Animation Industry Watching No.22: Creating and moving CG mecha that are recognized as "characters!　Interview with Eiji Inomoto, President of Orange!

Today, 3DCG has become an indispensable expression for 2D animation, but in the past, celluloid pictures and CG did not go well together and were often seen in a negative light.

Eiji Inomoto, president of Orange Co., Ltd. is the one who introduced the use of two-frame and three-frame animation-like movements to CG, which used to be frowned upon, and used a lot of toonshades to create a texture similar to cel-shaded pictures. The two works that determined Mr. Inomoto's reputation were "Zoids" (1999) and "Tachikoma" in "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" (2002). The CG director of "Code Geass: Akito the Exiled," which was completed this year, was also Orange's CG director, Mr. Motoi Ino.

We interviewed Mr. Ino, who was the sole creator of CG animation at the beginning, about the background to the establishment of Orange and the future of Orange.

Starting out as an illustrator and establishing a CG company

─ I heard that you originally wanted to become a manga artist?

Inomoto: Yes, I had been drawing manga from elementary school to junior high school. The four-frame manga I drew in high school won an honorable mention in "Shonen Sunday. After graduating from university, I once got a job at a company, but I quit right away because I thought, "I still want to draw manga. At the time, I was submitting my work to "Shonen Jump" and was assigned a staff member, so I took the opportunity to come to Tokyo. Once I was assigned a contact person, I was introduced to small jobs as a manga artist's assistant, but I was still struggling financially and in terms of my talent. I was wondering what I was going to do when Photoshop version 1 was released. I bought Photoshop and registered with a management company that introduced me to illustration jobs. I drew illustrations of just about anything. I drew anything, like Chisato Moritaka's feet (laughs). Eventually, I started getting movie jobs from game companies. However, I felt that the Mac was limited by its weak animation capabilities. I was using "Alias" software for Disney's "Aladdin," which I liked at the time, so I decided to buy that software (......). But at the time, it cost several million yen just to get the animation software, so I felt like I was jumping off a cliff. It was like jumping off a cliff. I decided, "There's no turning back now, I'm going to make a living at CG," and that was the beginning of my animation career.

───At that time, were you only working on game movies?

Inomoto: I started working on "Ultraman Tiga" (1996) and "Ultraman Dyna" (1997). I did my best to create a CG transformation scene, but it was soon replaced by a live-action scene (laughs). (Laughs.) But this was a transitional period when tokusatsu TV shows were beginning to use CG. Around the same time, work on opening movies for PlayStation 2 and other platforms was regarded as the flower of CG work among CG artists. There was an atmosphere of "You could make a whole movie with full CG," but when I was working on the opening movie myself, I felt that it was not quite the same ....... This was because the game movies were storyboarded by CG artists who were not trained in directing, and they cut the storyboards as they saw fit. Eventually, the job for "ZOIDS" (1999) came around. Since I was only drawing pictures, I found animation work very interesting. After that, I became more and more devoted to animation work.

───At that time, were you working alone?

Inomoto: Yes, I was freelance at the time. Later, I was asked to work on "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" (2002), and I was in charge of Tachikoma alone.

─ Was it around that time that you established Orange Co.

Inomoto: After "Ghost in the Shell," I was invited to work on "Genesis of Aquarion" (2005) produced by Satellite, and I asked the producer to increase the budget since we were going to incorporate. As expected, there is already a limit to working alone (laughs). So I established Orange, but there were only three of us, including myself. For "Aquarion," Satellite, our company, and another company took turns working on each episode. For the episodes that Cylite was in charge of, about 10 staff members were credited. But for the episodes we were in charge of, only three people were credited (laughs). Even so, I was about halfway to my dream of "making a living drawing pictures," so I narrowed my focus to animation work.