Super Animation Catalogue 2.0

[Herms]

If it were multiple animators tweeting these, then you could definitely argue that the Goku section could be from another fight, but it seems unlikely that one animator would be handling two separate action cuts like that.

Just so we're clear, the person tweeting that talks about how they drew the little doodle of Goku on their coworker's image of Cabba. In other words, the person tweeting the Cabba image is not the person who drew it; they simply added their own Goku doodle to it, presumably after it was decided it wouldn't be used in the actual episode. By extension, if this person tweeting the Cabba+Goku doodle picture is the person who did the Goku action cut, then that means the two action cuts were handled by two different people (the Goku one handled by doodle!guy, the Cabba one by doodle!guy's coworker).

[Araki]

Yeah, assuming Goku was supposed to fight Cabba is a HUGE stretch. And i thought it was clear those cuts weren't done by the same person..

[Skar]

An interesting article on WT. It had bad animation, really ? http://www.animemaru.com/world-trigger- ... /#comments

"The five people that pirated the series then later faced lawsuits from Toei."
I laughed so hard at the last line XP.

I dont know whether Ajay remembers this. But he told me on reddit that Toei was outsourcing the less important scenes to Chinese and Korean studios from the universe 6 arc onwards. So now that the WT staff is available will they stop outsourcing to control their budget ?

Outsourcing isn't done for budgetary reasons. It's done because there is too little available staff in-house or at Japanese sub-contracting studios to complete to complete an episode on time.

Is there a source that they don't have enough in-house staff? Outsourcing is usually done to save money in other industries so there should be something that states they have other reasons for doing it if cutting costs wasn't their main goal. I Googled "Toei Outsourcing" and only found this short article:
According to Filipino news service INQ 7 Toei Animation has said that, due to growing global demand for Japanese animation, they are considering increasing their outsourcing of animation to the Phillipines. Toei Animation employs roughly 150 people at Toei Animation Phillipines, 38% of the company's total workforce.

That article was from 2005 so pretty outdated. I couldn't find anything else specifically about Toei's situation so I Googled "anime outsourcing" and found these. From Variety:
Why the outsourcing trend? As U.S animation producers discovered decades ago, production costs overseas in such anime outsourcing centers as South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan and, more recently, India and China, are far lower than in Japan — a savings of about half, in the case of the Reliance deal.

Also, Japanese producers face a dwindling audience pool. The anemic Japanese birth rate, currently the lowest in the world at 1.21 children per woman, has led to a total population decline. With fewer kids tuning in, the number of toons on Japanese TV has fallen nearly 30%, since hitting a peak in 2006.

Finally, as the Reliance deal indicates, Japanese companies aim to aggressively expand sales abroad to counterbalance the shrinking market at home.

From [url=http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240 ... 4260925714]
The Japanese government says it is trying to support the industry, with plans to increase spending on education and training young animators and allocating more funds toward film marketing. But nurturing home-grown talent has become more difficult as Japanese companies increasingly outsource anime drawing to studios in China, South Korea and Vietnam, where labor costs are lower.

This one does imply that there isn't enough young staff in the country but it's about the industry as a whole and it still sites lower labor costs as a reason for outsourcing.

[Ajay]

Just so we're clear, the person tweeting that talks about how they drew the little doodle of Goku on their coworker's image of Cabba. In other words, the person tweeting the Cabba image is not the person who drew it; they simply added their own Goku doodle to it, presumably after it was decided it wouldn't be used in the actual episode. By extension, if this person tweeting the Cabba+Goku doodle picture is the person who did the Goku action cut, then that means the two action cuts were handled by two different people (the Goku one handled by doodle!guy, the Cabba one by doodle!guy's coworker).

Ohhhhh, okay. That makes more sense, then. Disregard my crackpot theory then.

And i thought it was clear those cuts weren't done by the same person..

I'm not entirely sure how you came to that conclusion unless you also understand Japanese. All key frames tweeted from under one account that have no stylistic deviations whatsoever? Not exactly a telltale sign of multiple animators unless you can read.

