A transcript of seminar with Yamamura sensei at Animation Nation last week. Conversational.

The following seminar took place at the National Museum of Singapore on 2 Nov, as part of Animation Nation 2008.

Start:

So after I graduated from university, I thought, “Ok, I know what I want to do, I want to be an independent animator in Japan”. But I realised as I started working on it, that there was no such system in Japan to support independent animator. Unlike NFB (National Film Board of Canada) and even in Russia whose government supports independent animators, Japan doesn’t have a similar system like that. So what I did was, I started doing commercial work like children’s animation, commercials, television series, and in the midst of that I worked on my own independent works as well.

Because of my background in oil painting, a lot of my animation starts its base from painting by hand, and then from there I move into animation, so there are a lot of technicalities there. As a base, what I would do is I work on paper; I use colour pencils, markers and ink, and from there I create my animations. So you could say it’s quite simple, my process. I do all my designing, actual drawing on paper and then I do my compositing and other things on computer. Some of the software I’m using are Retas!Pro, Adobe Photoshop and Final Cut Pro.

In the area of music and sound, I worked with different people but mostly since 1993, I’ve been working with a Japanese composer called Hitomi Shimizu. She has been helping me a lot in most of the projects. And sound design is by Koji Kasamatsu.

I work with the design of my characters, the actual look that I want, I do it all on paper first. I use that as a base to design and to improve, and to talk to different people about it, and then from there I would start working on my animation.

The greatest attraction of creating animation for me is really observing how people live in their lives, the issues that people deal with, their families. Just being able to express some of these struggles, these issues, is what I love using animation for.

This particular work (The Fig) uses a very small frame. Then of course there are some works that we use bigger frames, it really depends on the actual work itself and the feel that we are trying to portray. A lot of my works tend to be presented in the form of film; to me fluidity is very important.

About Atama Yama

Now allow me to share with you about Atama Yama which was made in 2002. Atama Yama took almost 6 years to complete. The reason why it took 6 years is because I was really stressed and frustrated by a lot of the commercial projects I was doing, which of course had their deadlines. And I was trying to work on my own independent project in between. There was a time when I realised I wasn’t actually making it. So that was when I decided to put all those things aside for a while just to concentrate and complete this particular project. The theme for Atama Yama comes from the inspiration of my first work Aquatic. The theme is about identity, and especially the issue of identity and the world, and that was the base of why I made Atama Yama. It took altogether about 6 years but a lot of the work was completed during the last one and a half year. And that was when I decided to stop taking on any more commercial work in order to concentrate on this project. And because of that a lot of my income went down by almost half. After I finished that project, I realised that I still have post production to do; I received the invoice from my assistant and there were a lot of things that I still have to look into. That time was really tough because I was operating on less income and trying to pay up for different things in order to complete this particular project. After it was screened, I was amazed that it was nominated for an Oscar and it appeared in a lot of film festivals around the world and had great reviews, and because of that I’m really happy.

Atama Yama was based on a very traditional Japanese story, about 2 hundred years ago, and it was part of the Rakugo (one person comedy) tradition, where the comedian would sit on a mat and tell stories. Rakugo has a very free style of storytelling, so each Rakugo artistes would basically tell the stories with actions, so these are stories about 2 hundred years ago based on that kind of history. But I decided when I want to do Atama Yama, I wanted to do it with my form of reality in it. Even as was trying to figure out what was my personal identity, I decided to put in that modern twist into the story. Rakugo, being a very traditional story, is like what we would call folk stories that are passed down from generation to generation. For me, it is very interesting to approach the story like this because in our modern society, the concept of family is disintegrated. So I thought it would be really interesting to portray a traditional folktale using a modern technique like animation.

About A Country Doctor

I finished the making of Kafka’s A Country Doctor in 2007. A lot of you may know about Franz Kafka, the original story writer who lived in Czechoslovakia and based this story on his hometown, Prague. So while I was doing this project, I realised that I had to see Czechoslovakia for myself especially his hometown Prague, so I decided to go visit and I made a short trip of 2 days there during this production. I visited the Kafka museum that was originally his birthplace and his home that was converted into a museum of his works. Kafka died at a very young age of 41, and maybe this was just a coincidence and there’s no special meaning, but I started working on this film based on his book when I turned 41. One of the issues that I was trying to deal at that time was, of course he is a world renowned author, and his story was based in Europe and I was thinking, as Japanese, would I accidentally put elements in there that would be unfamiliar to the audience? So I tried very hard to ensure that I maintained the neutrality of that. I was very happy and assured after the screening of this film even in Prague or other parts of Europe and I got very good reviews from the audiences there. So I knew that, ok, I managed to protect the original story.

