What was your approach to creating the character and costume designs for this video?
Rue: I went with aspects that anime and video game fans would recognize as stereotypes of one sort or another. The boy's goggles and glasses, the girl's pink pigtails and uniform, things that would get across the idea behind the character clearly. As for the band's new uniforms, they were designed to be reminiscent of Vocaloids and more futuristic costumes, playing up the theme of technology brought to the video.
How did your experiences with cosplay influence costume choices you made?
Rue: Cosplay definitely influenced my costume choices. I've been sewing my own cosplays for a few years now, and because of it, the costumes I design are based on my own experience with patterns. I make sure all of my designs are for the most part realistic and could actually be sewn if someone wanted to.
What tools (software, etc.) did you use?
Colby: The brunt of the work on this project was done in Adobe Flash and Adobe After Effects CS5. Shots were completed by Heather and her team and delivered to me as Shockwave Flash (SWF) movies. After Effects and Flash play nice together, allowing me to position and scale the drawn vector elements however I needed to, as well as translate the elements in 3D space, which allowed us to use virtual cameras and lighting effects.
How is working in Flash animation different than animating traditionally? What are the advantages and disadvantages?
Brianna: Flash animation is vector-based and can be stretched and resized once the animation is finished. Since it is all digital, you can pretty much add or remove whatever you need be. It can be a much quicker and easier process, but it can take time if you want it to look smooth and it can be very challenging to make it look paint-like. Traditional takes much more time, but it has a stronger quality level to it. You need to take the time to draw out each frame by flipping through the pages, then going back and inking everything. Flash is much quicker with animation but has a bit more simpler quality, unless you’re willing to really sit down for a long while to get a stronger look. Traditional, I find, can have a much higher level of quality since it is hand-drawn rather than vector-drawn, but the process is far longer.
What was it like leading a team of artists and animators on this project?
Heather: Besides being a lot of work, it was definitely a learning process the whole way through. A lot of artists have their own drawing style and sometimes that can become a problem when you're trying to stick to one specific style/look. The biggest challenge was making sure each animator was sticking to the guidelines of the character sheets, and everything throughout the music video remained as consistent as possible. It's exciting having a group of people working on the same project though.
Colby: It was very exciting working on the project and dealing with animators, as I have a little animation history myself. It was nice to be on the effects and post-production side of the table, however, as I know how much work goes into animation and Flash can be a pain sometimes. I had studied the Flash to After Effects workflow many times but hadn't had a chance to really participate in a full-scale animation project where I also had the leeway to experiment and add my own touch, so it was great to be able to work with great artwork and then add my own touch to the look and feel of the video.
How did you transfer the director's written script to the form of a storyboard then to an animatic?
Heather: The way the script was written made it a lot easier to transfer to a storyboard. Their would be a set of lyrics that was accompanied with what they wanted going on during that part of the song. The challenge at times was timing it so most of what was written could fit when those lyrics were sung. After everything was drawn out as a storyboard, we took all the shots and put them together to play out like a video, just minus all the animation and glamorous effects. In some places we'd apply some fading, and tweening to show if a character was moving, but an animatic is just to show timing, and what is going on in each scene, so animation isn't always necessary.
Can you describe the process between the building the animatic and then creating final assets and scenes?
Heather: After we finish the animatic we send it off to Matt for his approval. From there we change, update, and/or edit any shots we feel could be improved or may not be necessary. When the animatic is finished, we begin working on each shot. At this stage we work to get all the backgrounds cleaned up and colored for the animation. While some artists are working on backgrounds, others will be working on the animations. Each animator would get assigned a set of shots to animate. Once the rough animation was complete we'd start inking. Most of the animators that worked on the rough animation however ended up having to ink and color their own shots though.
How do you go about adding layers of polish?
Brianna: Once the rough animation is placed, I go back and add the layer of line art, tweak it to make sure the lines are smooth and connected, and then add the layer of paint. Once everything is smooth and
colored, I then add the shading depending on where the light is in the scene.
