A candid interview (continued)

 EX: What out there really strikes you as creative and innovative in Japanese animation?

SF: Japanese animation has a lot of really creative directors and technical directors and this, combined with a good knowledge of how camera works and a good eye for scene composition, makes for really great work. A lot of Japanese animation directors are people who really love movies and wanted to make them but there is just no chance that they could get to do what they want with live film in Japan.
Camera is an incredibly important part of the animation process. If you have OK animation but great camera people and set everything up right you can do good looking work. Bad camera and lousy setup can make great animation look horrible though.


 EX: What do you think of American animation?

SF: When I moved to Japan in 1987, I thought that American animation was dead and already rotted. The garbage that was on TV then was stunningly bad. Now there are some good TV shows like BATMAN, ANIMANIACS and DUCKMAN. I hope that movie production will catch up and some good movies will come out too. I think that the biggest problem with American animation is that too much of it is directed, designed and planned by committee and shows it. The creative soup has to pass through so many filters that by the time it gets out of the kitchen it is only lukewarm water, which is the same as all the other lukewarm water shows out there. Everybody along the line is too afraid to be innovative and take a chance. There is a lot of good talent in American animation companies but it rarely gets to flex its muscle.


EX: I agree with you on that. Only recently have we seen American animation with plots extending more than two episodes. Would you ever consider doing something for American television?

SF: I would actually prefer to make shows for worldwide release rather than just Japan anyway. I wouldn't try to make a show specifically for the US market myself unless I had serious backing from the US side and knew that it would indeed be on the air. If I was producing it in Japan and we had all the creative control that we do over our work now, then I would do it. In fact, I would probably enjoy doing it. If I was just subcontracting it and had no control, then no, absolutely not. I did do some backgrounds for DARKWING DUCK and SWAT KATS (neither of which I have ever seen) but that was purely to keep work in the studio and they were contracted through a Japanese studio. My staff hated it. Although I have enjoyed training people at US subcontractors to use ANIMO I have never had a pleasant production experience with a US animation company.
I do have to say that if I was a US animation company I would be extremely upset about all the live action movies being made from comic books. I think that might be taken as a slap in the face to the entire animation industry over there in some ways.


 EX: Do you think that anime has a place in the mainstream American culture, or will it always be something of a cult phenomenon?

SF: I don't really know. I think that the growth of interest in anime has been phenomenal but I don't think that every kid in America will be a fan of anime someday. To tell the truth, it really has to do with marketing. Anime is still not seeing huge promotional campaigns and that is what makes the market sit up and take notice. When anime can attract big sponsors then maybe it will get big promotion.
Animation and many TV shows in the US are still produced for (or as if for) syndication and long runs of non-sequential shows. Each week you can sit down and watch the SIMPSONS or whatever show and not have to know the story line to enjoy it. There is nothing wrong with this, per se, but most anime series are episodic. The market may be there but if nobody is willing to put it on the air because it is not in a format they like, then it won't be seen. For everything on TV and in the theatres there has to be some kind of backer and a reason that they think that it will sell.


 EX: What are the biggest differences between the animation that is produced for the US and that which is produced for Japan?

SF: Biggest differences are probably in type of animation and directing. Japanese animation is done with limited animation (only certain parts move and most things are shot one image every 3 frames) versus the American "full" animation, where everything moves together and you have one image for every frame or every 2 frames. (Not always true but that is the idea.) A Japanese TV show will have 3,500 drawings but a US show will have 12,000. The US shows all lip-synch and the Japanese do not.
(This is something I must comment on. Some of the animation on US TV is so horribly animated that the characters look like they were inbetweened by monkeys yet the mouths are all synched to the soundtrack. Get a clue, drop the synch and spend more time on making the individual drawings better and on the movement, people!)
The average Japanese director has more control over what the final product will look like than his American counterpart does.
The biggest artistic differences are that the Japanese animation is checked by the animation supervisor right after all the keys are done to make sure all the characters are "on model," whereas this usually takes place after the inbetweens are done in a US production. The Japanese key animators both draw their own layouts and time the animation themselves. Sometimes this is handled by different staff members (specialists) in a US production. (continued)