Continuing with the ‘sakuga’ theme of yesterday there is one animator style which I really wanted to try out. The famed Hiroyuki Imaishi. Having enjoyed his work on Dead Leaves, Redline, the irreverent Kill la Kill, as well as Cutie Honey and Blade Master he has made a name as animators animator, though these days he mostly directs. There is a certain hyper stylisation with his work. The in-betweens are extremely loose without much attention given to them par the movement impression. This is offset by the powerful posed key frames which snap in from the abstract in-betweens. His figure rendition takes Kanada base to a new level of hyper stylisation where the block colours become block shapes with heave set blacks acting as shadows. There is a certain semblance to Mignolas work in the stylisation which in turn lends itself to easier and consequently more playful hence better animation as demonstrated by Bruce Timm.
To utilise all of these elements I’ve used a quadrupedal abstraction, a creature straight out of Imaishi’s repertoire. I’ve used the strong keys as the snap ins and went to town with in-between, twirling the accents, twisting the stretches and rounding the squashes. It is a fun way to work on a figure movement, always thinking how to show off and be flashy. I believe that this approach of animation is best suited for fast and complex scenes with extreme camera angles (just like Imaishi uses) as it’s impact gets somewhat diminished with a simple side view. I think next time I’ll be trying it out in a more explosive manner.
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