"Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Discussion specifically regarding the "Dragon Ball Super" TV series premiering July 2015 in Japan, including individual threads for each episode.

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FortuneSSJ
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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by FortuneSSJ » Tue Aug 11, 2015 7:34 pm

Chuquita wrote:So there really was an incident that resulted in episode 5 being the way it was?
That's interesting.
Maybe they'll be able to learn from whatever happened and going forward figure out ways to adapt to whatever it was or figure out how to avoid this kind of result?
An Incident?! They are professionals. Even though they work agaisnt the clock and are human (have the right to fail), things shoudn't look this bad.
I'm just glad that this subject reached the animators/toei. Even if they knew how bad it looked, its always good to remind them that the fans are paying attention.
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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by JulieYBM » Tue Aug 11, 2015 7:40 pm

Chuquita wrote:So there really was an incident that resulted in episode 5 being the way it was?
That's interesting.

Maybe they'll be able to learn from whatever happened and going forward figure out ways to adapt to whatever it was or figure out how to avoid this kind of result?
I don't think it was so much an incident as a lack of proper scheduling. The raw genga came out looking like trash and the only animation supervisor available didn't have the time to do anything about it.
FortuneSSJ wrote:An Incident?! They are professionals. Even though they work agaisnt the clock and are human (have the right to fail), things shoudn't look this bad.
I'm just glad that this subject reached the animators/toei. Even if they knew how bad it looked, its always good to remind them that the fans are paying attention.
Why shouldn't things look bad when the key animators are not good and slow and there are not enough animation supervisors on hand to correct the drawings?
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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by Chuquita » Tue Aug 11, 2015 7:44 pm

FortuneSSJ wrote:
Chuquita wrote:So there really was an incident that resulted in episode 5 being the way it was?
That's interesting.
Maybe they'll be able to learn from whatever happened and going forward figure out ways to adapt to whatever it was or figure out how to avoid this kind of result?
An Incident?! They are professionals. Even though they work agaisnt the clock and are human (have the right to fail), things shoudn't look this bad.
I'm just glad that this subject reached the animators/toei. Even if they knew how bad it looked, its always good to remind them that the fans are paying attention.
Incident's one of those vague and hopefully neutral words I use when I don't know enough about the situation to be descriptive about it. ^^; "Something" or "A situation" would've been my other choices. I don't have enough information about what went on to know how to word it. If it was "bad scheduling", I'll just use "bad scheduling" instead.

I'm relieved they're aware of audience reactions to the episode too.
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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by Theophrastus » Wed Aug 12, 2015 3:24 am

So, regarding Toei's allocation of their available staff and how that might or might not effect DBS, is this list of staff for the next batch of One Piece episodes in any way notable? Like, is there anyone particularly good here that it might've been nice to have working on Super?
August 16 – 705:

Screenplay: 「中山智博」 Tomohiro Nakayama
Episode director: 「伊藤聡伺」 Satoshi Itō
Storyboard: 「伊藤聡伺」 Satoshi Itō
Animation director: 「楢崎朝子」 Asako Narasaki

August 23 – 706:

Screenplay: 「田中仁」 Hitoshi Tanaka
Episode director: 「長嶺達也」Tatsuya Nagamine
Storyboard: 「長嶺達也」Tatsuya Nagamine
Animation director: 「横山健次」 Kenji Yokoyama

August 30 – 707:

Screenplay: 「米村正二」 Shōji Yonemura
Episode director: 「上田芳裕」 Yoshihiro Ueda
Storyboard: 「上田芳裕」 Yoshihiro Ueda
Animation director: 「高木雅之」 Masayuki Takagi

September 6 – 708:

Screenplay: 「冨岡淳広」 Atsuhiro Tomioka
Episode director: 「藤田健太郎」Kentaro Fujita
Storyboard: 「藤田健太郎」Kentaro Fujita
Animation director: 「久田和也」 Kazuya Hisada

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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by shinmaru » Wed Aug 12, 2015 9:11 am

JulieYBM wrote:I'm dumb and forgot to check to see if Ootsuka Ken talked about what he did for Episode #5.
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Ootsuka also mentions something about the 'animation collapse' that occurred during the episode.
This is good, at least they're aware of it

