Pokemon How the Anime Is/Was Made (production cels and sketches!)

[sunyshore]

(this was posted before in a couple sites - sorry for crossposting!)

so, after ten years of searching, i finally found my dream items, actual, real, one of a kind animation production cels of raichu and lt. surge from electric shock showdown, the 14th episode of pokemon! i've been collecting cel sketches for years, but had been told all the cels were probably destroyed. i've never seen a cel of raichu before, and to get him with surge was an amazing and special treat.

the cels came with the entire story boarding and sketch process for the first one, and storyboard for the second. i was amazed at HOW much work went into even just 4-5 seconds of the anime (how long each of these end cels was on screen). i don't know if that much work still goes into it... sometimes i wonder when watching newer episodes

if you don't know what a cel is, it's the original artwork by the animators that you actually see on your screen - a one of a kind, absolute treasure.

these are my two cels.... but wait, there's more.

i lined up the entire package here on this site:
http://www.sunyshore.com/raichu_cel.shtml

you can see all of the storyboards, layout work, sketches, everything!! it's just beautiful, man!! this is my favorite storyboard, for anyone who doesn't want to look on the site:

but wait - there is MORE! i also have over 50 cel sketches from this episode, many of which i've also arranged onto a gallery (that badly needs redoing, i think). cel sketches are what the animators actually drew by hand, which were then taken and traced onto cels and painted for the anime itself. i am lucky enough to have the full animation sequence for three parts:

the full collection is here:
http://www.sunyshore.com/raichu_sketch.shtml


anyway, i hope you enjoyed this look into how the anime is/was made! i'd love to see any other cels or sketches owned by anyone else as well! thanks for checking them out~

 

[Kapu Riki]

Thats pretty awesome. I would not have the patience to work in an anime studio. xD That is a lot of work for such a little product. Imagine working on the movies. :O That would be a pain for me. Lol. Which other cels do you have? Or are these the only ones you have?

 

[Ice Arceus]

Wow, takes a long time just to make one episode.
I dread to think how many drawing it takes to make a movie.

 

[lovebunny713]

Wow, takes a long time just to make one episode.
I dread to think how many drawing it takes to make a movie.

they don't have to make a drawing for every movement now, at least that's what I was told. I'm not sure how it works.
I've wanted to go into this for a long time :3

 

[Crystal Hikara]

I've done some very basic work with Flash before. Where they don't have to draw every single panel, they use tweening. Tweening is the art of either moving or changing the shape of an object (such as an animated movie clip). Movie clips also help because they can repeat them several times, AND it keeps the file size down.

Backgrounds are probably kept on a seperate layer, so they can be re-used several times and motion-tweened.

Of course, back when the original anime was on, technology wasn't so easily accessible to my knowledge, so a lot of the many, many frames still had to be done by hand, as seen here.

Oh yeah, another thing to keep in mind for how long this sort of stuff takes- framerate. Framerate is how fast the frames play. Anime typically have a slower framerate than the stereotypical movies we see today. I think for Pokemon and some related things it's in the 18-24 frame per second (FPS) range.

So, to give you an idea:
12 FPS: The framework is choppy, but it's still impossible for the human eye to capture the many different frames within the single second.
30 fps: Standard Movie fps. You see how clear most of the images are.
1,000 fps+: These are used in special high-speed cameras like seen on Mythbusters.

Average anime episode is 22 or so minutes, so...times that by 60 (seconds) and then by the frames per second (18-24)...
1,320 x 18= 23,760 frames
1,320 x 24= 31,680 frames

That's for 1 episode. 1. Episode.

I respect animators for the sole reason above. I may not appreciate the actual animation, but I DO appreciate that they can sit there and get each thing done so quickly. @_@ It boggles my mind.

I'm sure there's more into this, too, but I never got to learn anything past Flash. To have these cels and be able to share all of this with us is SO awesome. :3

 

[Ice Arceus]

^^ that was some nice information you had there Crystal Hikara. A lot of things are starting to make sense now. As technology improves hopefully there will be easier ways to make episodes. I wouldn't mind going into stuff like this. Learning about all this is very interesting to me and now I know how some of these things work out. I also found this today, it seems pretty cool.

 

[+Life Shaymin]

I've done some very basic work with Flash before. Where they don't have to draw every single panel, they use tweening. Tweening is the art of either moving or changing the shape of an object (such as an animated movie clip). Movie clips also help because they can repeat them several times, AND it keeps the file size down.

Backgrounds are probably kept on a seperate layer, so they can be re-used several times and motion-tweened.

Of course, back when the original anime was on, technology wasn't so easily accessible to my knowledge, so a lot of the many, many frames still had to be done by hand, as seen here.

Oh yeah, another thing to keep in mind for how long this sort of stuff takes- framerate. Framerate is how fast the frames play. Anime typically have a slower framerate than the stereotypical movies we see today. I think for Pokemon and some related things it's in the 18-24 frame per second (FPS) range.

So, to give you an idea:
12 FPS: The framework is choppy, but it's still impossible for the human eye to capture the many different frames within the single second.
30 fps: Standard Movie fps. You see how clear most of the images are.
1,000 fps+: These are used in special high-speed cameras like seen on Mythbusters.

Average anime episode is 22 or so minutes, so...times that by 60 (seconds) and then by the frames per second (18-24)...
1,320 x 18= 23,760 frames
1,320 x 24= 31,680 frames

That's for 1 episode. 1. Episode.

I respect animators for the sole reason above. I may not appreciate the actual animation, but I DO appreciate that they can sit there and get each thing done so quickly. @_@ It boggles my mind.

I'm sure there's more into this, too, but I never got to learn anything past Flash. To have these cels and be able to share all of this with us is SO awesome. :3

Some minor corrections. Have to nitpick a little here.

Frame rate is how many frames there are every second.

Standard (NTSC): 29.970fps
Standard (PAL): 25fps
Film: 24 (23.97) fps
Anime: Depends on budget. xD

I'm a videographer, framerates it something I know pretty well.

I know a little about animation. I know Disney used to do it with some glass panel technique or something. I'm pretty sure that in general there is several layers.

---
The panels are really cool. Is there any more in existence? How would someone even manage to get a hold of something of that caliber?