Myths of anime [ Part 1 ] - Why anime looks choppy ?


There are 2 main players in animation industry , Western style , which you can refer from Disney , Pixar , Dreamworks , Blue Studio and etc , while on the other side , we have anime style , which come from various Japanese companies. 

Some movies from Pixar

Often times we can differentiate their styles as they usually use very different approach. For this time , for the very first part of this series Myths of anime , I would like to cover the topic of FPS , frames per second for anime.






As the reference photo above , the higher the frame rate , the more unique frames shows smoother movements. Generally all videos are using 24/25/30fps , same goes to anime , what makes anime different and choppy is they duplicated a frame a few times. Instead of having 25 unique frames ( all frames look different ) in a second , they copy the same frame twice , 3 times or even 4 / 5 times depends on situation. Some may have wonder why can't anime make use of all 25 frames and make their movement look smooth , especially CG animation , since you can let computer animate the in between frames with ease.

Let's look at a sample of anime - Attack on Titan



You can tell that it's an anime title , not only by the "very anime" look , but also the animation , which they duplicate a frame twice for this 24fps video , technically it's only 12fps for the animation itself because *choppy* animation is how should anime look like , how people have accustomed to it , but that's not all the stories.



Here's how they convert a 12fps animation into a smooth 24fps video.


While animation for character and smoke remain the same as 12fps , camera movement stay the same as 24fps , check out the background that it always moving from frame to frame , and some of the effects such as sparkles will be 24fps too.

But on some other anime , they could duplicate each frame for 3 times , or more , or mixed 2 and 3 times , possibly due to the style of the animation , lower budget , or very tight schedule ( weekly release series ). Combine with these various reasons , lower fps animation has seem to be a trademark for anime , and how people perceive anime , so even though you may let computer animate the rest of the frames , make 12fps or 8fps turn into 24fps , but it won't be feeling like anime anymore.


That's all for this part , more of this will be coming soon.

The story of AJIN - Part 1


AJIN is originated from a manga series that went quite popular in Japan , due to its bloodiness some website rate it as 18+ manga , such as this site.

The characters from the manga itself are having big and scary eyes , but when modelers convert into a 3D models , they look simpler and *friendlier* 

Kaito , Kei's friend

Kei , Protagonist

Throughout the first movie , I didn't do much for the shots as I was still working on other project , so my shots are starting from episode 2. Next I'll talk about some insights of the shots.


This is one of the sequences that I've been working on , where this shot is telling that a vehicle with fog light turned on is coming from opposite direction , due to night time scenario , the when the vehicle come closer to the character it can be very bright , and make him look overexposed.




This shot is telling a different story , you can feel that the character is thinking of something , usually there will be narrate voice to tell what is he thinking about. At this case , strong defocus on everything else other than eyes ( story teller ) can enhance the feeling .




This shot is pretty long , if I'm not mistaken it was around 20 seconds or so. The tough part of this shot is optical flare position due to the bike is moving around constantly , motion blur than need to match with camera , background color control , bike color , and the reflectors too.




Optical flares are often use to tell strong light source or just to indicate the light direction , for bike , it is essential.




A random slow motion shot , where you can see characters fly in the air.




On top of my favourite sequences , this is definitely the top one . I've gotten the color script and worked on it with proper colors , and also set up a node set to create the light streaks effects with "fake light streaks shadow" in nuke . The is no background behind characters , it's all pitch black , gives you a feeling of they're in a different dimension. In the end there were still some retakes back and forth to make it better in terms of visual , colors , and "feeling".




The color script was base on this shot , which can pretty much tell everything that you need for the whole sequences.




For the first part of the movie , it didn't feature much of my shots as more of my actions shots should be coming on second movie . This is the only action shot I have. Short but strong !


And that's about it for this round , more of it will be coming as soon as I get the clips.

AJIN Shoudou - 亜人 - 衝突 - Part 2 Trailer



First movie of AJIN has been aired in Japan , and this is the trailer for 2nd part of the trilogy movie. It features more of the shots that I've been involved this time around.

One of my favourite shot is this !

*Come to mama*

With enough resources , I'll start uncover some works behind the scenes , tears and sweats that everyone have been putting on for this project , stay tune !

Lighting and Compositing Reel 2015


There's only a month left from Christmas , which reminds me to wrap up my work throughout the whole year. Although majority of my works this year are still not available to public yet , but here's the compilation of my works that has been broadcast.

Random lighting and compositing practice

After I finished Sanzoku no Musume Ronja , a long series project , a couple of lighting and compositing practice being done during down time while waiting for next project to kick in.

 This is a very famous scene that you can get it free online for your own practice, it's call "The Museum".

Sanzoku no Musume Ronja - 2015 INTERNATIONAL EMMY® KIDS AWARDS NOMINEES




It is truly surprising and great honor to be nominated in 2015 INTERNATIONAL EMMY® KIDS AWARDS NOMINEES  , within the Kids:Animation category ! Yay !

 Emmy Awards Nominees

AJIN Teaser



After some amount of time of production , a longer trailer has came out . This project is definitely a very different experience compare with Sanzoku no Musume Ronja , where you have more bloods , humanity , gun fire to take care of. This trailer featured some shots that I've work on it.
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