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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by Lord Beerus » Wed Aug 12, 2015 9:11 am

Here's something that may interest you guys. A French article about the production of DB Super. Here's the info I got from the article via google translate. I've interpreted a some of the information in the article a bit differently only because the translation wasn't the best. The stuff in bold is info I consider very enlightening:

- There are 7 animation teams working on Dragon Ball Super. In comparison, Studio Pierrot has 11 animation teams working on Naruto.
- Naoki Tate's role in the episode 5 Super Dragon Ball was not to animate or draw scenes but to correct the drawings of other animators.
- Tôei Animation studio is known for having very few animators to work on an episode. In the 80s and 90s, they employed 4 or 5 more rarely. Usually these days, they do not exceed 10 animators unlike other studios.
- Episode 3 of Super Dragon Ball was animated by a single person, as was Episode 24 of Go! Princess Precure. In comparison, Episode 27 Go! Precure Princess had only three key animators. Which is still not a lot.
- Episode 5 of Super had over 18 key animators. With this many key animators, this means there was clearly a very tight schedule and the budget was a non factor. There was good animators in this episode, though. Examples include the Kamehameha that was launched by Goku Super Saiyan 3 which was drawn by Ken Ôtsuka.
- Because of lack of time and tight schedule, Naoki Tate had to make a choice of whether he should give priority to second half of the episode where there is more action, specifically where Goku was a Super Saiyan 3, and then abandon plans where Goku was in different scenes and not in action. The second half of the episode had almost no reproach unlike the first half. Naoki Tate had done just that 3/4 of his job for that episode, and he ultimate chose the easy way out, and provided more animators to scenes where there is less action to correct the most possible scenes.
- The animation in the strict sense, where the images were moving, was not so bad. What was ugly, however, was the lack of uniformity during the fighting scenes and in the background.
- It is also important to note, that the animation director must wait until the animators finish the drawing, as the animation director is the person who works last.
- The pace of production has changed since the day that Toei animation painted cels, as with the arrival of colorization using computers, delays in the process of animation were reduced.
- Many people like the anime producers, directors or designers and production assistants are paid during the manufacturing process, planning is very punctuated to limit the overall cost of production. However, the majority of employees in the animation are freelance, as he cost to internalize facilitators and animators would be too unbearable. The only studio that could afford to do such a thing is Studio Ghibli. But the problem is not the fact that the studios are stingy. Japanese animation studios are small companies which still struggling with the budget allocated by customers. They do not have rights. In general, they do not make big profits and are not in a position to invest their own profits in an original license.
- Japanese animation in budgets are extremely low. In the 60s, to be successful producing weekly episodes was seen a crazy idea but a necessary one. Osamu Tezuka asked the animators to make many sacrifices: work very hard to pay a pittance. The standard period is always the same 50 years later.
- On a series of television production, a animator is usually paid around ¥5,000 to animate a cut (from the layout to the animated key).
- The people responsible for in-between animation are paid around ¥250 per drawing. To live survive by this standard wage, the animation leaders must work fast and can not afford to work exclusively on a single animated cut. Many animators are therefore freelancers working for several studios simultaneously.
- The problem is still the same today, as Japan's animation industry produces too many projects at a rate of an indecent speed. There are not enough talented and experienced animators to oversee production and train new young animators. The studios have no alternative but to work with animators from a low level, sometimes even amateurs who do it as a hobby. They also have no choice but to outsource certain functions in other countries, not only to contain costs but also to deliver the episode in time. In this industry, everybody is all the time is extremely busy, but also especially talented. But even the most mediocre animators, however, are solicited to regular intervals.
- It is fairly common that nobody starts work on an episode until the very last moment because they are already struggling on their deadline on another production. In this situation, it is quite common to hear about "miracle" when an episode airing in time. Sometimes the animation for an episode can begin only two weeks before the broadcast and the episode is finalized a mere few hours before before it has to air TV. The quality may be rotten, but what counts most is to have something on the screen.

