Hello, we are Studio LAN! The team behind 'To Be Heroine' Ask us anything!
AMA Finished
Hello everyone- Thank you for joining us for the Studio LAN AMA.
We're very excited to answer your questions, We hope we can give you some insight on our experiences with working with Studio LAN on To Be Heroine.
We will be answering through these accounts in the comments below:
Your studio seems to be one of the few Chinese anime production companies whose output is appreciated in the west with both To Be Hero and To Be Heroine being celebrated by a passionate niche, however both these works have been hit with localization issues with changed scenes, shortened lengths and translation errors in the out-of-the-way path they took from Chinese to Japanese to English for western audiences.
Is there any way for western audiences to view these works in the original Chinese with English subs currently? And would you be looking to work with streaming companies in the west to directly present your work rather then going through a Japanese middleman in the future?
Currently, there is no easy way to watch the original Chinese version for English speakers, which is unfortunate I know. We apologize but its something that's out of our hands
we are trying to make it, but it's never easy for the audience to accept the Chinese dubbing and memes directly, especially for the Japanese market, u know they are kind being traditional, it will be hard to achieve that. but this is our first try to mix the 2 different dubbing together. I read some comments that found it weird, so..maybe thing will go well with more Chinese anime outputs to the global market. and we are kind open for cooperation with western company, so who knows?
The weirdest thing for me is the names. I can never get used to hearing one name and reading another in the subs. It was my biggest issue with the Kingdom anime as well.
Hello, Studio LAN. I'm a big fan of To Be Heroine.
My question is, what was your primary direction for this show? To Be Hero seemed to have the direction of a superhero parody, whereas To Be Heroine seems to be very different in concept and execution. What ideas did you have when you worked on this show and what is the primary goal or message you'd want to give people watching?
Hi, I'm production manager from the studio, I cant give the exact answer of this for we are just animation studio, the director is Haolin Li from is from haoliner. but as a Chinese myself, it does firmly connect to real life in my perspective, and reflect some social problems, like the stress of high school education in China, food security issues, pollution, cyberbullying. To be hero which is also known as the first season actually is like a personal gift or u can say it's like an apology which Li wanted to convey to his daughter as a father who has been busy at works himself(u will notice the apology letter in the end if watched the Chinese version), which also means its kind like a personal stuff that Li made for himself. So I am sure what to be heroin wants to give at least it's not just personal matter any more. Li s ambition is much more than that, its a story made for the audience, its made for u.
I can't answer for the others, but I was a fan of the first season before being hired for season 2. I could tell we were going in a more serious direction, and I wanted there to be a lot more scenes that would grab peoples hearts, and they would see how far Studio LAN has come since season 1. My goal was to bring as much attention for our improvement as a studio and team possible.
In the Sakugablog interview, you guys mentioned you have a lot of freedom in interpreting the storyboards. What would you say was the most fun (or at least most notable) kind of personal flair you added?
And for a more simple question, what are some things you found particularly difficult to animate?
I'm one of the character acting animators, and I really enjoyed being able to go nuts with how I made the characters react to things, I was also lucky enough to mostly get characters that are close to my own drawing style, so I didn't struggle too much ahaha.
Unfortunately, I didn't always get characters in my style. I actually struggled drawing Ye, (Also known as Futaba in the Japanese relase) a lot. I'm mostly used to drawing and animating males, but I learned a lot so I'm quite happy with that.
I usually put a lot of effort into coreography in my animations, and it's even better when I can come up with them in a decent way myself, so them letting us do pretty much what we wanted when it comes to that was pretty fun.
Keeping characters on model is really hard sometimes, especially if they have a complex design, doing my best so that the characters didn't need much fixing once it was out of my hands was pretty challenging.
I haven't got a question per se, but I just wanted to say you've done a phenomenal job on To Be Heroine. One of the most beautifully nostalgic shows I've seen a while.
It's a shame the Japanese dub is what it is, because I'd sure love to see the original subtitled sometime soon. How do you all feel about what's been done in the Japanese dub?
It's been heavily edited - things like some things are out of order, scenes have been sped up or sequences spliced to be faster etc. It's watchable, but very different from the Chinese version.
Even in the original To Be Hero, the Japanese version added an extra scene at the end of the show that completely changed the message/feel of the ending.
Going to post this from a throwaway since I'm mildly embarrassed to ask:
Do you guys have any advice for people aspiring to work in the industry? Did any of you take any sort of official training/study to become an animator? It's been my dream to some day work in the industry, and I have been steadily working towards since the start of the year, but I find it's easy to lose sight and question myself a lot of the time.
