Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1276583
D E PA R T M E N T 33 KEYFRAME FALL 2020 33 "[when Ninja Scroll was shown to me], my mind exploded. From the pure 'what are you allowed to do with animation' perspective, it's like 'Holy shit! You can make an old man fire bees out of his back, do kick-ass battles and have interesting adult themes.'" – Daniel Dominguez A still from Seis Manos. ANIME FOR EVERYONE But there is anime for every age, every genre, every sensibility—action, sports, drama, comedy, fantasy, science fiction, even cooking. "There's Minky Momo, a magical girl anime that was really influential to me as a child. I still watch it," says Erica Jones, whose work includes Home: Adventure with Tip & Oh and Adventure Time. "With that one, you could tell that it was just animators having fun animating crazy scenes. And at the center of it, there's this really cute girl and she can turn into anyone. She can be anyone." Lamar Abrams, a writer and storyboard artist who worked on Craig of the Creek and Steven Universe, remembers seeing Voltron as a 5-year-old and then later sampled shows like Speed Racer and Astro Boy. For an artist who considered himself not especially detail oriented, Abrams found the aesthetics of anime that called for a simpler facial structure in characters appealing. "I found a lot of designs in Japanese animation to be very exciting," says Abrams, who also created a comic based on the Dragon Quest video game. "They felt really fresh to me as an American who grew up on Bugs Bunny and other American cartoons in the '80s, like ThunderCats. When I was in school learning animation, they were pushing 3D because they said 2D was going the way of the dinosaur and we were not going to work on paper in the future anymore. I remember thinking, 'Oh, that can't be because Japanese animation is so good," he adds. There will be detractors—sometimes even those teaching at art schools—who might dismiss popular TV anime as a stew of big-eyed characters, over- the-top emotions, an overindulgence of violence and hot young girls. But to those who have studied the art and artistry, the hallmark of anime is its ability to offer an infinite array of dramatic possibility. "I wasn't very into Disney. I was like, 'Screw those cute lions,'" says Daniel Dominguez, a writer on SpongeBob SquarePants and the Powerhouse Studio-produced Seis Manos. "So when Ninja Scroll was shown to me, my mind exploded. From the pure 'what are you allowed to do with animation' perspective, it's like 'Holy shit! You can make an old man fire bees out of his back, do kick-ass battles and have interesting adult themes.'"