I think one of the unique features of this film is that I experiment the use of effects such as distortion, e.g. trembling and shivering, squashing and stretching of the characters in order to portray the feel of it. The reason why I did that is because this story is very subjective; it’s spoken completely from the viewpoint of the doctor, so there’s no objective reality in terms of whether the patient was really sick. It portrays the inner world, the inner workings of his mind. And the reason why I used the trembling and distortion of the character is because I wanted to make sure that the story is told in a way that you may not really know who exactly, from which perspective, it was being seen as the story unfolds. I think that is something Kafka was trying to achieve even in his original text; it helps you come in contact with the mind of the character, how they are thinking and feeling. I use this technique, the ‘perspective of mind’ to portray the inner workings of the mind.

A lot of people after watching, because they don’t know what the original story is, would be scratching their heads what’s going on. The idea of this is that it doesn’t really have a story to tell per say. I think this is true of all of Kafka’s works, that rather than a narrative kind of story, he’s actually trying to portray a certain thought, concept, something deeper than just a superficial story. I think a lot of that is a metaphor for him; himself as an artist; how he felt; his perspective. Even Kafka, he wasn’t a full-time artist, he worked in an insurance company in the day, and he could only work on his artistic titles at night. I think that might be a reason why he had a very tough life, and maybe that’s the reason why he died young as well. I think a lot of his work portrays metaphors of his struggles as an artist.

In the film, in the ending of the book, Kafka refers to the wound of the kid as a rose; as a flower. This is a very interesting metaphor. Because that has a very sexual implication, usually used in poetry or analogy; people refer the feminine part as a wound or rose or flower, but he used it to refer to the wound of the kid where he’s hurt, he’s dying from, as a rose.

Lastly let me share with you a few issues and approaches that I take in my animations. Firstly, the most important thing I look for in my own work is flow and fragmentation. As you saw earlier in the studio, you see many different layers for animation; these are all fragmented; they are all different pieces being put together to create a seamless flow. When I mention about flow, it is not just the flow of images; it includes the music, narration and the rhythm of the animation. Of course fundamentally you have the storyline, but I’m not just talking about the flow of the story but the emotions of the characters and their portrayal; how they flow into the next expression. For me as an animator, what I really focus on is the flow of the emotions; the characters’ emotions. Because I want to see what creates a reaction from the audience; what kind of reaction they have to the story; to the character; to its feelings. We take slices from life, different fragments of life that makes sense and baffles us. You put those things together, as different layers, and then you create a flow, a story, and emotional expression out of it, and I think that is what’s very interesting about animation.

Q&A

Audience (A): Hi, thank you for sharing your work process with us, it’s been very inspiring.

Koji Yamamura (Y): Thank you.

A: A technical question. Are some of the scenes, especially the scene where the doctor walks into the house, there’s a lot of distortion. Are those distortions done in traditional hand-drawn technique, or were there software involved?

Y: Ah, okay. They were all purely hand-drawn. We didn’t use any software effects to create the distortions. I decided I want to use a very traditional animation technique to create that, with hand-drawn.

A: Any advice for independent filmmakers or animators?

Y: It’s a difficult question that I haven’t even found a real answer to. I think if you decided you want to be an independent director; something you would like to pursue; what you can do as an independent director is simply to find out and discover along the way. It’s a process. The reason why it’s difficult for me to give you a specific advice is because it depends a lot on your personality; your likes and dislikes, and also how much work you really want to put into it; so every person will be different. And one thing that I really want to highlight is that it’s really tough. Because all of us have to make a living, so while working as an independent animator you may have to take on other projects as well. And in the midst of that, working on your own independent work can be tough. The most important question is “What kind of life do you want?” If you decide that making films and my style of films is very important to me, then that is definitely an area that you need to pursue. And in that bigger picture, because this is my life and this is how I would like to express myself, I would take on other jobs perhaps as a form of living to be able to support this interest. So it depends on what you want out of life, and for me, personally, this is the road I’ve chosen, because it is so important to me to make my own films. And of course on the other hand, as an independent director, you have this tremendous freedom of expression; you have this choice you can make, in terms of what you want to make. So perhaps this is not so much an advice, but because as an independent animator, you do not face any pressure, from around you, from a company, you basically have that tremendous freedom to create what you want to do. I encourage you to be bold. And take on the challenge in doing that.

A: What is the nature of your commercial works? Are there requests for your style in the commercial works?