Heather: When you start a project, especially one like this, it really takes a lot of planning in the beginning. You have to have the storyboard and all the backgrounds, character designs and personalities set in stone. Once that's all set you can start animating, starting with the rough animation, then to inking, then to filling in colors of the characters, then you can start to add final polishes like shading and lighting on the characters. From there we hand the work over to get special effects lighting, motion blurs, and so on. It's a long process but once you get to the finish it's a very rewarding feeling in the end to see it complete.
Colby, you sort of came onto this project midstream. Early on, you had to solve some problems induced by the original editor. What were some of these issues, and how did you solve them? What big changes did you make?
Colby: The original editor seemed to be missing some basic video standards knowledge and skills and had set up the original editing timeline incorrectly. Unfortunately, the vector scaling on the SWFs were not rendering correctly and the scaling needed to properly do the shot layout wasn't available, leaving the SWFs blurry and pixelated. It was fairly simple to recreate the project with proper vector scaling by compositing the shots in an After Effects composition instead of a Premiere sequence, and also presented us with a new opportunity to use the pseudo-3D, camera, and lighting effects that we see in the video.
What was the most complex effect you created, and how did you do it?
Colby: I think the most complex shot but also one of my proudest shots is around 2:27 where we cut to the tracking shot over the crowd towards the band. This shot involved creating a stadium full of flat animated crowd elements but also involved positioning Matt and the band to create a beautiful parallax effect as we track towards the stage. I had to light the stage and the crowd using a variety of spot lights and floating omnidirectional lights to make sure every layer of crowd was lit properly. The final part was designing and then testing out the camera move and seeing what looked the best. The results were very positive and encouraged us to use 3D more vigorously throughout the rest of the project.
What was the most fun part of this project?
Brianna: I had plenty of fun animating Pit, Squirtle, Wario, and Samus.
Colby: The most fun part of the project was knowing that my work would have a positive and defining impact on the video and also watching the video go from a primitive animatic and storyboard into a fully-realized sparkling and shiny video. That's always the best part.
What was the most difficult part of this project?
Heather: The most challenging part of this project for me, was making sure the animation was smooth enough and the style of the art was consistent throughout the animation. Not just the drawing itself has to match the style in the character sheet but the shading and lighting also has to be consistent as well. I think for a project like this one, with the anime style, I would give a sample to people to see how well they can replicate the style. An artist with a good attention to detail that can capture everything the original drawing has is definitely someone who could help benefit the team. I would also go about organizing the file structure differently. In the beginning there was no real file structure, and it seemed like we were all trying to figure it out as we went. Having something set in stone from the beginning of the project is something I would do differently next time around.
Brianna: Each character had different movements and reactions around the other characters so it was a bit of a challenge. I spent too much time on them and since they are background characters, I really should have focused more on the main cast at that point instead.
Do you see yourself as a (non-Japanese) anime artist, or something different?
Heather: I've been heavily influenced by Japanese anime before I even knew it was called anime actually, haha. Before drawing from Scholastic's "How to Draw 'such-and-such' Animal" books, I started trying to draw my favorite characters from my favorite TV shows at the time. Digimon was a big one. I was also really big into The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Something about the artwork and characters in anime and games really pulled me in. After a while I realized that I could create my own characters, after years of drawing in the anime style I decided to pursue my love for character and story design and go to college for animation. From there my style just improved tremendously, mainly because of figure drawing classes, those helped me the most. The more I learned, the more I improved. After I felt confident in my anime style I decided to take a couple steps back and get in touch with a more cartoony style. As much as I love anime, I don't like the idea of being restricted to one style. An artist will be more successful if they can draw in multiple styles, but you want to make sure that you have a couple really good ones, rather then trying a whole bunch at once, or else you won't have any one good refined look. So, I guess I like to see myself as an artist influenced by Japanese anime, but cartoons as well.
Brianna: I see myself more as just an artist. Yes, I do draw in an Anime-esque style, but I also draw in various other styles as well be them cartoon-like or semi-realism.
