple of minutes spent setting up an account, the game gets straight to the point explaining the protagonist’s overall motivation in the narrative, and goes through the game’s controls with an interactive tutorial sequence. For beginners, all these buttons may feel a bit overwhelming, but like any other video game, it’s something you get used to after a while as it becomes a part of the player’s muscle memory, and can be compared to driving a car. The opening arc’s fast pace of introducing new game mechanics is something I appreciate in retrospect, as it wastes no time letting the player begin playing around in a satisfying manner and in a generous safe beginner environment without making the game experience unplayable.

As a veteran player, I’m unable to fully be aware of the game’s unique details unless I explicitly compare it to another game. Instead, it’d be more insightful to have a look at my teammate’s first impression, since she has a fresher set of eyes/senses as a beginner. I think she had not heard of the game before this assignment, which makes sense as the game is does not have as much popularity in Europe as in America or China.

My stepdad likes to laconically describe the game as a «poorman’s Zelda» which is not a terrible description: Like Zelda, Genshin follows the style trend of Ghibli-inspired aesthetic, and borrows many open-world game mechanics from Breath of the Wild. Although MiHoYo also openly borrows from other Japanese titles like Final Fantasy, Bayonetta, Nier Automata etc. For their cutscenes, MiHoYo uses many various sakuga* techniques; For instance, the opening cutscene uses the itano circus and impact frames (Canipa Effect 2020). In short, Genshin is quite a loving homage to the anime subculture from Chinese developers and donghua animators, as evident in the company’s motto: «Tech otakus* save the world.» To put it in the words of Picasso: «Good artists borrow, great artists steal.» Here’s a gif from Zelda BOTW for comparison:

Personally, I find Genshin more enjoyable than Zelda, since the problem with BOTW was that at some point I run out of things to explore, and the open world ends up feeling empty. Although, there’s a discussion around whether or not games should have a definitive ending from an addiciton standpoint, I support the subscription model where you do not run out of content. For me, it’s a matter of the same convenience that Netflix provides, which places the power of choice and self-control in the user’s hand. This allows me as a player control whether I want to continue or not, instead of forcing me to stop. And if I do wish to stop, I can instead just watch a rundown of the cutscenes on Youtube, watch someone else play through the game as a backseat gamer, or simply break pattern and leave the game. 

In the game’s settings you can also switch between many different languages, though I would of course recommend playing the game with English dub because Zhongli’s English voice actor sounds amazing, although there are some Chinese expressions or rhymes which does not translate as well such as Hutao’s hilichurl song.

The game is understandably pretty large in terms of MB, partly due to how big the still expanding open world is, but give it a shot if you can 🌸.

Sakuga is an animation sequence in an anime that is of noticeably or drastically higher quality, usually for dramatic effect. This phenomena is common for productions on a tight budget such as animated tv series, which neither has the time nor money to produce cinema-quality animation for twenty episodes straight. I prefer discovering sakuga by watching compilation montages on social media, such as this one on special effects on Youtube, although professional animators would use SakugaBooru, which is a collaborative wiki used to identify and credit the individual artists/animators involved in a production.

Otaku is Japanese for geek or nerd, and is what anime enthusiasts may call themselves. Alternatively, foreigners may also use the word weeb or weeaboo to depreciatively refer to themselves as a member of the anime community/subculture. In the west, it can be defined as a term for foreigners who’s enthusiastic about Japanese pop culture.

Finish with one way of changing, improving or creating a variation of that game

Overall, I think the game is a lot of fun and great in many aspects, so it was difficult to find something we could improve or change about the game. We agreed that we could make the game more ethical, by removing the several different intermediary currencies in the optional payment transaction, which creates a cognitive distance and thus makes it harder to clearly see how much worth you’ve got for the money you’ve spent. At the moment the game has three different intermediary steps before you can gacha pull for a character or weapon: Genesis Crystal → Primogems → Wishes.

If we wanted to create a variation of the game, we could adjust the elemental resonances either by chaning the effects or adding other elements. We could also switch up what kind of weapons the characters uses, or remove how each character is limited to one weapon-type, allowing the player to keep using their favourite character just with for instance a sword instead of a bow. This would also create a larger pool of possible combinations and make the game even more customizable, which adds to a robust game design. The downside is that this would increase the costs since each character needs a different set of animations with each weapon type, which could lead to the animations being less appealing, and detract from the characterization of each character.

[sakugapod]

New year same fucking horrible dad.

[goatondaroad]

So I started Watching Medarot a couple of weeks ago and I really love the artstyle, here are some screenshot redraws I made, I’m trying to analize the style so I can apply it to my own, I already know how to do cute animals so the next step is doing cute humans.

[paperconsumption]

why am i already watching 29 seasonal anime and why did i just add two more with bakuten and mashiro no oto