Y: Yes, at this point of time, after all that had happened. I do get requests now from commercial entities that would like me to do projects with my style. But this only happens after I reached my thirties, a lot of my works I did in my twenties were mainly television commercials, and a lot of it were based on the requests and demands of the clients themselves. But yet in the process of doing the television commercials and children animations, I also began to discover and learn the entire animation process as well.

A: Where can one view your films, is it just at festivals? And do your films gain monetary profits?

Y: Yes, most of my films are screened at festivals and it’s really exciting for me to see them on the big screen, being watched by many different people. In Japan, I have produced about 3 DVDs. In France, there’s a DVD of Atama Yama as well as a collection of my works as well. And for Kafka’s A Country Doctor, it is now in DVD in Japan, so it will be available to the other parts of the world soon. We’ve tried to sell them over the internet but we haven’t got a great response from that. And in some countries, some of these films are shown on the television as well because some of those rights have been given to those countries. Yes of course, it is a good thing that it comes out in the form of DVD and on television, hoping that we get more and more audiences. In terms of income, most mainly comes from production fees. I can’t say that the earnings are a tremendously amount of money right now. But in the case of Atama Yama, I can say we’ve basically broke even. For Kafka, I think it is probably what we’re going to get now on. Because right now it is in production for DVD and when we start marketing that maybe we’ll see some returns from it.

A: What are your thoughts on the current trend of animation, in terms of 3D as opposed to hand-drawn?

Y: I think firstly it is very difficult to compare drawings that are done in 3D, and drawings that are done by hand. In terms of the current trend in animation, where it’s going, if you look at the American companies, most of them are basically working on 3D animation projects. And I think most students are studying 3D animation. I can understand the attraction of using 3D animation, but for me on a personal level my form of expression comes out when I hand-draw; that’s where my imagination really takes place. So for me that would be my choice of expression. I think 3D encompasses a lot of things, there’s 3D modeling and many other aspects. I think the real danger lies when students decide that they can do 3D animation and will just go to the computer and then design something. A lot of students don’t pick up pens or pencils and start drawing and designing, engaging their imagination. I think that’s where the danger lies. I had the opportunity to visit the Pixar studio some time ago, and what I noticed was that they based their productions on very traditional methods, they design the characters by hand, they do all the stretching by hand, they make sure they get all the feel, and artistic expression by hand. And it’s only after they finish all of that, then they put it into the computer and then use 3D technology on it. That’s what I understand of their process, the storyboard and everything is by hand.

Ultimately it’s a matter of choice of how you would like to express yourself. One of the sad things though from the year 2000, because of the advancement of 3D technology, a lot of students have been creating 3D animations and submitting them to competitions. And I have been a judge in a lot of these competitions, and one thing I’ve been noticing is in recent years although we have a lot more submissions, I’m beginning to see a lower quality in terms of the depth of concept; the artistic nature of it. There’s a decrease in that.

A: How’s the independent animation scene in Japan and the nature of the community over there?

Y: In Japan, in terms of independent animator kind of community, if you go by the Animation Association of Japan, we have about 170 members. So you could say we have about that number or even more. I’m unsure about the actual number because it’s a little bit hard to define independent animators as well. A lot of independent animators do their own work in the midst of doing commercial work as well because they have to take on different projects. So there’s a kind of a mix. But in terms of independence, having their own independent studios, the number will be less than 170, I wouldn’t exactly know how many there are. You can say that there is a long history of independent animation in Japan. In the 1960s, there was an animator called Kuri Yoji, and his debut screenings of his own works at the Tokyo Animation Festival, and that’s where it garnered a lot of interest and there were also a lot of other independent animators who started coming in with their works. I think it is interesting because in the 1960s it’s also a time when television series become very popular, television is becoming a main medium of communication. That was the time when these independent animators decided we want to do our own work as well, we want to be able to show our own work as well. A lot of you know Tezuka san, he was one of the very famous animators who were doing television series at that time. So he, as well as Kuri san, both of them were part of the animation association right from the beginning. Tezuka san was the president of the association. And even after Tezuka san passed away, his works continued to be showed in different parts of the world. He had another partner, Kihachiro Kawamoto, who took over. So you can see there’s almost a vertical flow, a succession of different directors from the 1960s moving on to my generation and also to the younger generation of animators. And considering where we are right now, I really wish that we had a lot more communication and a lot more networking even amongst independent animators. That gives you an idea how independent directors kind of survived, in that sense, in Japan over the past decades or so.

A: Thank you Yamamura sensei, for the wonderful insights and thank you for coming.

Y: Thank you!

End.