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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by JulieYBM » Wed Aug 12, 2015 11:44 am

Theophrastus wrote:So, regarding Toei's allocation of their available staff and how that might or might not effect DBS, is this list of staff for the next batch of One Piece episodes in any way notable? Like, is there anyone particularly good here that it might've been nice to have working on Super?
August 16 – 705:

Screenplay: 「中山智博」 Tomohiro Nakayama
Episode director: 「伊藤聡伺」 Satoshi Itō
Storyboard: 「伊藤聡伺」 Satoshi Itō
Animation director: 「楢崎朝子」 Asako Narasaki

August 23 – 706:

Screenplay: 「田中仁」 Hitoshi Tanaka
Episode director: 「長嶺達也」Tatsuya Nagamine
Storyboard: 「長嶺達也」Tatsuya Nagamine
Animation director: 「横山健次」 Kenji Yokoyama

August 30 – 707:

Screenplay: 「米村正二」 Shōji Yonemura
Episode director: 「上田芳裕」 Yoshihiro Ueda
Storyboard: 「上田芳裕」 Yoshihiro Ueda
Animation director: 「高木雅之」 Masayuki Takagi

September 6 – 708:

Screenplay: 「冨岡淳広」 Atsuhiro Tomioka
Episode director: 「藤田健太郎」Kentaro Fujita
Storyboard: 「藤田健太郎」Kentaro Fujita
Animation director: 「久田和也」 Kazuya Hisada
Nagamine Tatsuya storyboarded and directed the Opening to Dragon Ball Kai and Dragon Ball: Ultimate Blast, so he's a good action director. Hisada Kazuya was one of the main animation supervisors for Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT, although he isn't much of an animator anymore.
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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by Araki » Wed Aug 12, 2015 3:26 pm

Lord Beerus wrote:- Episode 3 of Super Dragon Ball was animated by a single person, as was Episode 24 of Go! Princess Precure.
That's not exactly accurate, as episode 3 had Aizu Satsuki and Toei Animation Philippines also credited for key animation, alongside supervisor Yoshitaka Yashima. In any case, Yashima is known for being quick and doing most of the work by himself, not only in Super but in other shows he has worked before, so that wouldn't be an anomaly, especially for a dialogue-heavy episode that didn't require much.

What's this Yahoo Japan article? I've been offline a few days, i guess i missed that. But it's nice that Ootsuka addressed the "collapse".
Time will tell us if someone relevant will take the blame, but we can definitely count out a handful of outsourced key animators that i doubt Toei will hire again. Tate will probably keep working on the show, as he did what he could - even without inside information, that should be obvious, as the art didn't look like crap for the entire episode, just a portion of it.

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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by DragonBalllKaiHD » Wed Aug 12, 2015 5:44 pm

I took a look at the staff for upcoming episodes, and I noticed that #7 will be supervised by Kitano again, but one thing stuck me interesting is that Naotoshi Shida will storyboard the episode Kitano is supervising on. I did enjoy Kitano's animation from episode 1. He's a pretty good animation supervisor, and anytime you put the excellent action animator like Shida to do the storyboard, the episode is going to bring a lot of life, especially when that episode is about the Vegeta's battle with Beerus.

I will be looking forward to Hatano's direction for #6.
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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by JulieYBM » Wed Aug 12, 2015 11:20 pm

My guess is if Shida is going to do anything for the Beers arc it will be for Episode #7. A quick 20-60 second fight scene from Shida wouldn't be impossible given he's done lengthy fight scenes before for episodes he has storyboard, like One Piece Episode #590.
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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by Scott » Fri Aug 14, 2015 12:52 am

Some of the animation in Episode 5 was without a doubt the worst animation i have ever seen in anything to do with Dragon Ball. Some of it was even worse than this http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/3696/y8k0.png

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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by DragonHermit » Fri Aug 14, 2015 3:56 pm

The weird thing is the fight between Beerus and that alien in ep 3, was 100 times better animated than the fight between Goku and Beerus. I honestly think eps 5 & 6 will just be an anomaly.

I'm more worried about them including all other characters and making them useful in the plot than the animation at this point. With these new ridiculous power levels, long gone are the days where Krillin & co could actually be useful.

