Kazuyoshi Takeuchi and The Art of Character Design

Kazuyoshi Takeuchi

Today in Tokyo Japanese animator and character designer Kazuyoshi Takeuchi introduced students to the art of Japanese character design, exploring manga, anime and Japanese design techniques. 

Kazuyoshi Takeuchi has over 75 animation credits to his name, including the legendary "Akira", which was the foundational moment of his career.  He described it as "a great honour" to work with Akira director Katsuhiro Otomo. 

Limited Animation

Character designs by Kazuyoshi Takeuchi 

Japanese animations tend to be "limited animations"; that is to say limited by the constrained budgets of TV series.  

The cost of an anime is around 34,000,000 Yen (£170,000), which might include around 20,000 pages of art work.  So artists must work creatively to produce the maximum quality on relatively modest budgets. 

Learn from The Masters

Kazuyoshi Takeuchi explained that the secret of great animation is to learn from the masters.  In our industry we don't call this copying, we call it "homage". The secret is to copy the work of great animators - but then to make it your own. 

Walt Disney Animation Japan

Walt Disney Animation Japan

Kazuyoshi Takeuchi also worked for Walt Disney Animation  Japan back the early 2000s.  There he learned a great deal about the Disney Animation style, and also began to work as a character designer.  Kazuyoshi Takeuchi has worked as an animator, animation director, storyboard artist and character designer on many, many films and TV series.. 

The Answer Studio

Kazuyoshi Takeuchi currently works for The Answer Studio, the successor studio to Walt Disney Japan, in Ogikubo in western Tokyo.  Kazuyoshi Takeuchi also makes time for freelance work for other colleagues at various Japanese studios, especially storyboarding.  The longer you work in the industry, the more opportunities will open up for you. 

No Rules, Just Tools

Dynamic sketches by Kazuyoshi Takeuchi

Kazuyoshi Takeuchi's favourite saying in the animation industry is that "there are no rules, just tools".  Learn the rules, then break them. 

Animation is Movement

There are many ways of drawing, but animation is all about movement. So movement is the essential part of the drawing. Movement must be captured in the drawing to make it work.

Kazuyoshi Takeuchi got all our students drawing, copying his rough dynamic sketches on screen and turning these into characters. 

Squash and Stretch

Mickey Mouse - Circles

Squash and Stretch is one of the key principles to apply in drawing for animation.  Human backbones are "quite flexible", so the drawing can be quite extreme.  If the initial sketch lacks flexibility and motion, the final drawing will be weak. 

Drawing in Circles

Another way to approach character design is to begin with circles, or spheres. This is a foundational drawing technique historically used by Disney artists.  Mickey Mouse, for example, can easily be reduced to a series of spheres, grouped together.  

Cylinders

Kazuyoshi Takeuchi - Drawing with cylinders

Another design technique is to start drawing with cylinders, these can be used to create depth, especially with hands and fingers. The cylinder can be used as a baseline, with the detail added later. 

Cylinders can be especially useful to establish perspective, to simplify the problem of foreshortening in a drawing. 

Cubes

Some artists also draw in cubes.  Female characters tend to have more curves than the males ones.  Male characters can be quite square, so a cube can be a good place to begin, especially creating a muscular male character. 

A design for a robot, for example, might be essentially a cube-based character design, with very few curves.  However cubes can be hard to draw, especially from multiple angles. 

Importance of Perspective

Kazuyoshi Takeuchi - Drawing with cubes

It is also important for animation artist to learn the art of perspective, especially those working in the layout or background departments.  Here, mastery of perspective is an essential skill.  

But perspective isn't just useful for architecture and scenery, it's also a necessary skill for art in general.  

Learning perspective can be boring and hard, but it is necessary. 

"The time you struggle to figure it out is the time you learn the most".

To find out more about Animation Apprentice, click here for a link to Frequently Asked Questions. To sign up for our next classroom at Animation Apprentice, follow this link.