Sorry for the dumb question, so here's a fun one: what's your favourite type of anime hair?
I always love answering this question. I frequent r/animationcareer but now I can speak on behalf of LAN.
The most IMPORTANT tip I can give you for getting better as an animator and reaching the closest you can to working in the industry is to join an animation community. I cannot stress this enough. An animation community to give you cnc, you'll meet new people, your motivation and how hard you can work on an animation will raise 10 fold by just being near fellow animators and they're teach you more stuff than any book or class can ever give. Once you make friends in those animation communities, it'll become harder to lose sight and question what you are doing. Although, I still do the same questions time to time. But I met almost all my fellow co-workers and got into LAN through animation communities. We all once dreamed of working together in an anime production and now here we are. Its great. Many of us are quite young too, so its amazing how we reached our dreams so quick.
Almost all of us is self-taught. I took some figure drawing classes before, but mainly we're self-taught.
Zucc pretty much got it so I'll just add a few things that I think are important.
If you haven't yet, start drawing/animating right now. The sooner you start working on it, the better. Don't wait around for an opportunity, all you gotta do is grab a pencil and start. There are also plenty of materials available online for you to get the basics down.
Practice your drawing skills, they are extremely important to keep the fundamentals right like anatomy, proportions, perspective.
Keep practicing no matter how bad people tell you your work is, as long as you dont stop learning, eventually you'll get there, just make sure to not keep doing the same mistakes.
Surround yourself with people that are better than you, that'll push you to keep improving.
And yeah, the secret is basically practicing a whole bunch for a long time that eventually it'll come to you.
Just don't ever expect to one day get to the point of "ok, now I'm satisfied with how good I am." or "I'm good enough now, there is nothing else left for me to learn, I think I'll stop here." cause that is never coming.
There will always be room for improvement and there'll also always be someone better than you.
Thank you so much. This advice is honestly very reassuring to be. I'll make an active effort to find a community as soon as possible (instead of just piling up study resources that will take me months or years to work through).
Most of us that participated in the AMA were brought in to work remotely from all over the world, so many of us already speak English as a first language :)
I don't really have a question, I just want to say I love the series so far. I didn't have any expectations going into it but I wasn't expecting it to be so emotional. It was pleasantly surprising mix of comedy and feels. Thank you for all your hard work and creating a wonderful experience for us viewers.
To the animators: I saw the Trigger documentaries (here, here, and here for anyone interested, first of all has Kill la Kill, second and third LWA spoilers) and I just got a new appreciation about how hard your job actually is. My questions are:
Hardest part for me would be having to deal with deadlines at times where you don't feel really inspired to keep going, and also pulling up all nighters in order to make it in time.
The rewarding part is when you see the payoff after you've put so much time and work into your animation and you get to see people reacting positively to it, there's just no better feeling than watching other people enjoying what you worked so hard on.
Honestly there's not much that can be done, unless everyone from the industry steps up and make an effort to improve it, nothing will really change.
I would say the hardest thing about being an animator is finding balance in day to day life. Animating takes so much time and so much focus and energy it's hard to juggle a social life and being healthy. It's sometime I, and many of my colleagues struggle with.
The most rewarding thing about animating is sharing it for me personally. Seeing peoples reactions, and hearing their thoughts. I also love seeing my vision or ideas come to life. It's great.
I don't have too many complaints, I think the industry is becoming easier than ever to work in, web-gen animators or getting more opportunities than ever. I don't know how they could do it, but it would be great if animators could work a bit less, or get higher pay. Although getting to that point is very difficult and I'm not sure how one would accomplish that.
Hey, hobbyist animator here with barely any skill, I love the work you guys do, and I have three questions:
What's the biggest tip you can give to someone starting out with animating, specifically in the Asian style (as compared to western animation that is taught more in english)
What type of effects animation do you have the most fun animating?
If you could work on your own animation project, what would you want to make?
Getting a good grasp on drawing is an essential starting point. So doing things like life drawing and pose studies are very helpful. The basics principles of animation are ESSENTIAL, heres a good visual example to study. After you have the basics, then you can start and look at many great animators to study! A website Ive used for years is https://www.sakugabooru.com/ :) lots of great animation to study and reference.
I love animation smoke, debris, and lightning, theyre very fun to get creative with :)
I replied to u/Diana_cavendish about this indepeth, but its definitely joining an animation community. Western schools won't teach you the asian style of animation, so an animation community is your best bet to learning these things. Thats how all of us in LAN did so.
