Santa Company

[npcomplete]

*Mod edit:

Please read the following guidelines before posting:

- Only the first post may link to a Kickstarter project and may be posted only as a reference.
- Do not make comments to encourage others to support or ignore the project in question.
- If you decide to support the project, do not post about how much you donated to it.
- Do not derail the conversation by talking about the fund rasing itself, nor try to "rush" people into it by discussing the deadline of each project.
- Remember that soliciting is not allowed here

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/.../santa-company

http://www.santa-company.net/en/

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news...paign-launches

Hello everyone. I’m Kenji Itoso, living in Japan.

I have a career learned under Hayao Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon.
Currently, I produce and direct live action films, music videos and commercials, mainly working on animation projects.
Also as a University professor, I do research on film techniques and teach my specialty.

I believe that Christmas day is the best day of the year. And I’ve always wanted to produce an animation film that is about Santa Clauses. After 12 years of planning, the time has finally come for me to get down to it.

Producer / Executive Director: Kenji Itoso (Transformers Animated, Dreaming Machine)
Director: Yumi Kamakura (Pokémon,Eureka seveN)
Screenplay: Naohiro Fukushima (009 RE:CYBORG,Eden of The East)
Original Character Design: Hidari (VOCALOID, Atelier Ayesha)
Animation Character Design: Hiroki Harada (Romeo×Juliet, Yu-Gi-Oh!)
Background Art: Takashi Aoi (Xam'd: Lost Memories, Eureka seveN)
Produced: KENJI STUDIO

More background from ANN:

Naohiro Fukushima (Eden of the East, Eureka 7: Astral Ocean) is writing the script, and artist Hidari (Fractale, Natsu-iro Kiseki) drew the original character design illustrations. Itoso's own KENJI STUDIO (Kotonakare Hero Gingerman) is animating the film. Itoso is serving as producer and executive director, while Yumi Kamakura (episode director for Eureka Seven, Blood+, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet) is serving as director. Hiroka Harada (Romeo × Juliet, Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal) is adapting Hidari's character designs for animation.

See the ANN link for more pics as well



- UPDATE -

There is a related project for animation students and enthusiasts
Art of Making “Santa Company” – A Complete Guide

It would be an excellent source for those who seriously seek the anime production career as well as and for anime enthusiasts. It would be an interesting read explaining what goes on behind the scenes of production.

The guide, which will be distributed as a DVD-ROM (Windows and Mac compatible) will contain original raw data used in the actual production, including JPEG and PSD data with layers intact. Other materials such as background and color specification tables will also be included in the DVD-ROM as a data. The reasons and intentions behind what is drawn or written in the raw data will also be explained in the separate PDF, written by Kenji Itoso himself.

This will be the first guide to feature these contents, and the material to understand the methodology and process of anime production.

Chapter 1：Various types of occupations and job details
Chapter 2：Proposal
Chapter 3：Script/Plot Structure/World Building
Chapter 4：Character design
Chapter 5：How to draw characters using Adobe Photoshop
Chapter 6：Background Settings
Chapter 7：Storyboard
Chapter 8：Layout (structure)
Chapter 9：Key Frames
Chapter 10：Background art
Chapter 11：Animation
Chapter 12：Finishing Process/Color Model/Color balance
Chapter 13：Filming (making the video)
Chapter 14：Complete production progress of the animation

Chapter 13 include the animated data and the background data for you to experiment with. From there, it will guide you through the software up to how to combine the two data to create the final animation movie.

This includes not only the explanation on how anime is drawn, but the process of planning, and the explanation on the production committee system, and about the current anime industry in Japan, and its future.

This project is new even to the Japanese audience and the anime industry, and is now in progress.

I hope this project will enable anime fans overseas to learn more about Japanese anime production!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...complete-guide

[MrTerrorist]

Looks good. It would be nice if this was a series.

[Dextro]

I'm really liking this trend of more shows showing up on Kickstarter to get us gaijins investing directly in the production of anime. First Little Witch Academia 2 and now this.

[npcomplete]

In Update#4 they mentioned that Rie Kugimiya will be playing the young shy-looking boy Thomas.

I dunno, I know she's played other roles before but I think it may take some adjustment hearing her voice through him.

[MrTerrorist]

"Santa Company" Casts Takahiro Sakurai

Whoa. How many more big names will join this anime?

[Kirarakim]

Sakurai Takahiro is what got me to support it. I am getting worried they won't make the stretch goal though.

[MrTerrorist]

Can't wait for this to come out in Christmas 2014

[Kirarakim]

It's been officially funded yay

I upgraded my amount so I could get a greeting card from one of the characters (I am a nerd).

[Ottocycle]

Originally Posted by Kirarakim

It's been officially funded yay

I upgraded my amount so I could get a greeting card from one of the characters (I am a nerd).

It's still rather precarious though. It may go back down to fail if any one of those $1,000-donors (most especially that lone $10,000 donor) do an about-turn on their pledge.

[Nachtwandler]

Sakurai's characters name makes me laugh every time I see it. Can't do anything about it.

[Kirarakim]

Originally Posted by Ottocycle

It's still rather precarious though. It may go back down to fail if any one of those $1,000-donors (most especially that lone $10,000 donor) do an about-turn on their pledge.

There are still 11 days left to the pledge and met its goal. And I highly doubt someone would pledge that amount if they didn't mean it.

[MrTerrorist]

Ayumi Fujimura and Haruka Tomatsu join cast

Oh my. More big names.

[Kakkou]

So Bell was a guy after all. A guy voiced by Yuki Kaji. Yaaaay~

[Kirarakim]

I was disappointed Sakurai was not in the trailer...why did they think I funded them?

But it still looks cute

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFmOgIZxXyc

[Dextro]

Originally Posted by Kirarakim

I was disappointed Sakurai was not in the trailer...why did they think I funded them?

But it still looks cute

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFmOgIZxXyc

Ok now I'm sold. That song and that voice cast just sealed the deal for me. I want to watch this

[MrTerrorist]

YouTube

https://youtu.be/sFmOgIZxXyc

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

Nice trailer.

[npcomplete]

I updated the first post with the follow-on project:
"Art of Making “Santa Company” – A Complete Guide"

[E_I]

According to this morning's backer email, DVD/Blu-rays will go out on the 11th. Links to the digital versions will be sent to backers on the 19th.

[kenjiharima]

Wow this looks interesting looking forward to this. Also the designs are super cute.

[Dextro]

So, has anyone seen the OVA yet? I watched it during christmas eve and felt it was a rather touching story even if it looked like they had far more ideas to put into it than the time they had allotted. It's just a shame that they couldn't go for 60 minutes instead. It would have worked much better imho.