Gedo Senki (Tales from Earthsea)

26th April 2006

Number 79 - The Enigma of Ascension

Sometimes the production diary[1] has a graph of the production schedule in it. The vertical axis shows the number of completed cuts and the horizontal axis is the date. Every week, the number of completed cuts for each process are put onto this.

In the photo it's small and hard to see, but if you look really closely, I think you can tell that there is a difference in the way each of the lines rises. All of them have a sharp upturn at the end, but the especially amazing ones are the lines for animation, ink and paint, and imaging.

I used to work in the construction industry. Even at construction sites, things often go into high speed at the end. The line on the graph showing production (amount completed) curves up sharply at the end. That is, the later the process in the schedule, the less time it has to be completed in. This is what often happens at building sites when the project is on the verge of completion - the interior people are working all night.

The same thing happens on an animation production too. When we got to cutting rolls 3 & 4, the reason that almost all the cuts were able to go to editing with even the colour added, was due to the amazing efforts down the home stretch of the animation, ink and paint, and imaging divisions.

Especially, the management and direction of the heads of the various divisions; Tateno of animation[2], Yasuda of ink and paint, and Okui of imaging; was crucial. Not only the quality of the pictures, but the quality of the schedule was maintained as a result of the work of these division leaders.

Translator's Notes

[1]: The other diary, the one not translated by me. Presumably, you can look and see the graphs though (I didn't know where to look).

[2]: Presumably this is Hitomi Tateno, credited as animation checker on almost every Ghibli film since My Neighbour Totoro and as in-between animator on The Cat Returns.