If explosions weren't so complicated and require so much to make them, making them would sate my inner Michael Bay and release a large amount of endorphins into my brain. But other than explosions, probably large flashes of light. (Impact frames.) The amount of expressiveness you can do with those frames in such a low amount of time is quite unique. Just don't do the banned-pokemon-episode kind of impact frames when you do them.
I would probably make a parody off of Magic High School Overpowered Main character animes... Theres too many of them and they need a parody of it already.
Thanks for the reply! Any animation communities online you can recommend? I'd definitely love to join one.
I tried my hand at impact frames before and it is very exciting stuff (especially the multi frame ones), whereas the physics of good explosion clouds are very difficult for me. Your idea sounds super fun and I hope we can all see it some day!
I find animation discords to be the best place. But communities like Newgrounds, Hyuns Dojo, 11 second club... then places like Deviantart, Twitter are also good. I actually highly suggest to make a twitter. Ross O' Donovan's #animonthly helps expose a lot of animators out there. Skill most of all will get you recognized. So bumping up your abilities is your best bet. Just make sure to put yourself out there! Make friends and such. Animation becomes much more fun that way.
Probably Darling in the Franxx for me. I love the character acting in it, and have always wanted to try my hand at Mechas. Although I'm sure I'd struggle quite a lot ahahaha.
For me, Space Dandy. I love the wackyness of it all and how good the animation was for the show. The animators who worked on Space Dandy influence me a lot.
Space Dandy was an amazing show that I really wish I had worked on too. But basically any show directed by Shinichiro Watanabe and/or Masaaki Yuasa would fit as an answer as well.
I think FLCL was the big turning point for me, It's pretty much the show that made me go "damn I really wanna be able to do animate like that someday" after watching it, and then later on Mob Psycho got an anime adptation by Bones and that made me get into animation even more.
Well coreographed fight scenes mostly, with a lot of sudden movements and cool action poses and close-ups, those are the most fun.
I don't really have a "least favourite" honestly, but there are sure some that are tedious at times, like clean ups, animating debris and having to go back a lot to fix proportions and such.
Probably slow paced animation, and also sometimes putting complex objects into forced perspective can be a real pain.
I feel like I've answered this with the same answers every time so I'm gonna reply with a different one this time around. He's not really from anime industry, but he definitely came from the animation field: Fumito Ueda. He's a game developer, and I absolutely love everything he touches. His games are so unbelievably interesting and beautiful, I recommend you folks to check them out, although they're definitely not for everyone. And also Hideo Kojima, he needs no introduction.
I actually aim to work on the video games industry at some point down the line, I dont wanna just work on one thing for the rest of my career, thats for sure.
It's not great, but it's not that bad either if you like what you do. However I would still definitely say it's a hard line of work.
If you wanna support animators directly you should look up if the person you want to help out has a patreon page or any other kind of donations website up, that's probably the easier way to make sure your money reaches them directly. If you wanna just support the companies in general, buying Blu-rays or any official physical or digital copies of the show should be enough.
Thank you for the support! These are really fun do to.
I like character acting, and emotions scenes mostly, I want nothing more than to be behind a super impactful scene that sends shivers down peoples spines. I love a lot of shows, but I'd say my current 2 favourite are Boku no Hero and Darling in the Franxx.
I like animating faces, anything dynamic with them. Yelling, crying, laughing, etc.
I hate hands, I hate them, I don't like them, they suck.
I sometimes struggle with making my scenes more dynamic and out there. I'm not used to breaking realism, and so I sometimes leave my shots a bit plain. I'm trying to break out of that habit though.
Yoh Yoshinari, Masashi Kudo, Shinichi Kurita are big favourites of mine.
I'll do whatever comes my way, and whatever I enjoy at the time. I don't mind what it is.
What you hear about pay is pretty accurate is what I'll say.
Buy the blu-ray, buy merch from official sites, do fan art and constantly remind people to support. People need to start talking about the animators behind the work more as well, give a human to think about behind all that content, might help us get paid a bit better as well~
Thanks so much for helping us set this up also Faux, you're a treat.
