HELP ME MAKE AN ANIME! (please?)

[TEKnician]

I'm making a story called "ELECTROLYTE". So far, I have contracted and artist on deviantART.com to help me draw the characters out. Since I really don't know what it takes to either make my own anime or present it to Funimation, Bandai or whoever else, I needs help from my peeps on the .org

Synopsis:

Takashi Masamune has lived most of his pre-teen years staring out the window. But not because he's daydreaming, he's watching his long-time neighbor (and long-time crush) practice her martial arts in the courtyard of her mansion. Ever since she moved in next door, he has been watching this white-haired girl practice every night and has learned quite a bit from mimicking her style. The only thing he hasn't learned is her name.

As he entered high-school, he tries to make a name for himself by picking a fight with the school bullies. Though he has some skills, he eventually becomes overwhelmed and outnumbered. It was then that a stranger came out of nowhere to his rescue. After completely mauling the bullies, the stranger kneels down to help Takashi up off the ground. Much to Takashi's surprise, it's the girl from next door.

Now if you want to know why the story is called ELECTROLYTE, either post a reply or message me. Trust me, if you knew why I gave it that title, you might just be interested.

[Jasta85]

you should probably start with a manga, that's how a lot of anime begin. Manga is pretty simple to do, so long as you have a solid story and half decent drawing skills you could pump out some pilot chapters. If you think they are good enough to submit try turning them in online submission, if the publisher you submit it to likes it they might consider turning it into a series, and if that series takes off a studio may consider turning it into an anime.

Anime requires an actual studio of people, lots of time and funding, trying to do it yourself will be a full time job, and a professional developer wont touch something entirely unknown.

submitting to competitions is a good way to build a resume as well. I turned in a poem of mine that i wrote in highschool into a national online poetry contest and somehow it got an editor's choice award and was published in a book with the best poems of the year (although they still charged me for the book.) I've also entered some short stories into online contests although I havnt won any of them.

[TEKnician]

@Jasta85:

Yeah, I can see what you're saying. But what I'm confused about are the animes that start off as animes THEN turn into manga adaptations (Eureka Seven, Fate/Stay Night...Clannad?). I though that there must be a way to develop an anime without spending so much time and money making the manga first.

N E wayz...

What I need help on in this thread is a collaboration on the plot/flow of my story. I need a third party opinion.

Again, PM me or post replies if any of you are interested.

[uncreative]

Fate/Stay Night...Clannad?

Those both were visual novels before they were anime.

Anime requires an actual studio of people, lots of time and funding, trying to do it yourself will be a full time job, and a professional developer wont touch something entirely unknown.

Of course, Voices of a Distant Star demonstrates that it's possible to do solo, but it's hardly something I'd recommend. Unless you actually worked for a studio (and we're not talking Funimation here, I mean something more like Bones/SHAFT/GAINAX/Madhouse/KyoAni etc. you know, someone who actually makes this stuff.) you're not going to see anything outside of doujin release (at least initially, if you're positively amazing something more might come out of it). Think like any of the Touhou anime projects; those are all doujin works (of a doujin work ) and aren't going to see a typical release, they'll just be sold at certain large conventions and over the internet.

As to the story it doesn't sound very distinctive at this point, but it's not like that's stopped most things that have come out recently anyway

[Jasta85]

if you're trying to make super short series then adobe flashplayer if a good tool to use. not to hard to create and animate characters using it. They may not have the distinctive anime feel but it's a lot easier and faster than drawing each frame individually. A lot of people use flashplayer for small independent works and i think a french studio made an animeish looking series using purely flashplayer.

[ZephyrStar]

Alright, I think I can help here. Not help you make it, I'm doing my own anime film But at least I can teach you what I've learned in this process. The first thing you need to figure out with this story is what archetype it fits. From what you've described, it seems there are martial arts involved, and you want a love interest to develop between your main character and the girl next door. The next thing you need to decide is "how does this ultimately end." Do the guy and girl get together and fight together? Do they dominate the school? What happens after that? Do they end up being world martial arts champs? Or do they end up fighting monsters? I believe that every good story needs a definite end. And I think for your first production, you should consider a short but powerful story. With that said, let's look at the steps you should carefully consider.

CHARACTERS: You really like your characters, right? You want other people to like them too, right? Then the best way to do this is to write emotion driven characters, and have them respond to situations realistically. It's also a very good idea to have them change over the course of your story. One dimensional (as in they don't change at all) characters are good for things like villans and sidekicks and comic relief, but I think you'll find that in the best stories, those kinds of characters change as well. Now, what do I mean about emotion driven characters? Well, you want to SHOW your audience what happens to your character and how the character responds to that situation. Never TELL them, SHOW them. So in each situation they are in, think carefully about what kind of person they are and how they'd respond. Try not to break character, unless something calls for it, such as the character has a life-changing revelation and decides to change to reflect that.

