What Goes Into Making an Anime?

This lady samurai is the kind of character who might appear in an anime.

In Japanese culture, the word "anime" is simply a general term for all animation, while in the West it has a distinct association with feature-length films of a fantastic nature such as Katsuhiro Otomo's 1988 film "Akira." Making an anime is a highly detailed process that breaks down into several distinct stages.

Project Proposal

Taking into account such matters as potential merchandising and "mecha" -- the technology of the world being envisaged -- an idea or project proposal kicks off the process of making an anime. If the idea meets the approval of a film studio, then it moves onto the following stages.

Script and Storyboards

The proposal is fleshed out into a script with a fully developed storyline, characters and dialogue, and this in turn is transformed by the director into "e-conte" or storyboards.

Animation

The individual frames are elaborated upon by a team of animators to create the anime. Originally these extra frames were sketched by hand, then transferred to celluloid film, but as of 2010 the whole process is achieved much less laboriously by the use of computers to fill in and color the gaps digitally.

Compositing

This is the process of making the animation feel like a film, with the sense of a moving, observing camera. Again, this is now accomplished digitally.

Sountrack

While the animators are busy, another team works on the soundtrack -- the voices, music and sound effects -- adding them to a very crude first cut of the anime.

References

• "The Rough Guide to Anime," Simon Richmond, 2009