Interview with Koji Tanaka, Director of Photography of “Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet” [3/4]

The fun of photography

Ishikawa: Are there any particular parts in Gargantia you had a hard time with?

Tanaka: Amy and the others. Their clothing consists of a lot of different parts, so I think the animators must have had a hard time drawing them, too. Since we have to shade it cut by cut, it takes time compared to other anime. Also, we processed the pictures so that there is a little gloss in both the characters’ irises and pupils, and in the case of female characters, we have to put it in every character’s eyes in each scene, so it’s a lot of work. Plus, although maybe this is only character designer Tashiro’s fixation, but only Grace’s mouth has gradation at times and is at times blurry. It might be hard to notice, though.

Ishikawa: I noticed it when looking carefully. Her mouth is pink, so one can guess that there’s less hair there.

Tanaka: And because of such a fixation, the photography department suffers (laughs).

Ishikawa: The more he fixates on it the more you suffer...

Tanaka: Someone is whining (laughs).

Ishikawa: It must be hard.

Tanaka: If it’s connected to the results, it is a reward to us as well.

Ishikawa: Everyone from the cast told me that “their eyes are very lively and pretty.” That took some work.

Tanaka: Yes. First, the animator draws a lively picture, then we give it another push to enhance that, so to speak.

Ishikawa: Being a photography director seems extremely difficult.

Tanaka: But it’s fun. The best part is that I get to see the completed materials first, even before the director.

Ishikawa: Really?

Tanaka: Yes. The artists complete the material, then the coloring of the animation cels is done, and when all these are together, I am the first to see it, and I feel like “this is just the picture I wanted to make.” It’s a lot of fun. In addition, since I’ve been doing this job for long time, I can directly understand the tension each section went through while making this anime. When I think, “We’ve come this far,” I also get a bit tense, and thinking that doing half work is not enough makes me work hard.

Ishikawa: How much you enjoy what you are doing is very important.

Tanaka: I agree. In a sense, maybe it is thanks to the balance of my thickheadedness and susceptibility that it turned out like this (laughs).

The job of photographing water

Ishikawa: What made you decide to get into this line of work?

Tanaka: Rather than aiming to be a director of photography and starting photography studies because of that, I started doing photography and advanced in my career, thus becoming a director of photography. I entered the photography section right around the time film was overthrown by digital. The president of the previous company I worked at told me, “From now on, things will be in digital. Give it a try.” I was asked, “Will you give it a try?” and as I was doing various things, it ended up like this.

Hirasawa: Your first job wasn’t photography?

Tanaka: I’m originally an animator; I was doing animations.

Ishikawa: You must be very good at drawing.

Tanaka: I wasn’t very good at drawing, that’s why I moved to photography. It was as bad as me thinking “this is useless, you can’t go on like this.” It’s not really about being talented or not. It is more like whether it agrees with you or not. I think whether your job suits you or not can influence your growth. That’s why I don’t think I am who I am now because I had this kind of talent to begin with.

Ishikawa: And that’s how you progressed to being a director of photography?

Tanaka: You could say I went with the flow and rode the waves.

Hirasawa: About you job suiting you, could you elaborate on what parts exactly made you feel that it agreed with your personality?

Tanaka: It takes an enormous amount of time to produce all the materials, and I didn’t have the kind of motivation to do something for a long time. However, things where I could see completion, like all the materials coming in to me and processing them as a whole were interesting and motivating to me. I feel that compared to other things, the point of photography that it isn’t as time consuming and I can relatively see the whole picture suited my personality, or rather my taste, more. I wasn’t made out to draw one character or one cut for a month.

Ishikawa: That is pretty understandable.

Tanaka: Being an animator can also be fun, but I felt that sooner or later I’ll get tired of it. That’s why I switched to photography and found a different kind of fun there. At first, I thought, animation was the only thing I could do, so I committed to it, and I would do it overnight for even three or four days straight, but it would’ve been too intense to keep that up for 10 years. So I changed directions, and to my surprise, that went a lot better.

Gargantia x Tokyo Otaku Mode Special Site:
http://otakumode.com/sp/gargantia

Source:
http://gargantia.jp/#kaito_3 (Japanese)

© Oceanus / Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet Production Committee