How the motion comes into Animation

“The frequency at which frames in a television picture, film, or video sequence are displayed.” This is how our good friend Google defines Framerates. These are generally measured in frames per second, or FPS for short.

Now avid Gamers will probably be very familiar with that term, as higher framerates were and still are one of the main reasons PC users declare their system superior to consoles, calling them filthy console plebeians while honoring themselves with the title of the glorious PC-Masterrace.

But as the title suggests, we aren’t here to discuss the antics and to comment on that odd fight that takes place inside the community of gaming. So, let's discuss the promised topic: How does the motion come to be in TV-produced anime?

The short answer is: it’s the result of the hard work of many different people. On that account let's take a quick dive into the production of anime, or precisely which staff members are involved in creating the animation for anime.

The production of anime is usually split up into three different stages: The Pre-Production, the In-Production, and the Post-Production. The animation is most logically made during the In-Production phase. The staff members who have the task to create the animation are the key animator, the animation director, and the inbetweener.

The In-Production-Stage in anime is the Stage during which the anime itself is produced, is arguably the most important step while producing an anime. Without it one wouldn’t have a finished product.

During this stage the script is written, the Storyboards are made, the layout is begin designed and finally the animation will be produced.

The episode script is written as a first part of the Production of the series itself. Episode scrips usually elaborate on the series script and selects what exactly is shown during the episode, as well as all the dialogues. The script is either written by a collective or a single person, which is then revised by other members of the Production staff, notably the series director, the episode director and the producers. In many cases a script is re-written three to four times before being finalized. However, modifications to the script past this stage are very rare.

Next in comes the creation of the Storyboard, which is the first kind of drawing realized for an animation. The storyboard is essentially the translation from the script to images, although they resemble to rough sketches. If the storyboard is created by an episode Director himself, then this often implies that the episode is truly the vision of the director. In TV-productions, this is rarely the case, so the Storyboards are handled by a special credit, the Storyboarders.

Storyboard from the 1988 movie "Akira" by
Katsuhiro Otomo

They are usually drawn on A4 paper by hand and contain the core information of how the episode and all its different scenes look. The Storyboard divides the episode up into scenes and then further into individual cuts (or Shots) that comprise the scene. Each Shot is given a number as well as details on what’s inside the frame, character and camera movements (such as zooms or panning’s), as well as notes on what kind of background art will be visible, additionally the dialogue as well as the length of each shot, measured in frames per second.

It takes about three weeks for a Storyboard to reach completion.

Layout from the Ghibli movie "Princess Mononoke"

Next up is the lesser-known layout stage. This time every single shot from the storyboard is redrawn in greater detail, as it will be seen on the TV broadcast. The shots from the cuts are upscaled to the full-sized animation papers, additional details regarding camera movement are also added, creating basically a blueprint of each shot. The basic structure of the Background art is added in (i.e. a tree there and a mountain there) as well.

After being approved by the director, these layouts are then duplicated and given to the background department (who get the originals), and the key animators. The art director and assistants work on painting the background artwork based on the rough drawings of the layouts while the rest of the production process continues concurrently.

By this stage, the look of every shot is clear-cut, from the position of the character’s, to camera motion to the background-art. Next in order the stage when the actual movements are added to the Animation.

The key animators are the ones who will draw the structure of a frame, meaning they will only draw the parts of a cut which are the most important. Let’s look a quick example: When animating a punch, the key animator will then draw the fist flying, next the first hitting its target and finally the impact of the punch (if it's a strong one). Key Animators are mostly older and more experienced animators, they are also the ones who have the most creative freedom during the whole process. While they are restricted to use pre-defined Character designs, camera angles and composition (which are defined by the storyboard), how exactly the movement or the scene looks is up to the individual key animator. This way some animators were able to develop their own style of animating which can even be recognized by some people.

Additionally, when discussing animators, I just feel obligated to mention Yukata Nakamura, also known as the grandmaster of Battle anime. Because of his fame, Nakamura is even allowed to storyboard his own scenes, giving his work has a very distinct feel of momentum and 
epicness, which demonstrates his deep understanding of cinematography. 

If you want to know what a cut from Yukata Nakamura looks like, search no further than Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. The second opening was his work. He is also known to have contributed in major parts to other big hit titles from the Animation Studio Bones, like Space Dandy and Kekkai Sensen (Blood Blockade Battlefront). The final battle in Sword of the Stranger (also a Bones production) is regarded till today as one of the best sword fights to have ever been animated, and of course, the fight is entirely choreographed and animated by Yukata Nakamura.

