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Anime Expo - Saturday - Blue Submarine No. 6
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It's a play on words: for the panel promoting the
release of the Blue Submarine No. 6 series on the Cartoon Network, everyone
was dressed in black, the table had a black drape and the stage had a black
backdrop. The series is far more colorful, with computer graphics that
enhance the underwater feeling. The show's producer said "I wanted to take
a step away from traditional animation styles and constraints." What he
also found was that moving to computer graphics also marked a move away
from traditional (inexpensive) animation budgets, because his company had
to purchase the computer equipment to create the graphics. |
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Takuhito Kusanagi, the beast designer for Blue Submarine,
said "I looked at the textures of marine mammals and creatures you would
find in the sea" when drawing the finned and flippered inhabitants of the
show's underwater world. "I always want to make my creatures attractive."
Kusanagi looks up the the character design of an American studio, that
of the late Jim Henson (who made far more than Kermit the Frog and Muppets). |
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Sending a show to U.S. television - or showing it
outside Japan - means a chance to make additional money, but it also raises
the chance that the show will be censored to meet the stands of other countries.
Mahiro Maeda, Blue Submarine's director, said "I want people to see what
I created, but I have to respect different cultures and morals. I have
to live with this. If there was only one world, it wouldn't be very interesting." |
