Best and Worst Animators

[Attitudefan]

Episode #65 and episode #66. Funnily enough, these are the first two animation supervisors of Dragon Ball Z.

Also, good God. How did Aoshima do all of the key animation in episode #66 alone?

Ah, Aoshima Katsumi. Love that guy. I posted earlier in this thread that I love the dude. He usually worked alone and later, worked with two other key animators. How did he do it? I have no idea. I work on animations and they take me forever! Not to mention I get lazy. He stayed detailed and consistent! The guys an animating god. Too bad he left during the Vegeta fight. He was awesome!

I have a thread on him here: /viewtopic.php?f=7&t=18929&p=515426&hilit=Aoshima#p515426

[JulieYBM]

Aoshima being a freelancer explains it. Like a lot of the 'special' animators/directors/supervisors we see on modern titles, he seemed to prefer to do a lot of the work himself. Tate Naoki is that way on the episodes he supervises these days. Guys like Wakabayashi Atsushi have gone on to take on all of the major roles of an episode himself, like with Naruto Shippuuden episode #167 where he was episode director, animation supervisor, and a key animator. I wonderi f Aoshima's doing anything like that these days or if he's retired?

To quickly touch on Dragon Ball Z episode #30 (for which he is most famous), it's important to note he had eight credited in-betweeners, so that defomitely lends to the fluidity of the animation. I have to wonder why he moved on from Dragon Ball Z, though. Was he simply not asked back or did he move onto another Toei title?

[Attitudefan]

Well I am not to sure why he left. He was around since Dr Slump I think. Eight in-betweeners must've helped a hell of a lot and is a great send off for the guy. Episode 30 is probably the most common/known DBZ episode other than Goku's SSJ episode.

[csl002]

Solo episodes or two-people episodes didn't seem too uncommon back in the day, especially for long-form shows. How many other DB/Z episodes were solo?

Some shows these days still have solo episodes but they tend to be more "artsy" shows, like Kemonozume or Mawaru Penguindrum. And it tends to be completely solo -- all key animation, storyboarding, and direction. Also, for Shippuden 167, Shingo Yamashita animated all of the first half iirc. Random bit of information!

[JulieYBM]

Yeah, from ANN:

In episode 167, Shingo Yamashita animated his section in the beginning of the episode using Flash. He did key animation, in-between animation, and finishing. Overall, he contributed about 5,500 drawings for the first 7 or so minutes of the episode.

I can only imagine how far in advanced this episode was planned. I really wish we could see something like that with Dragon Ball, but the closest we'd ever come is if Tate Naoki was allowed to board and animate a project.

[DarkPrince_92]

I honestly don't like how Naruto has been handled, (character model wise), nowadays. I feel it is much more cartoony than it used to be. A lot of details in the face and limbs seem to have went down in quality. I'm trying my best to find refs but they're all bad quality.

[JulieYBM]

I honestly don't like how Naruto has been handled, (character model wise), nowadays. I feel it is much more cartoony than it used to be. A lot of details in the face and limbs seem to have went down in quality. I'm trying my best to find refs but they're all bad quality.

They are in the middle of production on the sixth Shippuuden film, so that's bound to take some of the punch out of the line-up, but overall I think Shippuuden's done a great job of maintaining quality over the years, espicially once we got past the first year where Studio Pierrot was still recovering from the damage inflicted by the last eighty episode of Naruto. Hopefully Suzuki and Tsuru will return in a few months to do the fight with Edo Tensei Asuma.

Uh...to try to stay on topic, I'm really rather impressed by how Dragon Ball Z wasn't negatively affected by the production of two films a year. We continued to get Maeda/Nakatsuru/Miyahara episodes and even saw improvements in Shindou Pro and Seigasha episodes. Heck, we also got Studio Cockpit episodes. I guess it just goes to show how far Toei's fallen.

[Gaffer Tape]

Ahhh. Just got done watching episode 30. I'd forgotten how amazing it looked. When I had just gotten the Dragon Boxes and was just learning the different animation teams, Aoshima was one I mostly overlooked due to his being practically non-existent. It was hard enough learning everybody else, so I almost forgot his contributions entirely and skipped past the unfamiliar name. But I wish more episodes could have looked like 30.

[DarkPrince_92]

Aoshima's work is interesting. It doesn't really remind me of Toriyama, but I like that it has it has its own unique look.