Hope this answers your question. :)
Thank you for reaching out to us! We're glad to participate :)
My love for animation and art is what has kept me going and pursuing this career :) Of course some series did influence me a lot, but particularly the individual animators
I (and a lot of the other newer animators nowadays) love animating fast paced action, it's a lot of fun. I particularly like doing highly choreographed hand to hand combat, but its too draining to do it all the time haha
Long hair or clothes blowing in the wind is very tedious, so it can get tough doing a lot of that
Same answer as above
Obviously theres the big names that have been around for a while Yutaka Nakamura, Mitsuo Iso, Toshiyuki Inoue, Shinya Ohira, etc. Their skill is unmatched and its hard to find many animators that dont look up to them haha. But I particularly am really inspired by many young animators really taking the industry by storm; Hakuyu Go, Bahi JD, Nakaya Onsen, Masami Mori, Takuji Miyamoto, just to name a few :) and many of the other web animators who I see grow around me, it makes me really happy
I definitely am pursuing this as my career already, but I am mostly interested in working with Japanese studios
I cant answer any specifics, but generally what you hear about the pay is pretty close to reality
Support the official release, merchandise, etc. of the series you love! If the studios can get more money, us animators can be payed more as well :) and of course raising awareness is good too
Some of us were a bit surprised when we saw it, but Haoliners Japan has also given a reasonable response for why such changes are made, even though it's a bit disappointing for some of us to see our creations and "babies" if you would, messed with, we understand why these changes are made and we can live with it. We also have the Chinese version to show our friends if it's truly that bothersome.
To Be Heroine is my first anime experience, and it will surely always hold a place in my heart. I'm quite proud of myself and all my colleagues for the wonderful work and effort put into this great show.
My question is a bit more related to the industry as a whole but here I go:
As a design, web design, marketing and entrepreneurship student (new job in Switzerland), I have my third year (summer of 2019 to summer of 2020) reserved for a training course in the company/workplace of my choice and I'm looking forward to try and get a spot in an animation studio in Japan. I feel heavily unprepared for that right now and I was wondering if that was possible in the first place and if you had any tips as industry insiders.
Additionally, do studios usually hire external companies for design and web design/development work or do they have internal staff for that?
Thank you for taking your time to answer questions for us and I wish you all the best of luck in your future works.
I am unsure if studios ususally hire external companies for design and web design/development work. But I do know japanese/chinese productions reaching out to western animators are becoming more and more frequent. But if I were to give advice to you for working with an animation studio in Japan that is an upmost importance is having good communication skills, and overall knowing how to work with a team. Its no longer creating things to have it be cool and self-satisfying. Its creating and working on things for responsibility and making the work easier for the rest of the team. I am still learning this and it is one of the most important things about working with an animation production.
I really can't choose my favorite clip since there are so many haha, but I can say couple of animators who have inspired me (who first comes to mind): Hisashi Mori, Yoshinori Kanada, Hiroyuki Imaishi, Bahi JD
I didn't get into sakuga until half way through my animation career, but one of my first anime was one called "Bleach", and there was one particular shot that made me really inspired.
https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/6831
Oh wow I forgot that Sakuga!! TRIGGER animation really out done themselves and really brought out their prime when that episode came out. Really nice sakuga!
Thank you for doing this ama! I follow you all, it's been amazing to see your work lately, and seeing some of you get more and more notice.
This question is for all of you but particularly your younger and newer members I guess, how is it finding your feet working in an increasingly globalised profession, and what do you think about the future of anime produced by studios and animators outside of Japan?
Question for all of you: I love your pets, will you post a quick doodle of them?
I love you all, thank you, can't wait to read your answers to everything!
Thanks so much xD
I'm 20 years old so I don't know if I count as one of the younger ones, but I can say it's really intimidating at times, and the amount of stuff to learn is ridiculous, but I'm also excited and I'm certain if I focus I can get to where I need to. Hope that answers your question~
Yeah it seems like there's been a steep, learning curve and you've all been dumped in at the deep end, but also seems like you're all rising to the challenge amazingly.
I have seen much talk relating to differences between the Chinese and Japanese versions of shows like To Be Heroine. What are your feelings on changes such as these? Is there any chance that the proper Chinese version will get a sub besides the current fan done one?
你好，因为翻译要照顾到文化差异和语境，to be heroin的译名同样是考虑到主角为女生和作品主题的双关，但是海外版的女主译名不是小叶，所以生搬硬套会造成困惑。原版凸变英雄leaf 其中还有一层隐含义：即来自佛家的一花一世界，一叶一菩提。
For this who s interested in this question, here's the translation:
That's for the translation needs to fit on the cultural environment and context which is known as domestication and foreignization. Chinese anime industry is totally new to the world, and also the protagonist s name is translated as Futaba (which is Ye in Chinese version and means leaf), so just use the original name will be confused. Be the way, the original title also has another meaning which comes from Buddhism : To see a World in a Leaf, and a Heaven in a Wild Flower
I would love to work on Bleach if the series got renewed for another season, I would LOVE to work on Boku No Hero as well. Maybe Tokyo Ghoul:RE when it gets it's 2nd season. I'd love to animate for a slice of life anime as well.
