Title GENGA ALPHA RELEASE DRAFT ✅

The ANIME Survival Kit Genga Section Draft Developed by Tonari Animation Contributors: Jarrett Martin Stephen Hausdorff Beast Tahoe51 Macarena Duarte Vivian Lun Julius De Bellen Editor: Bellamy Brooks
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Note From the Author Hi, my name’s Giuseppe! I’m an animator and designer with Tonari animation. I started back in 2021 as a freelancer, but I became a full-time member of the company in early 2022. I bet you’re thinking “that isn’t enough time to understand anime and write a book!” You’re right. I’m not a one-man animation encyclopedia. Instead, I’m more like a researcher. Tonari has experts in every field of animation, but they’re all busy–so they talk and I write. I’ve tried to cross-verify and vet everything in this book over multiple drafts and rounds of feedback. What you’re getting here is my explanation of their work, edited to make it as clear and approachable as possible. I hope you learn a ton! (adding a section introducing the people we interview would be awesome) Beast Jarrett Julius Nyki Stephen Tommy Hiya! My name is Bellamy.I’m just as excited for this book to exist as the rest of you! A book like this has never existed before for people outside of Japan. The barrier to entry for this industry is huge, and it’s great that we can help break that barrier down. I’ve worked in the animation and education industries for nearly ten years. I graduated college from the University of Arkansas with a degree in journalism in 2016. When I joined Tonari, I immediately spread my tentacles to every single department I could get involved in, for better or for worse! I am responsible for many duties: animation, production assistant work, pre-production, character design, costume design, prop design, clean-up, promotion, and more. Anyways, my broad base of practical experience helps me to catch mistakes and keep the perspectives balanced as I edit. I spent so long trying to get out of education to join the anime industry, yet here I am educating people about animation. It’s funny how things work out. Bellamy Brooks, May 9th, 2022 Variation, Communication, and Clarity: Some Words of Caution This book is an attempt at gathering all the basic information needed to make anime. I think we’ve made something really impressive here, but the anime industry isn’t a monolith. People and companies all vary significantly in their standards, working styles, terminology, and expectations. For example, how Studio Trigger (the studio that made Kill la Kill) produces a crazy action anime will be quite different from how a tiny indie studio might produce a simple slice-of-life show. 3
Why the variation? For more reasons than I can count. Some of this comes from experience, some of it comes from different specializations, and some just come from differences in personality or style. It’s OK! These differences give us a ton of amazing work from all kinds of people. We’d be worse off without it. Great! So you can do whatever you want! It's anime, get crazy. Make big explosions, throw in some light flares, maybe some menacing poses. Anything g– Hold up. It’s the shared basics that allow variation. Can you cook a complex cake without knowing how to operate an oven? Nope! Is it a good idea to pilot a helicopter with no prior flight experience? Still nope. Can you write a book all by yourself in a language you can’t speak, read, or write in? No sir, no how! Anime is the same. You need some basic knowledge of the core processes before you can join the industry, and you need context and experience before you can break those boundaries and start making your own rules. How much information, how many experiences? I wish I could tell you! You’re the one that gets to decide exactly where these lines are–but it’s usually not too hard to tell when a lack of basic skills is getting in the way of your ambitions. Take it easy and don’t fret too much about struggling with the basics. Roll with the punches and accept the frustrations. I guarantee there’s some stuff you’ll need to learn in anime production that’s going to drive you crazy. It’s a little different for everyone. I, for one, can’t stand writing out time sheets. Some people hate cleanup, others love it. Some can’t stand the idea of douga work, others do nothing but douga. You’re going to find your own strengths and weaknesses–but at least knowing a little about everything is absolutely key. What advice can I give? Well, a common theme in almost every interview and conversation I've had when working on this book is this: Clarity is key. If the next person in the pipeline can look at your work, understand what you’re doing, and do their job, you’re golden. Making anime requires the combined efforts of dozens and dozens of people toward the same ultimate goal, that only works when they understand what they need to do. As a matter of fact, this even extends out to the viewing audience. The animation team behind a show is just trying to communicate an idea to their audience, and how well that idea gets transmitted is mostly up to how they share ideas amongst themselves. So, if you can answer the question “is this clear?” with “yes” then, great! What you’re doing is good. If the answer is “no” then you need to find a different way to do things. Just remember that YOU don’t actually decide what clear communication is. The people who need to understand your instructions do. You can do almost anything you want in animation, but not if other people in your team are confused or it doesn’t properly communicate the story. Be responsive to who they are. Sometimes they might be able to work from very little. Other times you might need to be extremely specific. This process of learning to communicate is never-ending. Ask for feedback, try different things, see what other people are doing and if it’s working, play with ideas. As long as you have a solid working foundation, and you’re always trying to expand your knowledge, you’ll find a way to make it work! m 4