exhibition

Revolutionising Anime: Production I.G’s pursuit of ultra-realistic fantasy

The exhibition will explore how characters and props are conceived and designed before the complex process of animation begins.

Detailing the intricate process behind creating animation through storyboards, backgrounds and digital images from Production I.G films, such as Mamoru Oshii’s international cult hit Ghost in the Shell, and its sequel Innocence.

Viewers are taken behind the scenes of Production I.G, one of the world’s leading animation companies, recognised for its sophisticated animation techniques and ultra-realistic animation. Its films range from science fiction to historical fantasy and contain references to philosophy and Zen, addressing aesthetic and moral questions.

The first Japanese animated film was made about 90 years ago, and now Japan is the anime capital of the world. Using an international language and expressing a story in a way understood universally, anime presents viewers with an entirely different world of characters. Typically, these might be friends of the human race fighting for justice, or girls with magical powers.

The exhibition will explore how characters and props are conceived and designed before the complex process of animation begins. The storyboards, which are crucial to the staging of action, direction and planning, are then added. The backgrounds, the next stage of the process, contain some of the most intricate and form the basis of the 3D environment of the animation. Finally, the key animation drawings are added.

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