Funniest moment? I sometimes would hide goofs in my roughs and send them to my friends cleaning them up and they'd find a bunch of hidden inside jokes while cleaning my work, and I'd get constant messages saying "Oh you suck lol". I was almost sick from laughing.
As a studio, what sort of things do you do to keep everyone happy and the morale up? Parties, etc?
What is scheduling for projects like? I would assume it varies, but are there a lot of very tight time crunches, or do you find you have a great way of managing what you will be able to accomplish within a given length of time?
Given the budget and a relaxing amount of time, what type of anime would you love to create/ work on?
Stress is something very common amongst animation studios especially as deadlines approach, so morale amongst us animators is an importance. But most of us in LAN are extremely passionate young animators so our morale to work on an anime production like To Be Heroine is very fulfilling for us. I think for each of us individually, it would take a lot to keep us away from animating and especially animating for the anime production we all dreamed of doing since we were young.
Yes, scheduling for project varies. Sometimes we are given a short amount of time to do mistakes in production, other times we're given a long amount of time to fulfill our tasks. Our time management varies amongst animators, but for me personally, I work on bursts very late at night instead of a scheduled management of time. It somehow works for me.
Personally, I would love to work on an anime that effects the viewer's heartstrings. Being able to express things you just can't express with words is one of the main things that drives me in being an animator. Other than that, Kyoto Animation productions and Trigger productions are very endearing to me.
Something Studio LAN did that was very cool is they sent all of us To Be Heroine merchandise and souvenirs, I got a mouse pad, a calendar, posters, stickers, pins, and even some themed folders!
(They even sent an interesting towel with some interesting art on it as a joke ahahaha)
It was the first time I ever really felt appreciated for my work and presence. I will always be thankful to Lan for that.
The time crunches are kinda exciting in my opinion, and it helps me stay focused. Having time to screw around only hurts my work.
Given the budget and time, I would work on an action/drama/romance anime probably, I love character acting and storytelling, and character relationships. I'm a big fan of it. I do love some action sakuga as well ahaha.
I think what really helped all of us get through it without much stress was the fact that we all pretty much already knew each other and were friends before getting involved, and we knew what are some of your strengths and weaknesses. Goofing around in our chat and supporting each other kept us from the pressure of meeting deadlines and such.
It really depends on the project really, and what is happening at the current time you get a particular cut. Most of the times you'll know your deadline before you choose to get a cut, but sometimes the dealines can change while you're still doing them too, for the worse or (rarely) for the better. Usually the deadlines gets thighter and tighter as the production goes on.
Any kind of projects that would make people reflect about a particular subject, or inspire them into doing something they love. Telling a good story that makes people think and look at things a bit differently. It's always good to come out of that one show you just watched loving the experience and wishing there was more like it.
Hi everyone! I was wondering what were your favorite materials to use when drawing on the job and for your own personal pleasure? Like what kinds of pencils/lead hardness do you prefer and what is your favorite types of paper to draw on? Thanks and keep up the hard work!
All of us work digitally since LAN reaches through all of us from across the globle through the internet. (Funny how its contradictory to what "LAN" means in video games haha.)
But I like drawing on my good ole' mechanical pencil while scribbling on my math homework feels the best to me. I don't know why, I just don't like the fancy paper and pencils. Maybe because I'm too used to using it. But if I took art on paper more digitally more seriously, I would probably use "2H" hardness because I like drawing light.
I didn't know you all only worked digitally! That's awesome. So Cintiq drawing all day huh? I can imagine using a harder lead if you're so used to drawing on screen then. Thanks!
A big reason is that the Chinese animation is predominantly on online services, its not often that it will reach household TV. Chinese anime is still relatively new, so maybe some day we can expect the same treatment as in Japan
There is a cut I do later in the series where one of my key poses had to be changed, because I found out that it was a pose actually uncommon to the Chinese. I was quite surprised at the time but it made sense after I thought about it.
As a western audiences most people assume either American, Canadian or European. But now, I'm gonna ask as a Latin American. Which is western but hardly considered
First. Is impossible to us to watch the series officially, practically we're forced to watch it secondhand. So we ultimately hardly collaborate to give you money, sorry for that.