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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by JulieYBM » Fri Aug 14, 2015 4:08 pm

DragonHermit wrote:The weird thing is the fight between Beerus and that alien in ep 3, was 100 times better animated than the fight between Goku and Beerus. I honestly think eps 5 & 6 will just be an anomaly.
Hayashi Yuuki did that scene in Episode #3. Even then it wasn't the best he is capable of.
I'm more worried about them including all other characters and making them useful in the plot than the animation at this point. With these new ridiculous power levels, long gone are the days where Krillin & co could actually be useful.
Characters don't need to be as strong as Gokuu and Vegeta to have cool fight scenes.
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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by FortuneSSJ » Mon Aug 17, 2015 9:38 am

The proof that haters took the chance to bury Super in episode 5, is when they are still saying that episode 6 had terrible animation too.
But they are the same people that said Super would suck before evan began anyway.
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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by JulieYBM » Mon Aug 17, 2015 2:35 pm

FortuneSSJ wrote:The proof that haters took the chance to bury Super in episode 5, is when they are still saying that episode 6 had terrible animation too.
But they are the same people that said Super would suck before evan began anyway.
Both Episode #5 and Episode #6 have bad animation, there's no getting around this. Episode #6 has three animation supervisors, a clear sign of "oh, shit, we're running out of time to finish this episode!"

If you like Super, that's fine, I like Super for its dialogue and voice performances, but let us not pretend that Super hasn't suffered tremendously from the predicted scheduling issues.
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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by Araki » Mon Aug 17, 2015 3:04 pm

JulieYBM wrote:
FortuneSSJ wrote:The proof that haters took the chance to bury Super in episode 5, is when they are still saying that episode 6 had terrible animation too.
But they are the same people that said Super would suck before evan began anyway.
Both Episode #5 and Episode #6 have bad animation, there's no getting around this. Episode #6 has three animation supervisors, a clear sign of "oh, shit, we're running out of time to finish this episode!"

If you like Super, that's fine, I like Super for its dialogue and voice performances, but let us not pretend that Super hasn't suffered tremendously from the predicted scheduling issues.
But episode 6 looked like the average episode from a long running show, nothing that would deserve a fuss. The action scenes were ok and the directing was very good.
Art-wise, only thing i think would need fixes for a blu-ray release in this episode were some faces when the camera was far away, as the close-ups were fine.

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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by JulieYBM » Mon Aug 17, 2015 5:11 pm

Oh, the directing was great, but I wouldn't say the animation was okay even if it was average for the series or long-running series in general. Poorly drawn Yamamuro designs are just as hideous to look at as on-model Yamamuro designs. I think the only cut I really thought was okay-ish was Vegeta tying on his head-band.
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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by Lookerman » Tue Aug 18, 2015 4:39 am

JulieYBM wrote:Oh, the directing was great, but I wouldn't say the animation was okay even if it was average for the series or long-running series in general. Poorly drawn Yamamuro designs are just as hideous to look at as on-model Yamamuro designs. I think the only cut I really thought was okay-ish was Vegeta tying on his head-band.
You got a point there.

While it wasn't as eye-searingly bad as episode five, it still wasn't all that great from a technical standpoint. The wide shots make the characters derpy, Piccolo's got a lazy eye in a few cuts, Satan looks like he was drawn by a 5-year old and some of Beerus' close ups make him look like an ungodly (and starkly terrifying) mix of Chester Cheetah and the Energizer Bunny. 'Sides, if not even Ootsuka or Shida could make Yamamuro's designs look good, what chance do these guys have?

It's telling when only one member of the staff had worked on the series before (One of the contracting companies), and they were only involved with the movies, and as in-betweeners at that.

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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by Kid Trunks » Tue Aug 18, 2015 1:16 pm

I thought people might have been exaggerating about how poor the animation was at times. I watched the fifth episode and pretty much all of the fighting looked atrocious. One part in particular stood out to me as especially bad:

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Re: "Dragon Ball Super" Animation Staff Discussion

Post by irreality » Tue Aug 18, 2015 2:44 pm

Maybe I need to watch that scene again to understand the specific complaint of that picture? Beerus looks good, Goku's body and hair looks fine. Goku's face could use more detail (the foreshortnening for his head is weird -- looks too small), but in motion I don't think I'd notice. I feel that is not the shot I'd call out of what is wrong with the episode. Mostly I minded the zoomed out images lacking detail and linework looking sketchy. Like, looking at this image I'm not sure what I'd tweak other than making the lines bolder. Other images I have specific complaints about.

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