[JulieYBM]

Via Vale:

how much cheaper korean and chinese studios compared to japanese one (tween&finishing)

It's not even the price, but the sheer capacity and speed. You can just send 300 tweens "abroad" and have them done in 2 days while in Japan companies could demand weeks to finish it. Of course the quality suffers.

Then again, there are some animators who have insane tween capacity. I know of people who can draw well over 1k frames a month, the capacity of a smaller studio. Of course these people tend to be extremely popular and overbooked (or contracted).

[Skar]

Via Vale:

how much cheaper korean and chinese studios compared to japanese one (tween&finishing)

It's not even the price, but the sheer capacity and speed. You can just send 300 tweens "abroad" and have them done in 2 days while in Japan companies could demand weeks to finish it. Of course the quality suffers.

Then again, there are some animators who have insane tween capacity. I know of people who can draw well over 1k frames a month, the capacity of a smaller studio. Of course these people tend to be extremely popular and overbooked (or contracted).

He's saying that they're faster and that it's cheaper to outsource which is what the other articles said. He's not giving a source so I assume he works at an anime studio but I don't know if it's supposed to be Toei. I'm asking for the source that states TOEI outsources because they don't have enough in-house staff and it has nothing to do with budget. If not, at least how you came to that conclusion and 100% sure based on the information above.

[JulieYBM]

Vale is a production assistant at Sunrise. He has an idea of how the industry works.

Toei Animation has the largest output of any studio in an industry producing hundreds of animated series a year. They're outsourcing because they don't have enough talent in Japan to tween or do key animation in the first place.

[Skar]

Vale is a production assistant at Sunrise. He has an idea of how the industry works.

Ok so in regards to the anime studio that he works at, they outsource because those foreign studios can produce more at a lower cost. Every article I found stated that one of the main reasons for outsourcing is to save money. You're saying it has nothing to do with budget at Toei. We don't even know what Toei's budget is and yet you're somehow 100% confident that it's not a problem. It would make things a lot easier if you could provide a source indicating that. I Googled "Toei outsourcing" again and this is what I found:
From Japan Press Weekly (dated 2007):
Toei Animation is outsourcing 95 percent of the total workload to subcontractors, including foreign firms, in order to cut personnel costs. At the same time, the company uses many “individual contractors” who have no labor rights, like Satoko, in order to make up for shortages of in-house manpower.

According to the Japan Council of Performers’ Organizations (Geidankyo), animators on average work for ten hours a day or more than 250 hours a month. Their average monthly income is about 94,000 yen (half of the minimum hourly wage) for “cleanup” drawings and about 187,000 yen for “rough” drawings.

At Toei Animation, there is the Toei Animation Labor Union, a division of the Federation of Cinema and Theatrical Workers Union of Japan (Eien-Roren) affiliated with the National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren). Together with “individual contractors,” the union has been tenaciously working to improve their insecure employment status. The union has so far achieved the introduction of the basic salary system into the mere piecework pay system and won bonuses for workers. The union has also won overtime allowances for animators.

In this article, they mention a shortage of in-house manpower and that they're outsourcing to cut costs. Usually a company doesn't have enough staff because they either can't afford it or they're purposely trying to save money. This is from 2007 and I can't find anything regarding their current situation or DBS specifically.

[Ajay]

Episode 44:



Animation Supervisors:
Karasawa Yuichi, Kinoshita Yui & Kusunoki Tomoko.

Assistant Supervisor:
Tanaka Chihiro

Key Animators:
Karasawa Yuichi Abe Kazuhiko Kimura Mika Maruyama Masahiko Matsuo Shunsuke Fujiwara Mai Tu Yeong-chaek Aizu Satsuki Yasuda Youko Matsuda Chiori Fukazawa Kenji Kanno Rika Chiba Yasuko Suzuki Hiroshi Tsugihashi Yuki Ikeda Hiroaki Yamauchi Aki Sugiura Keiichi Aritsubo Takaaki Funakoshi Mayumi Matsuki Yasunori Imada Akane Hayase Makiko Muroyama Shoko Sakamoto Nozomi Nonaka Miki Kajiwara Yuri Kawasaki Sae Baba Kanako Onishi Maiko Shima Arisa Nozaki Ayaka Takagi Hiroaki Matsui Kyosuke Yamada Yoshinari Yamamoto Takanori Iwai Yukina Chikada Shinobu Tsuchida Ryoun Nakaho Yukino

-

Really nicely animated episode. Nice little fight scenes, and the expressiveness on Kaio's planet particularly was wonderful. Karasawa is now three for three! It's nice to have an animation supervisor who you can rely to provide nice looking work every single week. I hope he doesn't get fucked over later down the line. He's definitely a name to watch out for -- not only because he's good at his job, but also because he seems to be given good KAs, too.

