The two anime directors were sharing their experience of working on independence short films as a way for many member of the industry to try new things and to spark creativity. Maeda showed examples of his work which were more focused on the traditionally drawn approach to animation whereas Yoshizaki took a more digital-traditional hybrid approach by combining 2D and 3D animation techniques together. The two of them showed to the audience about their breakdown their breakdown of each scene. I found this event to quite helpful as Tom Bryant the founder of Interference Pattern a Edinburgh animation studio spoke to us today and gave us some great details about what it is like to be working as one of the only independent animation studio.
Johnathan Clements did a talk about how the anime industry is changing. I found this talk to be quite interesting as it helped answer questions I had about the direction that the anime is currently heading. I always wondered why the story telling is not as effective in anime as it used to. The reason I considered this was because I find story to be a strong element when it comes to animation,
After the talks finished I headed over to the Edinburgh film house to watch a film called Expelled From Paradise (2014). I enjoy watching anime so I went to see this film to see what the combination of 3D and 2D animation would look in a feature length animated film. Instead of 2D animated characters, they had 3D characters but painted in the same visual appearance as if they were made in 2D. The backgrounds were 2D but when it came to fast action scenes, these were in 3D. This was difficult to judge. At times, it looked like they were drawing in 2D but when they moved it was clearly obvious what it was a 3D model. However, I would give them credit for using this opportunity to experiment with this technique. The animation at times had time to breath between action sequences and there is a reasonable amount of banter between the two leads instead of constant action and little character development. Here the characters do develop and changed at the end. However, it didn't make a big impact on my part. Furthermore in the third act, we are introduced to three characters we don't know and their introduction feels out of place. However I found the biblical themes to be a bit overused, since the main female character in this film is called Angela. However there is a clean contrast between her and the male lead who reminds me of Star War's Han Solo. The giant robot scene also are fast paced and it was the first instance I wasn't too bothered by the 3D models replacing 2D ones. However I still feel that there is room for improvement. While I don't say it's an amazing film, I still enjoyed watching it.
References
Expelled from Paradise. 2014. [film] Directed by Seiji Mizushima. Tokyo: Toei Animation.
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