While most people know what a director, animator, or scriptwriter does, these are just some of the jobs involved in creating anime. Many jobs in this industry are relatively obscure to outsiders. One of the things that comes to mind is the animation director. To highlight a bit of this job and what it entails, I recently sat down with My Deer Friend Nokotan animation director Karin Ōmura at Wit Studio's main office in Tokyo. Together, we not only talked about the details of her current job but also about the path she took to get there.
Omura began his passion for anime since childhood. “When I was in middle school, I drew a picture for my younger brother. He was really happy and said:'Wow, you're so good at this! Thank you'and I think painting might be fun,” she began. “Around that time, I first learned that there was a job called 'animator' when I was watching an episode of a certain anime. […] I was a little surprised to learn that anime was created by humans and that is why I became interested in it—an interest that continues to this day.”
©Oshioshio・Kodansha/Hinominami High School Deer Club
Years later, Omura entered the industry and started from scratch as an animator in the middle. To describe her work, she first explains a little about how the animation is created. “There is a person called a keyframe animator, who draws out the key points in the animation. After receiving keyframes from the main animator, a middle animator will 'clean up' the animation. They draw shapes between keyframes so that the images move smoothly as they pass through them. That's the job of an intermediate animator. When you first step into the industry, that's your first job,” she laughed. “It's a very difficult job.”
During his time as an interstitial animator, Omura drew an impressive amount. “I was asked to do my best to draw 300 frames [một tháng] then go home. I tried a few times and felt like I had reached 300. In terms of daily numbers, what is that? […] 15 pieces? I think that's about as far as animation goes.” However, Omura does not consider this workload anything special. “At most, I draw about 320 frames in a month… but that's still not much, not really.”
After a year and a half as an animator, Omura was ready to try the next step up the ladder: that of chief animator. But before that, she must take a test to prove her skills. “I think maybe it depends on whether the studio is holding a test or not, but at the time, at the studio I was at, there was something like 'Let's draw the main layout and animation shown. within the allotted time' and you will send it,” she told me. “The people at the studio at the time would look at it and if they felt this person was good enough to do the main animation then they would let them do it.”
©Oshioshio・Kodansha/Hinominami Deer Club High School
Omura passed the test and began working as a keyframe animator. Now, instead of animating keyframes together, she's creating those keyframes from scratch. “As a keyframe animator, based on the storyboard created by the director, I would set the setting and the characters and then decide on their movements,” Omura continued. “Then I start drawing the key points of the movements and matching them to the timesheet—which includes the length of the scenes and the overall timing of the show.” She did this job for about the next four years.
At this point, Omura finally landed his current job as an animation director. But the question remains, what exactly does this job entail? “The animation director meets with the episode director for the first time, who says ‘I want us to do it like this’ or ‘the storyboard looks like this, but I want to do it this way,'” she explain. “After listening to those kinds of requests, the drawings that the main animators have done will be passed around and the director and episode director will make modifications.” After reviewing all the edits, the animation director will make further adjustments so that the frames match the character model sheet.
In a broader sense, Omura sees his job as ensuring there is a solid base to build the rest of the anime upon. “What needs to be noted is the division of labor in animation. There's main animation, middle animation, coloring, etc. Main animation is the preliminary stage—meaning it will be done by many other people, so I have to make sure it's understandable to the next person. following and the person after that.”
Omura spends most of his day testing and perfecting keyframes. This is measured not by frames or scenes but by cuts—that is, a single shot that begins and ends with the camera “cutting” to a new perspective. As for the length of the cut, it varies widely. “Sometimes it's just one frame, sometimes it's 10 or 20 frames,” she told me.
©Oshioshio・Kodansha/Hinominami High School Deer Club
Regarding his workload, Omura says the following: “I can do about three easy cuts a day. However, some of them are quite difficult and may take a day or two to complete one cut. […] On a busy day? The most I do is four or five cuts.”
Surprisingly, given the scope of her work, the people who work directly with Omura are usually not animators or directors. “The person I probably interacted with the most was the production assistant on an episode. When I send something or have a question to the episode director, I usually ask through that person,” she continued. “Sometimes I go talk directly to the episode director if we're sitting close to each other. But usually we are on different floors and some people work from home” Omura laughed, “Basically, I usually just talk to the production assistant.”
To conclude, Omura summarizes his job simply: “The animation director's job is to make sure the characters in each scene match the character chart.” So the next time someone asks you what exactly an animation director does, now you know what to tell them.
My Friend Deer Nokotan is available on Crunchyroll, Prime Video and Amazon Freevee, Tubi, ADN, Anime Onegai, and many streaming services in more than 140 countries and territories.
