Input Mode

[liralen]

I've mostly been in input mode lately.



Jet and I have been watching Avatar the Last Airbender from the very first episode all the way through, since we just bought season three from iTunes. It's been as wonderful as I remember. We've also been reading Whistle! and I'm remembering all my delight at the Guardian Deity of Musashinamori and the high spirited Seiji, their star striker along with how much their rivalry really shapes Sho and his team.

I also have been watching the second season of Ghost in the Shell and have been really liking the backstory episodes very, very much. It was also really interesting listening to an interview with the elderly seiyu for Aramaki, and how he liked the cybercomm sections much more than the regular dialog because he didn't have to match his breathing with what the character was doing on the screen.

I'm like Woah... he actually matches his breathing and phrasing with what's animated up on the screen! They don't do it the other way there. Holy smokes. I mean, it seems that Pixar's process is such that they have the voice actor's do their thing first with rough-ins of the animation, and then they animate to the voices, not the other way around. So, basically the Japanese seiyu has to speak to the way the film is animated, just as the dubbed actors have to do it, but it's so much better in the japanese it just amazes me.

I should look up what regular cartoons do, if they animate to the voices or the other way around, but the whole concept of the seiyu paying so much attention to his character that he actually breathes with him, just... amazes me.

The final scanlation of Tsubasa RC came out a few weeks ago, and I am very, very satisfied with how it ends. It's very cool, and given how CLAMP has often ended some of their series, this was very wonderful and really showed how far they've come, I think, in how stories develop and grow. The ending really did close off a lot of the things that the series started with and really used nearly every stage of development they had during the whole series. I enjoyed it a very great deal.

I'm looking forward to seeing where xxxHolic finishes, now.

Comments

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

The matching breathing thing is so cool. *___* I'd never had guessed it was done this way, they always sound so natural!

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Yeah! They do... both sound and look that way... but it was impressive, to me, that he'd actually match the phrasing of the character on the screen. Whew.

[amciel.livejournal.com]

Coming from an animation major:

Films (pixar, Dreamworks, Disney) record all the voices first. They'll show the actors concept art, maybe a rough cut of the scene so they can get the gist of their character. The animation is then based completely off of the voices. Most of the time they video tape the actors performance as well.

Cartoons/tv shows will often animate first. They have a fast production schedule and have to complete alot of episodes very quick so they don't have the luxury of taking their time. This is why most tv shows have rougher frame rates then films. Anime's trick of having characters hold still while the background moves/only animating the mouths/reusing the same shots again and again are conceits necessary to their output speed. The animators will get the script and the voice actors will have to match afterwards. Some take it very seriously and try their hardest to match which is why that seiyu now ROCKS in my book!

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Ah ha! I see how that makes a lot of sense given the budgets and time constraints.

Interesting... I like knowing this very much! Thank you!

[theablackthorn.livejournal.com]

I can't wait to see the end of XxxHolic eiither I have really enjoyed all the twists and bends of Tsubasa and the ending was really good. :)

[liralen.livejournal.com]

*beams*

YAY!

[robotech-master.livejournal.com]

I've lately started watching the series about a young man who, wherever he goes, people keep dying all around him…

No, not Death Note, but Case Closed/Detective Conan. Gotta love those murder mystery shows.

And boy, there sure is a lot of it to catch up on. :)

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Woohoo!! That sounds fun. *grins* Yeah, with some of these series there's a LOT to watch.

[annieroo2.livejournal.com]

I don't know about cheaper cartoons such as those done by Hanna & Barbera, but modern animation done here in the US is almost always done with the voice acting first and the animation to match.

I've always thought the Japanese were crazy to do it the other way around, because it never allows for any spontaneity or changes in the plotting when you hear the lines. Still, I bet it makes for very precise voice actors in Japan.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Mmm... *nods at that*

Yeah... I think that that last bit is very telling, as I often can't stand the dubs that the Americans produce on top of the animation. Never quite figures out why there was such an apparent quality difference, but... now I can kind of see why... I wasn't just making it up in my head, I really was hearing a real difference in the quality.

I thought, at first, it was obvious why, as American dubs HAVE to be done the Japanese way, so I thought they were at a disadvantage because the originals were made to the voices as they were said; but now I realize that they both were doing the *same thing*... that the Japanese actors had to speak to the animation, too!! So the difference is all the more glaring, I guess.