Anime Backgrounds

Focusing on: pictures of the best background art, information about background artists and art directors. Also sometimes I talk about art designs, directors, storyboards and shot composition.

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Anime: Mobile Suit Gundam 08 MS Team Art Director: Ikeda Shigemi 機動戦士ガンダム 第08MS小隊

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Anime: Sora yori mo tooi basho / A Place Further Than The Universe Art Director: Saho Yamane BG studio: Kusanagi The series has mostly simple and unimpressive digital backgrounds, but still the innovative storyboards and wide panorama shots create backgrounds with a lot of emotional impact. Just like any other series by the same art director this one too lacks any real distinctive style and truly masterful BG’s. For a series that is all about learning to look the world on a different way than you did before, the series finds far too few ways to utilize BGs as a storytelling method.

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Anime: Soul Eater (episode 1) Art Director: Nakamura Norifumi (Ouran High School Host Club / FMA) Director: Igarashi Takuya The storyboards in the series give the backgrounds a chance to shine. While the manga looks horrible igarashi’s anime is visually superb. The attention to details and shadows really create a visually intriguing world no matter where our heroes go.

Pen and paper are an effective tool when making BGs, they should still be utilized more often than not.

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Anime: Allison & Lillia Art Director: Shibata Masato Too bad there isn’t any good quality torrent for this series. Historical settings require an interesting world and BG’s certainly did help the series to deliver a good atmosphere. Still all in all the backgrounds weren’t worth to watch the series for, but Allison & Lillia still had a few good designs and some beautiful backgrounds.

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Complexity and details are but one way to make a great background. Even the best background would be useless if the characters didn’t sit well within the composition. Mahoutsukai no Yome uses panorama backgrounds and they work so well that it makes me cry.

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You can really notice how in Mahoutsukai no Yome utilizes the Art Boards in the actual series itself. Here are few of them from episode 23. These wide panorama pictures with a clear depth-perspective really let the world come to life and tell its own story. Art Board backgrounds help to set the mood and still let characters control the scene whenever they are present.

I really love the dissonance between the first and fourth picture. In the first the light is depicted as calm and natural and shadows are there to mostly help us see the details. Its a landscape painting, natural yet depicting eerily quiet vast field. However the fourth picture is clearly less about realism and more about cinematic impact. In the picture a blazing sun sets into the sea and creates a shadow which overwhelms our character Cartaphilus, who is slowly realizing the depth of his curse and is mentally at the point of breaking. He realizes he has tainted his own hands beyond the point of return.

When we return from the past to the present we see now thousands of years old and insane Cartaphilus again inside his own inner world. It is a world of shadows and darkness. The BG’s of the episode depict his long journey from life of goodhearted yet unlucky young victim (criticized unjustly by ignorant people from the shadows) to the cruel and borderline insane immortal perpetrator we have come to known.

"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you."

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Studio Bamboo has for some time now been one of the more stable digital background art studios. They are relatively small studio, which doesn’t have an outsourcing branch in Korea (like Studio Easter) or in Thailand (like Bihou Inc). Even in Mahoutsukai no Yome they work together with many BG-studios such as Studio Blue (BG department linked to KyoAni), Studio Easter and A1 Pictures Art Department.

They often work with Production I.G, P.A. Works and A1 Pictures, albeit they very rarely are the only BG-studio working on any project due to employing only about 15-20 people. They often work with familiar freelancer art directors such as Higashiji Kazuki (often associated with P.A. Works background department) and veteran art director Takeda Yusuke (SAO, Moribito, Eden of the East etc.) , but they have a build a solid small staff for themselves.

Ps. Sorry for bad quality jpgs.

[as-warm-as-choco]

Tekkon Kinkreet (鉄コン筋クリート) Background Art by Shinji Kimura

Art Director : Blue Exorcist (movie), Tekkonkinkreet, Steamboy Background Art : My Neighbor Totoro, AKIRA, Urusei Yatsura

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I can’t but help and feel that quality of Kekkai Sensen Beyond¨s backgrounds has declined compared to the first season. After the departure of the auteur art director Kimura Shinji backgrounds have lacked both in complexity as well as in originality. Even though I’m whining, Kekkai Sensen Beyond still is a good looking series - no doubt about it.

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Houseki no Kuni (ep. 1-6) Art director: Hisako Akagi (has a Studio Pablo background, but seems like this is her big debut as an art director) Backgrounds: Studio Homare, Deho Gallery, Trigger Art Department(?) You can really see the touch of Yuuji Kaneko (Kill la Kill for example) and Trigger Art Department/Studio Pablo in the backgrounds. I would be surprised if the last picture was not Kaneko¨s own work. The sad blueish tone which sometimes overwhelms the backgrounds is often seen in the works of Kaneko and Trigger Art Department.

The role of art director Kaneko in this series is still little bit unclear (he is credited as a blueprints =青写真 and as a art director of episode 6), but I will do further research to understand it. At least Studio Pablo is not credited for this work, however it is clear that several former and current members of the studio worked in this project one way or another.

Anyways, the pencil drawn backgrounds are marvelous to look at and they fit surprisingly well with the 3DCG characters. The simple yet effective use of concrete and grey in the 1st and 2nd picture remind me of Hiromasa Ogura which is not surprising because few of the background artists working on Houseki no Kuni have previously worked in Ogurakobo. Also the sunset view on the peninsula in the 2nd last picture is almost as if it was drawn by Ogura himself.

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Anime Flip Flappers ( フリップフラッパーズ ) Backgrounds Studio Pablo and Inspired

Inspired is mostly responsible for digital backgrounds, but one of the largest background studios in the business Studio Easter contirubted for those as well.

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Anime Flip Flappers ( フリップフラッパーズ ) Backgrounds Studio Pablo and Inspired

Background art and animation did really stand out with this one. Quality did not drop significantly despite latter part of the series was not supervised by Studio Pablo, which is famous for its beautiful non-digital backgrounds.

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Shirobako episode 19 We see a short reference to young Shichiro Kobayashi (= Sagamori) as well as whole episode on his pupil Hiromasa Ogura (Patlabor, Ghost in the Shell, Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise etc.). It took an effort to find a picture of young Kobayashi to match the anime character. Ogura himself drew some backgrounds just for this episode to match his character in the series. Pictures in the celluloids are his selfdrawn as well as the first picture. The episode brought tears to my eyes thinking about Ogura and Kobayashi and all the great things they have achieved together.

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Venus Wars Art Director: Shichiro Kobayashi

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Shoujo Kakumei Utena: Adolescence Mokushiroku Art Director: Kobayashi Shichiro (Every anime ever since 1968) Assistant Art Director: Nakamura Chieko (Mawaru Penguindrum, Doukyuusei) Background studio: Kobayashi Productions

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Art director legend Kobayashi Shichiro collaboration with director Dezaki Osamu. Movie: Space Adventure Cobra, You can clearly see Kobayashi-ish pencil lines on rocks and on ice.

This week I will focus on Kobayashis works. Here is his some of his work on Mamoru Oshii’s movie Tenshi no Tamago http://animebackgroundart.tumblr.com/post/154346011161/anime-tenshi-no-tamago-1985-directed-by-mamoru

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Anime: Tenshi no Tamago (1985, directed by Mamoru Oshii)

Art direction by the legendary Shichiro Kobayashi. He teamed up with famous artist Yoshitaka Amano. Shinji Kimura was working on the project as well.

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