[A1] Toei Animation (http://corp.toei-anim.co.jp/english/), 11/30 (Wed) 10:00 - + Attended by: Ms. Ueno (General Affairs Dept), Mr. Azuma (Strategic Management Dept) They will give you a tour of their production area (which span over a few buildings). The tour goes to each section and explain what they are doing with quick demonstration at the desk. After the tour, we will go into a conference room and Mr. Azuma (a corporate executive in the Statigic Management department) will answer your questions. Note that he is more of a management and marketing person now than an animator (although he was one before). So he knows a lot about how anime is doing (by sales and other aspects) outside of Japan. He can also tell you about their overall strategies for overseas markets (including copyrights, collaboration with overseas film studios such as Disney). However note that, after anime title is 'sold' to an overseas company, Toei won't have any rights to it. So the issues such as fan-sub or content change is not their concerns... You can ask anything to Mr. Azuma during the Q&A session, or people/workers at the production area during the tour. --- BACKGROUND INFO: Toei is the largest, as well as one of the oldest, anime/animation companies in Japan. They made numerous well-known titles (TV, cinema etc.) over the years. They just had their 5th aniversary in 2006. Their work is extensive. They had difficult times over the years, but in the last 2-3 years or so they have been doing very well, especially in the overseas market. The company wants to expand in overseas even more!! --- Toei in Japan makes key-frames only. The rest, especially the in-betweens ("Nakawari"), to its subsidiary companies in the Phillipines (and Korea). And the Japan side sends stuff to the overseas subsidiaries through their dedicated communication lines. Artists at Toei use "pen-tab" (graphics tablets) to draw -- not penciles (or pens) any more. They switched over to the "digital creation" several years ago. Toei is probably the only anime company in Japan who does things (almost) totally digital -- the most 'technologically advanced' anime company in Japan. They used to do collaboration work with Hollywood before, but not much these days. The company's CG department is growing quite rapidly lately. Their overall outlook for the next several years is pretty good. They've had a couple of 'failed projects' in recent years, but despite that, the sales has been growing. The company is currently producing 4 (or 5) titles (TV anime series) in parallel. That's about average for them. Despite the use of latest technologies, the company buildings and facilities are a bit old. ============================================= [A2] Telecom Animation (http://www.telecom-anime.com), 11/30 (Wed) 15:00 - + Attended by: Mr. Takeuchi (President) Mr.Takeuchi will give you a tour of the company (the production area). During the tour, he will probably try to explain and emphasize the points which are done differently in Japan than in the U.S. (e.g. storyboard written vertically; different paper size; number of frames per second, screen sizes, the way animators make animation). The studio is one large room so we are expecting to see most of their production process. Telecom is one of the oldest anime companies in Japan. Notably, Hayao Miyazaki used to work there in his early career and made "Lupin the III, Castle of Cagliostro". Being in the anime business from early days, Mr. Takeuchi and the company is well connected with other anime/animation companies. They have also worked with film and animation companies in Hollywood such as Disney and Warner Brothers. Actually they made a part of "Green Lantern". (*) The company is currently producing 2-3 TV titles. They are also working with Warner Brothers on the next Superman animation. (**) Mr. Takeuchi may ask your comments on their work with Hollywood -- as example reactions by the U.S. viewers.s Unlike Toei, Telecom's production process is still traditional. Manually drawing 2D keyframes (and backgrounds) on paper, scan them into computers, then color the images and do further touch-ups on computers. The company building and facilities are kind of old. ============================================= [A3] Shirogumi (Chofu Studio), 12/1 (10:00-12:00) http://www.shirogumi.com/ Attended by: Mr Yoichi Ogawa, Animation Director Tour of Studio (10:00-11:00): 1F Filming Studio (there will be s shooting scheduled on the day, so we will take a peek) 2F CG Team, Miniature Production Studio 3F Movie Production Team (11:00-12:00) Q&A with the director ============================================= [A4] Marza Animation Platet, 12/2 (3:00pm-5:00) http://www.marza.com/en/ Attended by: Mr. Sakai Review of CG Production Flow followed by Q&A ============================================= [A5] Robot Communicaions Inc., 12/3 (5:15 - 7:15) http://www.robot.co.jp/index_en.html http://www.robot.co.jp/en/index.html Attended by Mr. Ikuo Nishii (Character Animation Department, Technical Supervisor) No specific content of the visit is discussed yet, but most likely tour of studio followed by Q&A with Mr. Nishii ============================================= [A6] Kyoto International Manga Museum, 12/6 (2:00-6:00) http://www.kyotomm.jp/english/ http://www.kyoto-seika.ac.jp/eng/edu/graduate/manga/ http://www.kyoto-seika.ac.jp/eng/edu/manga/ Attended by: Professor Jaqueline Berndt (Kyoto Seika University) Tour of the museum followed by discussion with Kyoto Seika University Manga Department graduate students. We will get there and meet with Prof. Berndt at 2:00 pm. Then the class starts at 2:40 pm, to which we will join and do discussion with her students. Her students are mostly graduate/Master's students majoring in Manga research. Each student has his/her own research topic, which is typically a theme in Manga but analyzed from readers' perspective (as versus Manga writers or artists perspectives). Their fundamental theory (I believe) is that the more interprestations by the readers a Manga allows, the more complex the Manga is. =============================================