Top: Key Animation for "Space Dandy"
Middle: Yutapon-Cubes in the second Season of "My Hero Academia"
Bottom: Key Animation by Yukata Nakamura for the
movie "Sword of the Stranger"

One of his core characteristics are the so-called Yutapon Cubes, a distinct style to animate debris and destructed rubble in geometrical shapes like cubes. One of his more recent works showing off all his talents, from camerawork, effects animation, fluidity and his famous Yutapon-Cubes is the battle between Saitama and Boros in One Punch Man.

Another, nearly equally important Animator is Yoshimichi Kameda, whose animation style is just as easy to recognize. His work consists of heavy black and brushy paint strokes, thus giving his cuts a distinct ruff, erratic and wild feeling.

He is known to have worked with Industry Legends like Hideaki Anno on certain shots in Evangelion 3.0 as well as the critically acclaimed Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. He is responsible for creating some of the best-looking action sequences in the series, one of them being the death-scene of Lust in episode 19 respectively Envy's death-scene in episode 54.

Additionally, he worked on some of the most memorable fights in One Punch Man, one them being the Underdweller-fight, of which he animated the beginning and the middle sequences.

Yoshimichi Kameda is of the, if not the leading force behind the Anime adaptation of the Mob Psycho 100 manga, creating the Character designs and handling a major part of the animations.

Envy's Death, Ep. 54 from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Now we got set off-track speaking about two notorious animators, let’s continue where we left off:

Obviously Key animators they aren’t the only ones who bring movement to still images. As I stated before Key animators usually only draw the most important frames in a cut, so looking at their work isolated the movements would simply jump from one position to the next, without any actual fluidity in the movement. Here’s when the in-between animation comes into play. The in-between animators create the missing movements between keyframes, in essence, they fill in the gaps. Since in-between animation is basically grunt work it is either outsourced (mostly to Korea) or it becomes the task of less experienced animators, which is also paid accordingly bad.

A single episode of anime usually needs about 20 different key animators and even more in-between animators to be made. When so many different people are drawing the same stuff, someone must worry about consistency. That someone is the Animation Director. Animation directors tend to be more experienced animators and are paid more for the role. However, it is their responsibility if things go wrong with the animation, making it a potentially very stressful job, especially under time pressure. Often, an episode of anime will have more the one animation director, and this can be a sign of scheduling problems, with more people needed to complete the episode satisfactorily and on time, or even a sign of many poor drawings needing correction. Furthermore, it can also be because animation directors are being used to their respective specialties (i.e. An animation director brought on to handle a mecha sequence, or to handle drawings of animals), or an indication that it was a difficult and demanding episode with a lot of drawings.

Next, to the animation director, an anime Series also tends to have a Chief animation director, who oversees the complete series. He often works a lot with the character designer or he mans both positions.

Now that we know all there is to know about the staff members directly responsible for the animation, we can now answer the question (high) above.

Anime, produced for both TV and the big screen always has a constant framerate (24 frames per second), meaning we see 24 images for every second of animation.

But most of the time anime gets produced in 2's, meaning there is a unique image every second frame. This involves that a second of animation only consists of 12 individual images per second which are then shown twice to create a fluent motion of 24 fps. To save time and thus money animators use all sorts of tricks to lessen their already enormous workload.

Sometimes anime uses even less unique images (sometimes called cell, reminiscent of the traditional way of making an animation using celluloid) in a second and will only be animated in 4's or even 5's. A framerate this low is usually used during dialogue or comedic scenes, where there is either not much movement or the hasty movements of a character doesn’t feel out of place.

An also commonly used method is to divide the individual shot into different layers of importance which are then animated accordingly. While the main focus of the shot may be on the main character in the foreground, which is animated at the standard 2's, irrelevant background motion is simultaneously animated in 3's.

Something else to know about shooting on twos is that it makes it very easy to smooth out an animation because you can just replace one of the duplicated drawings with a "tween" cell. If someone makes a fast movement, shooting on twos make it look like their arm jumped from one side of the screen to the other. Replacing the duplicate cell with a "tween" will make the action smoother. Plus, there's repetitive motions, reused animation, and other ways to save drawing time/money/wear on the artists.

In conclusion the motion itself is created by showing the eye images in quick succession, and these images are created by whole team of people. And there are still many more steps to be made to reach a finished product from where we left off, most notably the coloring, editing and sounddesign.