STRUCTURE: Good stories have structure. I'm sure you have some good ideas, but you might not know where in the structure they should fit, or how to use them the best way. Very basically there are 3 parts. Introduction, Body, and Conclusion. There are sub-parts, and I use an 8 step process to write my stuff, but these are the very basics which you can use to figure out where you're going.

INTRODUCTION: Who are the characters? What do they do? What are they normally like? What world do they live in?

BODY: Something happens. What is it? How do the characters react? What do they decide to do? There should be some sort of conflict here, something out of the norm of the daily life of the character. Something that makes them stop and have to deal with the situation. This section is where the beef of your story happens, this is where relationships are made and characters start to change.

CONCLUSION: Everything comes to a conclusion. In your case, do the guy and girl get together? Do they defeat their enemies? Do they change for the better? For the worse?

Alright. That's story stuff. Just tidbits to consider.


Now, the bigger problem...how to make it. All I can really tell you here is how I am doing it, and why I decided to do what it is that I'm doing. I went to college for animation, having not much of an art background (I always drew stuff but I was terrible) and halfway through school realized that I would rather tell my own stories than work on somebody else's ideas. Not only did I decide this, but I decided I would learn everything it takes to do all of it that I can myself. I think the tipping point, the thing that made me realize that it was indeed possible, was watching Shinkai's "Voices of a Distant Star." This is not the kind of thing you can just decide to do and then sit around and not do. You gotta be willing to put all your free time into it. I realized early on that I could not count on other artists/animators/people to help with the project and see it the same way I did, unless I paid them for their services. Which you say you've done? Contracted?

Anyway, I spent most of graduate school trying to learn all the stuff I would need to do this myself. I spent 6.5 years in college and got 3 degrees. Do I regret it? Hell no. I'd do it all over again if I could, only this time I'd focus on actually MAKING the thing as I was learning how to do it. Do you have to spend all that time and money to learn? I'm not sayin you need to go out and go to college and do all that stuff, but if you want to see it succeed, then yes, you'll need to spend a hell of a lot of time to learn how to do things. Or, have a lot of money to pay people to do things you can't. So my advice is start small. Start like, AMV small. Make a trailer for your production, or a 5 minute animation. This is advice that I myself did not take, so do what you will.

I decided the quickest and most streamlined way for me to create something was in 3D. It plays to my strengths as I am not a great 2D artist. I can get by if I have to, but there's no way I could do a movie in 2D. On the other hand, I can model, texture, rig, animate, etc. in 3D. So I just have to spend the time getting my models looking really sharp, and it will be possible. Cel shading has come a long way. Anyway, that's enough of a post for now, I'll check again later and see if there's more I need to share :p If you ever just want to ask questions/talk about production, feel free to pm me.

Also, the link in my sig is to my blog for my movie "Akazawa."

[TEKnician]

Fate/Stay Night...Clannad?

Those both were visual novels before they were anime.

Oh...

[ShatteredFoX]

Another suggestion following ZephyrStar is instead of trying anime and manga you could also try visual novels. If you are confident in your writing since it doesn't really demand art or high quality art(of course HQ art is better so if you can draw better or find someone too; that's better.) And only requires a little bit of knowledge in programming(practically none with RenPy which is a visual novel creating software that has you using an overly basic version of Python(a programming language with tons of usability and already is simplified for users.)

And just like mangas it is often chosen to become animes, of course you're going to really get your visual novel out there or create many if you're not in a studios(just like manga). Thought it might help to keep your possibilities open.

[Chained(E)Studio]

Hmm, not much else I wanted to say really compared to everyone else...

Except, this is something I plan to do along this year when I get my new computer. But you could try doing various things like these:

Draw With Me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvjZ6VkLuCM

Harry Potter(Anime Style >D) Opening
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH9YYdl9zEk

Harry Potter 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmPgpKF1tp0

Its not exactly a "full" Anime, nor Manga really but all 3 of these things are quite interesting I think. You could always try working with something like these as well. Though keep in mind you would need your full story written out, or manga scanlation sort of done as well.

You could also try working it in ways of M@Ds, as doing things this way is potentially long, hard, but at same time would be a lot more fun(ner). Doing it more an a entrepreneur sort of thing. Slowly make things better, try different types of videos, between these examples. Who knows maybe trying this could get you noticed enough to land you something :3

Dunno, just a suggestion ^^

[ZephyrStar]

Mike Inel (the guy who did Draw With Me) certainly has the talent...I'm hoping he does something feature lenght, or at least longer than 5 min. I rather like the idea of a VN, or even more simply (if you were far better at writing than drawing), you could go for a "light novel" format, that way there would be less you have to pay an artist for, and the main focus of the production is on the writing.