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Making Of AppleSeed

Interview with Yasuhiro Otsuka, CGI director and Yasushi Kawamura, Animation Director from Digital

Frontier about the making of AppleSeed.

May, 25th, 2004 , by Raffael Dickreuter, Ed Harriss

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What was your

involvement in this

project?

Otsuka: I am this project's

CGI director. I am in

charge of project

management, quality

control as well as

technical and compositing

direction. Basically, I am

the direction and

animation pipeline.

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Kawamura: I am the

Animation director. I

directed Animatics,

Character animation,

mechanial animation,

Facial animation and

Character Setup. I am

also in charge of XSI

team management and

some special effects cuts.

Tell us about the

production process of

AppleSeed

1. Pre-production ( Make

plot -> Artistic work ,

Character design -> Script

-> Story book )

2. Low-resolution polygon

character modeling and

background modeling

3. Motion Capture

4. Animatics and high-

quality character modeling

and background modeling

5. Facial Capture

6. Make each cut ; XSI

team in charge of all

character work , Maya

and LW team in charge of

background

7. Compositing

8. Dubbing

9. COPY

Yasushi Kawamura, Animation Director (left) and Yasuhiro Otsuka,

CGI Director.

How many people worked

on this movie?

Total 70 - 80 persons

( including compositing

staff )

The XSI team consists of

25 persons.

What was the biggest

challenge in this

production?

Kawamura: Create a new

visual style never seen

before; CG character

expression which draw

the audience into the

screen.

Otsuka: During the

prototyping phase of the

project, we faced a

serious problem. I felt like

Toon Shaded characters

and Realistic

Backgrounds did not

match well. We tried to

match colors between

characters and

backgrounds in

compositing. We noticed

the audience gets used to

this special composite

expression during this

movie.

In mid-production we

found another problem

with character facial

movements, which did not

fit with the traditional

animation mouth

movement style.

Traditional Japanese

animation does not care

about lip sync. At first, we

used this traditional style

and we used a motion

capture system for

character movements.

Finally, we could not

accept the result of

traditional lip movements

with our realistic motion

captured animation. We

know the traditional

Japanese way is easy to

make and this style has

already been established ;

using it we can safely

estimate production time

and quality. But we

worried about the

mismatch of realistic facial

capture expression and

traditional lip sync. Even if

we chose full frame facial

capture lip sync, we also

worried it would be too

realistic for Toon

animation.

As a result, we chose a

new way where animators

edit the facial animation

based on the facial

capture data. We spent so

much time using this way

but we are satisfied with the final result.

What role did Michael Arias play in the production?

Michael provided us Toon Shader deeply technical advice. We also had many technical problems. He

led us to a new frontier. We don't know how to express our thanks Michael !!

Normally Japanese animation is 8 frame, 12 frame/second, how easy was it to adjust the schedule to

24 frames?

Kawamura: Of course we felt 24 frame animation is strange. But we think 8 frame and 24 frame

animation are totally different work. Our goal was to find a good balance between 8 frame animation

an 24 full frame animation. As a result we succeeded in expressing 8 frame animation's impressive

expression in full frame animation.

Otsuka: At first I felt it is strange because the characters are toon expressed, but in full frame and

animated with motion capture. But I found is quite a new expression ( nobody has seen such kind of

images before ).

How difficult was it to get enough talented people from all over Japan to work on AppleSeed?

Kawamura: We used same way as other projects.

Otsuka: I think the number of XSI power users is not high enough in Japan.

Actually, the character animation team hired some beginner level animators who just graduated from

CG schools.

I think Kawamura grew these new team members to a senior level during this project.

How was it for people who have worked on Final Fantasy to work on this toon project?

Otsuka: I think Realistic CG implies huge production costs and time. And we should take over many

risks to complete the project.

Realistic CG characters seems like dolls, because the audience compares Realistic CG characters

with real humans. As a result , the audience does not empathise with the movie.

Toon Shader characters are watched as symbols by the audience. It is easier to get empathy.

Toon shader characters are more modern than realistic CG characters.

We think Toon Shader characters are a new style of expression.

Finally, we chose the right expression to maximize quality and good entertainment but with a low cost.

Was there a previsualization process? Can you tell as more about that?

1. Make low-resolution polygon character (XSI) and low-resolution polygon background (Maya)

2. Import motion capture data

3. Layout , camera position and rough character animation

4. Add simple effects to some cuts

5. Draft voice and simple video editing

6. Director preview : improve camera angle , layout , length of each cut and scene construction

7. Switch from low to high-resolution polygon modeling. And brush up animation quality.

Why were there no traditional animators in this project?

Kawamura: Final images seem like cell animation, but it is not a copy of traditional cell animation. We

think this is a new style of animation. We did not need traditional cell animation style. A few traditional

animators joined this project, but we did not get special benefit from traditional animators in this

project.

Otsuka: The Director, character designer and world designer (Concept) have a traditional animation

background.

We had no plans for traditional animators to join production work. It is totally different workflow

between traditional animation and CG animation. And traditional animators are not familiar with

computer techniques.

Traditional animators have talent to draw beautiful 2D animation, but they don't know how to make

attractive animation in 3D space.

In addtion, we used motion capture for character movements. This is totally different from hand-

drawing animation.

If we had enough time and money , we would have welcomed traditional animators to join this project.

But we did not have resources. We are proud we could make this movie without traditional animators.

How was XSI a big help for this project?

Kawamura: Of course Toon Shaders are great, Script, render pass and synoptic view were great

benefits to establish sophsticated work groups. The Animation Mixer was also great for data

management.

Were there aspects of the production that you feel could not have been done without the use of XSI?

Kawamura: The XSI Toon Shader is great and flexible, and Render Passes contributed to productivity

improvements.

What are the challenges when it comes to animating toon shaded characters?

Kawamura: This is a first experience to see 3D cell character animation at 24 frames/sec. 8 frame

animation was interpolated by the audience's brain, but 24 frame animation is full frame. The

audience does not interpolate in brain. We should take care of all animation.

We hoped to use 8 frame animation techniques into our 24 frame animation. But we faced many

problems.

Ex. : Perfect stop cut is one of the techniques of 8 frame animation. But it is not fit for 24 frame

animation, the audience thinks it is cutting corners.

We tried to get same result but in a different way.

Although the character work was done with XSI, you did use other programs. (FilmBox, Lightwave,

Maya) How well did all these programs work together?

We use motion builder for data conversion ( camera data and background object data ).

Tell us about the balance between keyframed animation and motion capture techniques that were

used for AppleSeed.

Kawamura: It is a difficult question. Each character is a different case.

Ex. Mechanical objects (Robot...) are almost all keyframe animated, without a walk cycle.

What skills are essential for young animators and CG artists who once want to work on Manga or toon-

styled projects like AppleSeed?

Kawamura: Even a normal skilled animator can do this job

Otsuka: I can not say a lot about it.

I recommend you study traditional animation style. Of course this style might have another problem

(sometime animators can not break rule from traditional animation way), but we can refer to this

traditional animation way to solve many kinds of problems. I also recommend all animators to watch

very carefully everything around you ( Shape , material and animation ).

When can we expect to see this movie premiere in the USA and Europe?

It is not fixed yet but I heard this fall.

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