Working in anime studio

A quick disclaimer that i had this interview on japanese and translated to english, some part might have bit mistake.

Question: What is the hardest part of anime to draw and how long does it take?

Makoto Shinkai: When it rains in animation, it is so much harder because when there's a window there are thousands of raindrops. If you have umbrella, the rain falls on it and roll down. For a lot of animetion on this film, we had 2D animators hand-drawn scenes as well as CG, and it was challenging to make sure that audience couldn't tell which one is hand-drawn and which one is CG.

Q: You had mentioned merging hand-drawn with CG rain scenes, could you tell more about that?

MS: So basically in Japan, just like how we used to do it, we had hand-drawn animation with painted backgrounds with characters on cels. And even though that process is shown as the CG, we do feel like we put a lot of effort into how do we blend in or which way do we blend in more. Like do you want to blend in towards the background at the CG? Or do you want to blend in more towards the … Or lean towards more the character drawn by hand? So basically that mix and then the blending is really an important part of our project.

Q: What inspired you to in the anime industry?

MS: I think if I go back, like way back, on how I got really interested in animation, it was Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky. I saw that when I was in middle school and I was like, “Wow. I can’t believe that something so interesting could be made.” And the next thing that inspired me was watching Neon Genesis Evangelion. It was maybe around when I just started working, or maybe just after graduation, is when I saw it. But I was in awe with the animation. But it was really about Hideaki Anno’s method on how to use his lack of time into the cel. So he’ll have a background with just the character just having a monologue. So he used that as an advantage of not having enough time to animate. So I was like, “Wow. If he could do something like this, I think that I could make my own film too.”

Q: What inspired you to become director?

MS: When I first started working, I started working for a game company [Falcom] as a designer. And I worked on this opening movie for one of the games, using After Effects. But it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to really put myself into my story into the movie. So then I thought, “Okay. Why don’t I just make something on my own?” So while I was working at the game company, at night I just started making my own movie. And then I started turning them into competitions and they started winning awards. And then that’s when I made Voices Over a Distant Star (2001), which is about 20 minutes. That was my first film. And then from there, I just started making more films on my own. And that’s how I became a director.

Q: What inspired you to make weathering with you?

MS: There’s a few things that inspired us. I think the biggest thing was climate change. Yeah. Climate change really became a huge part of our lives and we see it here. Because every summer in Japan, we always have a lot of rain and water-related disasters because of it. So, every year they’re talking about climate change and how we have to do something about it. But we also know that it’s not something that we could turn back in a few years. So it has happened. And then how do we live in this crazy world that we have created? And how do especially the young people live in this crazy world? That’s what I started thinking about when I started working on Weathering With You.

Q: Can I ask what the budget was?

MS: Actually the budget is not public information. But it was bigger than Your Name. But it’s probably smaller than Disney or Pixar. (chuckles) Way smaller than Disney.

Z: Thanks for interview.