[JulieYBM]

I made a small MAD recently for Oonishi Ryou's work on Episode of Bardock (set to background music from Bleach: Jigoku Hen, nonetheless). I'm a big fan of Oonishi's work as it moves fluidly with a lot of emotion. This is his first time working on Dragon Ball but he's made a real impression, as one might guess based on his work on One Piece and Toriko. If Tate Naoki was ever placed in charge of a Dragon Ball project I think Oonishi would fit in quite well, considering the turn Tate's style has taken in recent years. Hopefully Yamamuro Tadayoshi can keep bringing Oonishi back, espicially if we continue to get video game cut scenes.

[kei17]

Diverging a bit, how's the animation in the DBZ movies? I've never seen any of them (yeah...) I know that action animator extraordinaire Yutaka Nakamura (who today is probably one of the best animators in Japan) worked on Cooler's Revenge, but that was from his really early days so his cuts probably won't be that good.

I don't know much about him and his style, but I heard that he had done the fight between Piccolo and Sauzer in a forest.

[soulnova]

Is good to know the names of the animators... I have been rewatching DB/DBZ, and I called the Triangle Crap studio as "Derpgeta and Derpku studio". Their faces... god, their faces... :S

[Gaffer Tape]

Oh, wow, I didn't even realize that Aoshima Katsumi was animation supervisor for episode 23, the one where Yamucha dies, as well. That's one of my favorite episodes, from way back in the fansub days, and I never picked up on that until now. No wonder it looks so awesome!

[Attitudefan]

Oh, wow, I didn't even realize that Aoshima Katsumi was animation supervisor for episode 23, the one where Yamucha dies, as well. That's one of my favorite episodes, from way back in the fansub days, and I never picked up on that until now. No wonder it looks so awesome!

Ah, I always can tell each varying art style. I always know who's doing what. It's so distinct!

[paparapa!!]

Um, I have some more questions with regards to the animation (some of these I should have included in my opening post):

1. Could I have some sceenshots with the names of the key animators who drew the animation? Also, how can I identify different key animators (what are the distinguing chacteristics of their animation)?

2. How can you tell whether and where a certain piece of animation has been "touched-up" by the animation supervisor and what that looks like depending on who that person is?

3. Why is some of the key animation credited to a studio instead of individuals? Is it possible to know who works for these studios and if so, who? How can they be identified?

And finally, how much does the in-between animation of an episode matter for the overall quality of the animation of that episode?

[JulieYBM]

It's typically hard to tell which key animator did which cut. Most often it's guess work from the fans by comparing credits and the like. Some animators and directors have Twitter accounts, which I know some fans have been using to get in contact with them to help confirm who did what.

As for in-between animation, it matters a great. In-betweening helps give fluidity to the motions by filling in and connecting the key frames, without it you get lifeless cuts between the key frames. I don't believe Dragon Ball ever did this, but some shows will have a key animator do their own in-between frames as well, but this sort of this is really restricted to the elite, genius animators of the industry.

In-betweening is a very important job and really goes toward helping to give life to the series.

[csl002]

Um, I have some more questions with regards to the animation (some of these I should have included in my opening post):

Also, how can I identify different key animators (what are the distinguing chacteristics of their animation)?

Most (good) animators have some defining traits in the way they... animate things. Poses, detail, what they move, how it looks. General, vague stuff but you start to pick up on it. Usually, if I know the animator's style well, I can pick out their cut as I watch the episode even without knowledge of the credits. Not just for DBZ but any anime.

In more accurate methods, there are things on commentaries, interviews, artbooks, blogs, and twitters that tell us clearly what animator did what.

[DarkPrince_92]

Most (good) animators have some defining traits in the way they... animate things. Poses, detail, what they move, how it looks. General, vague stuff but you start to pick up on it. Usually, if I know the animator's style well, I can pick out their cut as I watch the episode even without knowledge of the credits.

I've gotten to that point with most of DBZ (especially Seigasha), but I have to pay close attention with other anime's nowadays, some are too consistent to see the vague similarities and differences (Like FMA Brotherhood for example).

[JulieYBM]

Most (good) animators have some defining traits in the way they... animate things. Poses, detail, what they move, how it looks. General, vague stuff but you start to pick up on it. Usually, if I know the animator's style well, I can pick out their cut as I watch the episode even without knowledge of the credits.

I've gotten to that point with most of DBZ (especially Seigasha), but I have to pay close attention with other anime's nowadays, some are too consistent to see the vague similarities and differences (Like FMA Brotherhood for example).

Funny that you say that.

The videos might be reversed to avoid getting pulled, by the way.

[csl002]

Kameda's animation is very hard to miss/not recognize, especially with those "in your face" sketchy frames.

Hironori Tanaka likes to make hair move in very detailed ways. These two guys did pretty much everything good in FMAB. Also, Murad's account getting nuked not too long ago made me sad. His videos were incredibly useful for showing other people the names & styles of animators and now they're mostly gone.