Alright, so I haven't quite exhausted the vast amount of anime stuff to talk about that doesn't involve reviewing specific titles. I started to write this about voice acting, due to the sudden re-kindling of my desire to meet Megan Hollingshead, who I just found out is RANGIKU on Bleach!
Not that I like Rangiku all that much, just that it's such a main role in a current popular anime. She wasn't really in much for a while, totally destroying any chance of her coming to a con. She still hasn't been to a con in 3 years, but I hope that'll change someday. I have to hope. Either that or get to Youmacon and meet Wayne Grayson.
Anyway, to the article. What exactly goes into producing anime? Well, first there's the animation technique. There's a dozen different ways of "animating", but the most commonly known and the one we'll be talking about is "traditional animation", "cel animation", "hand-drawn", or "classic". A cartoon. (as opposed to stop-motion, claymation, model animation, puppet animation, the one where you take flat piece and put them together, and of course, 3D animation)
The first thing done in ANY animation project is storyboarding. Storyboards look something like a comic strip, being a series of panels showing what the director wants to be animated, and the dialogue. (no word bubbles, though)
After the storyboard is drawn, character designs and model sheets are drawn. Then the backgrounds are chosen, based on the angles of the camera and positions of the characters.
Then the actual drawing of characters begins. Wikipedia does a much better job of explaining this than me, and let's face it, I'm just rephrasing what they say anyway. The first drawings are done by the key animator, who animates, as the name implies "key" frames. In a 16-frame per second animation, I guess that would be something like 4 or 5 frames. The animator constantly checks their work, and in American animation, where the voices are recorded first, the drawings are scanned and checked to see that the voices fit. The clean-up artists trace the key animators' work onto a clean sheet. Then the in-betweeners come in and finish all the stuff that the key animator didn't draw.
This is where things have started to drastically change. Here's how it to used to work:
Backgrounds are typically one big acrylic piece that the cellulose sheets are moved over. All the character animation is eventually transfered to cels, so called because they are made of cellulose, either by inking or photocopying. They are then colored, and finally, the filming process can begin.
Cels are placed on the background and filmed with an animation camera. They are moved for every frame, reminiscent of stop-motion animation.
Nowadays all of that is done digitally. I quote, "The last major feature film to use traditional ink and paint was Studio Ghibli's Princess Mononoke (1997);" Miyazaki himself drew around 80,000 frames of that film, and personally checked every of the 144,000.
After all the visuals are done, the voices, background music, and sound effects are added. I assume that voices are recorded afterwards to cut down on the budget, simplifying the animation from a specific mouth movement to a mouth just moving up and down. This also makes it very practical to dub anime into other languages, since there is very rarely a problem with another language not fitting the shape of the mouthflaps. There are times where specific sounds are animated, usually when a character is making an effort to say something. Offhand, the only example I can think of is from Yuugiou. (that will be the only offhand example of things I know VERY often) Episode 77, (Oh yes, I know the exact number. I go waaay beyond dork with this series, let me tell you.) part three of possessed Jounouchi (Joey) and Yuugi's death duel, Yuugi tries to break Malik's (Marik) possession by talking to Jou about his sister, Shizuka. Jounouchi, as a sign of the mind control weakening, says her name, and each syllable is animated. (Shi-zu-ka) Well, ironically enough, her name is the most accurately translated. "Shizuka" roughly translates to "peace" or "calm". Her name was translated as "Serenity". Unfortunately, this has one too many syllables for this particular scene, since there's really no other way to translate what was happening. This was solved easily enough, by having the English voice (Wayne Grayson) simply match the first three syllables to the mouthflaps, and let the fourth be spoken while transitioning to the flashback. The names are similar enough that the different word dubbed to the specific mouthflaps is unnoticeable.
The voice acting process in America can be found on the special features of a plethora of American released anime DVDs. The script is re-written for English to match mouthflaps, and hopefully keeping the dialogue still sounding like normal, well, dialogue. (I'm looking at you, early episodes of Bleach--"so what exactly the heck is that thing over there that I'm looking at?") Fullmetal Alchemist is one of the best examples of good American script adaption I know of.
The voice actors individually go into the studio and record their lines. They go into a booth, get a pair of headphones and a mike--all standard in any animation--and they watch the Japanese version. After they know what they're dubbing over, they get three beeps, and where the fourth would be, they start speaking the line, while the animation still plays so they can see what they're doing. (I think.)
Along with voices, background music and sound effects are added. Music is typically pre-recorded, and certain tracks are played depending on what the animators need for a scene. For example, this time in Fullmetal Alchemist, there is a very well-known (to fans of the series) theme for Ed and Al called "Brothers". There is a single recording of this, which is manipulated for each episode it is used in, rather than having an orchestra sit down and record for each episode.
I have very little idea how sound effects work in anime. I know a tiny bit from watching Avatar commentaries, and that it involves manipulating normal sounds, slowing, speeding, etc.
Finally, it's all put together and shown on TV, released on DVD, ripped to computers and fansubbed, and eventually, brought to America! Where they redub it, and hopefully leae it otherwise unchanged. Or 4kids gets it and dubs out anything remotely offensive or not-American. Which apparently are the same thing. -_-;;
Now, being fictional characters, we as fans can never meet our characters. We can, however, meet the voices that play them, and so voice actors are celebrities in our otaku world. As you can tell from my ramblings on Megan Hollingshead, Wayne Grayson, etc. I'm starting to get a hold of my obsession now, though. Really. Some voice actors go to conventions; certain very popular ones do just about nothing but go to conventions and voice-act. There is a group called the "50+" who have been to more than 50 conventions total. According to animecons.com, they are:
I've met 5 of them. ^__^ You'll have the chance to meet some of them, too, if you come to Tekko this spring! (don't you love my shameless plugging?)
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