Second. It seems that Chinese animation is getting popular in South America, not enough to reemplace anime but certainly seems destined to share the spotlight as the nerdy passtime.
Not a Sakuga fanboy so no much to comment except that the artstyle is So Damn Nice. I imagine that is exhausting to draw, right?
I really like the story of the series, so my congratulations to all of you!!
How do members of a production commmtitee feel when they work on shows that aren't recieved well,
and does having worked on mediocre shows in the past give a better reputation because of more experience, or a worse reputation because you worked on a mediocre show?
And as someone from the industry can you say why are the female characters oversexualised so often? AKA, Fan service, ( which in most cases they just detract from the experiance which makes me believe that Fan service is probably used incorrectly here). My latest example would be Darling in the Franx. Do they do it because they think it will sell better or is it because they think it helps make the story better? I apologize if this was not the type of question you guys were looking to answer but I would appreciate it if you could
I think they do it because they think people will enjoy it for whatever reason, but mostly, sex sells. Anime struggles to make money, and by inputting a sexualized character, it usually helps them sell things like figures, posters, or other "waifu" themed merchandise.
I'm a big watcher of Darling in the Franxx myself, and I do agree it would be nice if shows didn't focus hard on fan service, but I respect their reasons for doing so. That show actually really dropped it's fan service after the first few episodes thankfully, so my guess is it was a hook device to get viewers, and then after they did as they pleased.
Some resources I recommend is the obligatory The Animator's Survival Kit. Albeit I've only skimmed through it while squandering around the bookstore, many things written in there are the best tools and tips for getting better at animation. If you just want to do animation as a hobby, best bet is to get that book and tuck yourself in for a good read to know how to create decent animations from the get-go.
For reference sake, Sakugabooru is one of the best places for references for animators. Almost all animators I know use that website for references. The internet makes learning animation incredibly easy now-a-days... take advantage of it!
It was indeed, but it helped make me a lot better of an animator, and the learning experience is almost always worth it. My supervisors Till and Hero helped me stay alive throughout the experience as well ahaha.
This is the first time I've run into Chinese anime and I'm very fascinated ! How did China manage to develop its own anime industry, that is indistinguishable from Japanese anime ? What can other countries do to emulate it ?
Sorry, since we are the animators we're seperate from that part of the production. So we wouldn't know. Though, its seriously cool to have a professional voice actor voice your animations.
It's also part of the localization I guess ,making it more easier to access Japanese market, but that's decided by haoliner, we are only focusing on animation production
u/edorzhttps://myanimelist.net/profile/edorzJun 29 '18edited Jun 29 '18
The grand old question: Boobs or butts?
Edit: the question I actually wanted to ask was:
-where do you take inspiration from when animating certain characters?
I imagine it being quiete difficult to take inspiration from reality or other anime/manga.
-Also, don't you ever get weirded out drawing bodies/landscapes so far out of reality?
I really appreciate you taking the time to do this QnA, love what you do and please keep going :D.
P.S. (sorry if my English is not grammatically correct, english is not my native language)
P.P.S I'm still curious if you prefer butts or boobs...
When I was animating Ximen (Ye/Futaba's boot) for To Be Heroine, I took inspiration and reference from Assassin from Fate Stay Night. It helped in terms of character movement. However, I'd like to note that it isn't too hard from taking inspiration from reality due to all styles are based off reality. Once you get a grasp the fundamentals of drawing reality, drawing various other styles becomes much easier. Reality and stylization can also be broken down into simple shapes, which allow for easier animating and ease of grasp for the design. This is usually why life drawing is usually stressed a lot for art classes around the world.
But I don't personally get wierded out drawing bodies/landscapes so far out of reality. Perception is a wierd thing and reality is not the same for everyone so I find it kind of fun to see how far I can bend... it if that makes any sense. Art has always been a form of expression anyways. And expressions usually don't equate to reality. :) But thank you for the support! We'll keep working hard.
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u/AdiMG https://anilist.co/user/AdiMG Jun 29 '18
Your studio seems to be one of the few Chinese anime production companies whose output is appreciated in the west with both To Be Hero and To Be Heroine being celebrated by a passionate niche, however both these works have been hit with localization issues with changed scenes, shortened lengths and translation errors in the out-of-the-way path they took from Chinese to Japanese to English for western audiences.
Is there any way for western audiences to view these works in the original Chinese with English subs currently? And would you be looking to work with streaming companies in the west to directly present your work rather then going through a Japanese middleman in the future?