Toei are really going ham with throwing everything they've got at Super. I mean look at how many key animators it took to pull that off! Insane. This episode was outsourced to Studio Wanpack.

According to NewType, next week is being led by Naoki Tate, but the preview looked almost nothing like him. I don't know if the magazine was just wrong or whether someone started reigning in his style, but it's weird. I guess we'll see.

Nevermind, it's definitely him. Man, it's so on-model. Those eyebrows are so him, though. This is really weird to look at.

[Sodhi]

I am sticking to my theory that these filler episodes are being made as quickly as possible to give animators in trunks arc more time.

[kinisking]

Episode 43:

<image coming soon>

Animation Supervisors:
Karasawa Yuichi, Kinoshita Yui & Kusunoki Tomoko.

Assistant Supervisor:
Tanaka Chihiro

Key Animators:
Karasawa Yuichi Abe Kazuhiko Kimura Mika Maruyama Masahiko Matsuo Shunsuke Fujiwara Mai Tu Yeong-chaek Aizu Satsuki Yasuda Youko Matsuda Chiori Fukazawa Kenji Kanno Rika Chiba Yasuko Suzuki Hiroshi Tsugihashi Yuki Ikeda Hiroaki Yamauchi Aki Sugiura Keiichi Aritsubo Takaaki Funakoshi Mayumi Matsuki Yasunori Imada Akane Hayase Makiko Muroyama Shoko Sakamoto Nozomi Nonaka Miki Kajiwara Yuri Kawasaki Sae Baba Kanako Onishi Maiko Shima Arisa Nozaki Ayaka Takagi Hiroaki Matsui Kyosuke Yamada Yoshinari Yamamoto Takanori Iwai Yukina Chikada Shinobu Tsuchida Ryoun Nakaho Yukino

-

Really nicely animated episode. Nice little fight scenes, and the expressiveness on Kaio's planet particularly was wonderful. Karasawa is now three for three! It's nice to have an animation supervisor who you can rely to provide nice looking work every single week. I hope he doesn't get fucked over later down the line. He's definitely a name to watch out for -- not only because he's good at his job, but also because he seems to be given good KAs, too.

Toei are really going ham with throwing everything they've got at Super. I mean look at how many key animators it took to pull that off! Insane. This episode was outsourced to Studio Wanpack.

According to NewType, next week is being led by Naoki Tate, but the preview looked almost nothing like him. I don't know if the magazine was just wrong or whether someone started reigning in his style, but it's weird. I guess we'll see.

I thought new type had 46 as Naoki tate? Also, it's episode 44, not 43.

[Avok]

Key Animators:
Karasawa Yuichi Abe Kazuhiko Kimura Mika Maruyama Masahiko Matsuo Shunsuke Fujiwara Mai Tu Yeong-chaek Aizu Satsuki Yasuda Youko Matsuda Chiori Fukazawa Kenji Kanno Rika Chiba Yasuko Suzuki Hiroshi Tsugihashi Yuki Ikeda Hiroaki Yamauchi Aki Sugiura Keiichi Aritsubo Takaaki Funakoshi Mayumi Matsuki Yasunori Imada Akane Hayase Makiko Muroyama Shoko Sakamoto Nozomi Nonaka Miki Kajiwara Yuri Kawasaki Sae Baba Kanako Onishi Maiko Shima Arisa Nozaki Ayaka Takagi Hiroaki Matsui Kyosuke Yamada Yoshinari Yamamoto Takanori Iwai Yukina Chikada Shinobu Tsuchida Ryoun Nakaho Yukino

Holy shit, that's insane.

