Why not just hire Shinj Aramaki? Is he not Japan's CG master? (who also worked with Khara previously for their expo)

TMBounty_Hunter wrote:If they want the latter two, they probably think their current stuff is clearly inadequate. Big list of software you need to be familiar with for them too.

If they're seriously doing motion-capture animation for a whole fight scene (as was shown in the preview at the end of Eva Q), then they're gonna need a heck of a bigger crew then they've got in order to pull it off. This is a technology where techies and digital wizards scratched their heads over the possibility of having two mo-cap characters simultaneously in the same shot rather than doing the characters one at a time. This is something James Carmon had to jump through hurdles in order to get the processing power for a whole group of mo-cap characters captured simultaneously in the same shot. And he was funded by a Hollywood powerhouse studio.

...And here's Hideaki Anno's little Japanese studio, which is an independent film studio for all intents and purposes, with it's very optimistically name "Khara," possibly chugging up to the technology while repeating "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..." for a fight scene that might require 10 or more giant characters per shot in some cases. If mo-cap is something they're going with for certain scenes in this film then they have to up their digital game beyond integrating cel-shaded 3-D animation in a 2-D hand-drawn environment. What they accomplished for the preview looked adequate for the purposes of the preview (whatever those might be right now), but they need a bigger crew for a movie-quality effect scene like this one.

^
A question, since I know too little of this process.
I understand, that one might need lots of money and many people to process a choreographed fight scene to immediately translate it onto the screen. But wouldn't it be possible (much cheaper and thus more feasible), to record the fight multiple times tracing one person at a time?

robersora wrote: But wouldn't it be possible (much cheaper and thus more feasible), to record the fight multiple times tracing one person at a time?

Weta Digital (the LotR special effects guys) designed a program called "Massive," where the computer takes many individually recorded mo-cap information and randomizes it multiple times over in a group scene. It's been done with people, horses, and orcs in the LotR movies (as well as a human crowd scene in Pixar's WALL•E), but is generally used for wide shots where the characters are small on the screen. Something like this (though not exactly this, unless they want to buy the "Massive" license) can be used for background Evas or something. But if you're going to have two figures fighting, it's best to have two figures actually fighting. Body slams and sword fights would be near impossible to capture one at a time, unless the animators are going to do some serious editing to it later on.

Arcadia's legacy wrote:Why not just hire Shinj Aramaki? Is he not Japan's CG master? (who also worked with Khara previously for their expo)

Because they're not making a 3DCG movie. They're making a movie that's uses 2D as much as it is desirable and sometimes turning to new techniques if they fit the vision. The whole point of having your own studio is to be allowed to do things your own way and if necessary spend time on figuring out and developing the how-to. We have plenty of talk from Anno about how he wants to nurture the future of Japanese animation. Everyone else in the industry is busy pumping out the same old shit just to stay afloat and they don't have time to sit back and develop something new.

Personally I greatly dislike Aramaki's directorial work. Just as with Yutaka Izubuchi, his talent lies in mecha design and not directing. Storywise, choreography, cinematography, Aramaki is stale as fuck with all that.

TMBounty_Hunter wrote:Personally I greatly dislike Aramaki's directorial work.

But i wasn't talking about how his directorial work (in my eye's, he's like Zack Snyder. as good as his script), i was simply suggesting that he'd be a good choice for this fight scene that you're all talking about (with modeling and rendering being done by Qs own team (assuming the're still on the project)

Shinji Aramaki's visual results are completely different than what Khara seems to be aiming at with their use of computer graphics in these movies. Khara wants more seamlessly integrated CGI and cel animation, incorporating it not only with Eva Unit figures, but also with sets and camera movements integrated with the movement of traditionally animated characters. (Watch the "Rebuild" making of for Eva Q. You'd be surprised how much CGI was snuck into a simple camera move while keeping traditional animation at the focus of the shot.) Shinji Aramaki is more about bringing CGI into a fully-realized form of art in it of itself, all while creating his entire workflow around that goal. At the end of the day, Khara's simply going to ask Shinji Aramaki to only do as he's told and not out the atmospheric foggy haze around Unit 02 or something like that.

It's like asking Bach to write romanic-era music, or asking Rembrandt to paint a Picasso-style piece. The two artists have completely different creative goals and really wouldn't be of much help realizing the goals of the project.

Eva-fan has a new article up about it. http://neweva.blog103.fc2.com/blog-entry-4277.html Don't know if any of the information is new though!

Says they're hiring digital animators to work on the New Evangelion movie. Finally!

Eh, maybe I'll live to see it after all!

(I've had a recent scare about my mortality, which I won't know the answer to until mid-Jan)

Maybe we'll hear some news after the 26 episode airing on Nico.


Finally nice to see "some" of the gears turning for this movie.

Kvanu wrote:Says they're hiring digital animators to work on the New Evangelion movie. Finally!

Nowhere on the current recruitment page, khara's twitter or any other official source does it say they're hiring for Eva.

They're simply hiring.


The new Evafan article is much more intrigued with the fact that internal khara 3DCG guy Hiroyasu Kobayashi has made it to the khara board of directors.

TMBounty_Hunter wrote:The new Evafan article is much more intrigued with the fact that internal khara 3DCG guy Hiroyasu Kobayashi has made it to the khara board of directors.

Kobayashi could also be the reason why Khara's expanding their digital departments. And since Khara also does other animation work for other projects outside of the studio, this could also simply be a re-waorking of the animation services Khara offers.

(Or it could be Eva Shin.)

pwhodges wrote:Eh, maybe I'll live to see it after all!

(I've had a recent scare about my mortality, which I won't know the answer to until mid-Jan)

Cancer?

(Answering by PM)

I hope the results show that you have nothing to worry about, pwhodges.

We all hope

Hopes for the best, pwhodges!

TMBounty_Hunter wrote:The new Evafan article is much more intrigued with the fact that internal khara 3DCG guy Hiroyasu Kobayashi has made it to the khara board of directors.

That's a pretty big promotion there. Good for him!

On the subject of animators, would they need to hire again for Eva? I thought that's what the April call was for? I don't know much about these things.

^ I'm thinking this is more along the lines of the company simply growing and expanding with more jobs within becoming available, and not really "Oh, we're understaffed for what we usually do right now. Let's fix that."

Since I can't be arsed to make another brand new thread for wild speculations about what's going on in khara i'll just put this here.


Shuichi Iseki has posted some pics and comments on twitter showing khara is packing up at the current location:

tweet-body

— twitter-user (@username) date

Initially he posted a tweet about year-end cleaning, but then someone said that doesn't look like cleaning but more like leaving:

tweet-body

— twitter-user (@username) date

Something something consturuction and moving to another location.

Maybe they outgrew the tiny studio we saw them in the Animator Expo documentary, or maybe they're shutting down, who knows :P