Dialogue between Pan and Kevin, artistic director of table tennis.

Deliver high quality under a tight schedule: a conversation with Emerick Kevin, artistic director of Table Tennis? Cartoon brewing

Original author: Ben Edinger

Chinese translator: Ezio Pan.

The iconic position of table tennis, with the background drawn by Aymeric Kevin.

Emory Kevin

The art of landscape painting, as its name implies, does not strive to attract attention in animation, but is often drawn by talented artists as the crowning touch of movies. Without the landscape, The Maze Without Words (1987, directed by Rintaro) would not be what it is now. In 1970s, Shichir? Kobayashi's expressive landscape paintings made his works unique, including tennis baby and The Adventures of Gamba. Similarly, the drawing of table tennis also plays a very important role. Aymeric Kevin, a legal person studying in Japan, is directing the painting of this work, and the cartoon Brew has shown his works before. Emrick is very nervous about Masaaki Yuasa's latest works, and at the same time, he must be familiar with a brand-new painting style. It is in this case that Aymeric still produces many excellent backgrounds that can make the film unique. How did Aymeric and his team produce so many backgrounds in such a tight time? Aymeric patiently explained a series of questions about table tennis by email.

Animation Brewing: What makes you fascinated with animation?

Japanese animation. As in most cases, it all started with my fascination with Japanese juvenile animation. In the 1990s, a large number of animations flooded into France-such as Dragon Ball, Saint saint seiya, City Hunter and even The Big Dipper-and during that time, many animations were always shown on TV. Later, Masaaki Yuasa's Mind Games and Miyazaki Hayao's Ghost Princess deeply shocked me. Until now, I still want to say that they are my favorite movies. When I was in high school, I really enjoyed the animation process of making videos, and I got a glimpse of this magical world through it-in this world, people from all over the world put in enthusiasm, worked hard and completed challenges together bit by bit. This made me decide to join the animation industry. I will still spend hours watching a movie called The Birth of the Ghost. If you haven't seen this film, I strongly recommend you to see it.

Cartoon brewing: Gobelins has always been the holder of the record of high-yield works of extraordinary students. What makes Gobelin so different? What have you learned from it?

Gobelins likes to remind people that they won't teach anyone to draw. They teach everyone how to do animation.

Aymeric Kevin: The pace there is very fast-once you are accepted by them, you should speed up your pace to adapt to them. In fact, they tend to choose those who have a solid foundation in painting, which may explain why they can make such great progress. Gobelins likes to remind people that they won't teach anyone to draw. They teach everyone how to do animation. At the same time, they will provide a whole set of courses for students to experience every step of animation production. Knowing the whole process and steps can help you choose the part that suits you best in the animation industry.

I learned a truth from the first entrance exam-I was sitting in a big classroom with many rows of seats that day, and hundreds of applicants like me had filled all the seats-obviously there were more painters waiting outside. This kind of competition, this kind of real competition, has already started in my Gobelin era. Whether it is good or bad, it undeniably pushes everyone to do their best all the time.

The background is based on Dao Jiang in table tennis.

Cartoon Brewing: How did you join the Japanese animation industry?

Aymeric Kevin: Just after I worked in France for nearly two and a half years, I got an opportunity to work for a French-Japanese joint venture. In that job, I met Cui Enying, who is an excellent director/animator of Diversity Animation Company. She has created such works as Animal's Paws, Hippo and Tatami Galaxy. Because we cooperated from the beginning, she has been my guardian angel in the animation industry since then. She suggested that I go to the production company to draw the background for Masaaki Yuasa's animated short film "Wrestling Romeo and Juliet". I know my dream has come true. I left everything behind, ended my life in France and flew to Japan. Without the help of my wife Yoko, I couldn't have taken any steps. It is not easy to immigrate to Japan, but her strong support made it possible.

Kevin refers to the real scene of the story, including high schools in Japan and the National Table Tennis Training Center.

Cartoon Brewing: Recently, you have finished the beautiful scenery production of the ninth episode of Space Playboy. How much background do I need to draw? How much time did they spend? What prompted you to finish them?

Cui Enying has 340 shots in one episode, which is a little more than the average of 250 shots in each episode of ordinary Japanese TV animation. When I was in Gobelins, I heard that Sanyuan directed and finished a whole episode of Hippo. I think it's cool to make a whole work independently, which makes me hope I can do the same thing one day. It will be like a baseball home run, and I feel that the satisfaction brought by that achievement will be quite strong. Wrestling Romeo and Juliet gave me the first chance to realize a similar wish, and naturally the idea of "hippo" came into being.