[Sodhi]

I thought new type had 46 as Naoki tate? Also, it's episode 44, not 43.

Tate was listed for #45, #46 was still undecided. From some shots from the preview it definitely looks like tate.

[Ajay]

Also, it's episode 44, not 43.

Thanks for the correction on the episode number. Woops!

[Wezenheim]

So many key animators! Yeesh! So I guess most of us were right to be skeptical about that cut not being Takahashi. What do we win? The eye and face roundness was throwing me off and it was fun to speculate if it was someone else, but since that key animator list is overwhelming, I'm just gonna go with it being Karasawa.

Animator's Corner made an interesting point on Twitter: Apparently this is the first time in quite some time that Matsuda Chiori has been moved from PreCure. That's pretty neat!

Karasawa is great. Really, really great. I was constantly looking up and down from my computer, but what I did see was very nice. Can't wait for next week!

[Ajay]

Updated with the image.

As for next week, I get the feeling some of the key animators are the same ones found in episode 35. Kaoru Takamura may just be working alongside Tate. That's assuming they were responsible for the weird-looking parts of #35's second half. I guess we'll see.

[ArchedThunder]

Really solid looking and moving episode, not a single off model shot and Jesus Christ at that animator list. I feel pretty confident in my theory now that because of the money Dragon Ball is making Toei is just going to throw as many animators as they can on every episode to offset the schedule.

Too bad they didn't show a Tate action cut in the NEP, the only action cut they did show was pretty meh. Hopefully Tate gives us some goods next week!

EDIT:I made some GIFs of the action. http://imgur.com/a/EPy7d
If they are willing to put this many animators on a random filler episode and the little bit of action looks like this I'm getting pretty excited for what the Trunks arc would give us.

[dhaval_dongre]

Episode 44:



Animation Supervisors:
Karasawa Yuichi, Kinoshita Yui & Kusunoki Tomoko.

Assistant Supervisor:
Tanaka Chihiro

Key Animators:
Karasawa Yuichi Abe Kazuhiko Kimura Mika Maruyama Masahiko Matsuo Shunsuke Fujiwara Mai Tu Yeong-chaek Aizu Satsuki Yasuda Youko Matsuda Chiori Fukazawa Kenji Kanno Rika Chiba Yasuko Suzuki Hiroshi Tsugihashi Yuki Ikeda Hiroaki Yamauchi Aki Sugiura Keiichi Aritsubo Takaaki Funakoshi Mayumi Matsuki Yasunori Imada Akane Hayase Makiko Muroyama Shoko Sakamoto Nozomi Nonaka Miki Kajiwara Yuri Kawasaki Sae Baba Kanako Onishi Maiko Shima Arisa Nozaki Ayaka Takagi Hiroaki Matsui Kyosuke Yamada Yoshinari Yamamoto Takanori Iwai Yukina Chikada Shinobu Tsuchida Ryoun Nakaho Yukino

-

Really nicely animated episode. Nice little fight scenes, and the expressiveness on Kaio's planet particularly was wonderful. Karasawa is now three for three! It's nice to have an animation supervisor who you can rely to provide nice looking work every single week. I hope he doesn't get fucked over later down the line. He's definitely a name to watch out for -- not only because he's good at his job, but also because he seems to be given good KAs, too.

Toei are really going ham with throwing everything they've got at Super. I mean look at how many key animators it took to pull that off! Insane. This episode was outsourced to Studio Wanpack.

According to NewType, next week is being led by Naoki Tate, but the preview looked almost nothing like him. I don't know if the magazine was just wrong or whether someone started reigning in his style, but it's weird. I guess we'll see.

Nevermind, it's definitely him. Man, it's so on-model. Those eyebrows are so him, though. This is really weird to look at.

Studio Wanpack. Nice. They have worked on so many big anime projects before. It must be costing Toei some decent amount of money. But was it for key animation or just some less important scenes ?

[Sonicjamareiz]

Please tell me if I'm speaking too soon but I think this quality will probably be the standard for Super for a while.

[Sodhi]

Please tell me if I'm speaking too soon but I think this quality will probably be the standard for Super for a while.

We would know when we get into the meat of Trunks arc.