In view of the fact that we still have some time, and a large number of Japanese studios are still trying to find landscape painters, Cui Enying and Shinichir? Watanabe immediately accepted this proposal. These works took four and a half months to complete, during which I also worked for Masaaki Yuasa's adventure lackeys. This method makes the artistic direction of the film in a relatively consistent direction, and this unity is sometimes difficult to control when many people operate at the same time. Especially in Japan, because the dead line of animation is very tight, there are few opportunities for this kind of "home run". For example, we only have about a week to draw an entire set of table tennis.

Comic book brewing: a week? Is it the whole animation or just part of the scene?

Kevin: This is just the painting part. As far as the whole animation is concerned, each episode takes about two to three weeks. This includes layout, keyframe animation, auxiliary keyframe animation, model/animation correction and tween drawing, and it is also fast enough.

Cartoon brewing: Does the spoon draw a mirror image of the story every week?

Yes

Cartoon Brewing: What is the general production scheme for TV animation like Space Dandy?

Aymeric Kevin: For Space Dandy, every episode is finished ahead of schedule. I have participated in the production of several episodes, and their construction period is about three to four months. Although this will free up more time, the animation team is usually smaller and the overall time will not be too fast. But this is not common. Japanese animation is often finished before it is put on TV. As far as I can see, it takes about one to three months to make them.

This picture shows how landscape painters paint buildings, and change the drawing details according to the distance.

Cartoon Brewing: Before playing table tennis, you were the landscape designer of Romeo and Juliet in Masaaki Yuasa Wrestling Ground. How does it feel to work with Masaaki Yuasa?

At that time (Tang Qian) directed Adventure, Space Playboy and Table Tennis at the same time ... During that time, he only slept for 30 minutes every day.

Aymeric Kevin: It is an unspeakable experience to witness his daily work, and I feel lucky every day. As a fan, this is really a magical feeling! He doesn't know, but I feel that I am his secret apprentice. I observe and try to learn everything he does. He is my role model. At that time (Tang Qian) directed Adventure, Space Playboy and Table Tennis at the same time ... During that time, he only slept for 30 minutes every day. Maybe an ordinary person will collapse under such pressure, but he looks so calm, even though he told me that he could only sleep for 30 minutes every day during that time.

Cartoon Brewing: What do you think of Taiy? Matsumoto's unique artistic style? What's your attitude towards the artistic style of table tennis?

Aymeric Kevin: I don't know why, but I can't make a qualitative evaluation of Taiy? Matsumoto's artistic style. His subtlety is difficult to describe with any existing concept. I can only think of one word to describe him: freedom. Every frame of his looks so unique. I think, for many artists, that is the peak they want to reach. Have the creative and manufacturing ability as natural as breathing. I believe this is not as simple as he thinks. But this is what you can feel when you appreciate his work. In the process of drawing scenes for table tennis, I decided not to change his and Mr Tang Qian's works and ideas.

Color script is not common in Japanese animation, but the color script for Wrestling Romeo and Juliet by Emrick Kevin makes director Masaaki Yuasa feel very useful. So Kevin made a color script for every episode of Ping Pong.

Cartoon Brew: can you show us the process of making the background in table tennis?

Aymeric Kevin: For the background of table tennis, we use a pencil to cross this line and then color it with numbers. Now this process is more common, because it is faster to draw scenes with pure Photoshop. However, in our opinion, it is very difficult to control the lines while representing the dynamics and mixed jitter of Matsumoto on the graphic tablet. So from the layout of the animator, I have to draw on the paper with accurate lines. As cross-hatching is not my specialty, it took me several months to get good lines, among which I want to thank Mr. Tang Qian and Cui Enying for their ideas. As far as coloring is concerned, I made a coloring script for each episode, and I prefer to refer to them and then color in Photoshop. We used a special set of brushes, which were specially scanned from real strokes. That's why sometimes painting looks like traditional painting. It is very important to be loyal to the organic touch we feel in Matsumoto comics. My role is to produce 25-30 key backgrounds in each episode, so I try to control the production time of each background within 3 hours, so that I can draw at least five pictures every day. The rest of the time is to revise it repeatedly with the landscape painting team.