I directed animation for the first time after having only ever made independent animations before. In independent production, data management is much looser, there’s no need to separate in-between drawings from key drawings, and there’s no need to give instructions to anyone, but commercial animation doesn’t work that way, so it was tough. There were at least three major accidents, and I ended up drawing a huge amount of layout, key animation, in-between animation, and backgrounds. In the end, I got heavily involved in every stage except the photography, and for the month leading up to the deadline—34 days—I worked every day for 13 hours while talking on the phone with the art director, making it feel like the three of us, including the photography director, were producing an independent animation. Because my memories of my first time as director were like this, it has become a trauma.

Graduation project work. Production began around January 2021; the trailer was posted on YouTube on May 14, 2022, and the full version (about 7 minutes) on July 1. During my third year of university, I was almost constantly drawing MV illustrations for HoneyWorks. When I told Gom, the leader, “In my fourth year, I won’t be able to take on work because I’ll be focusing on my graduation project,” he said, “Then let’s make something together,” and asked me to handle the music side. That led to the launch of the creator team “Euluca Lab.” with the graduation project as its first work. I never expected to have a song produced for me — especially by HoneyWorks — so at first I had no idea of making an MV. Since my third year of high school, I had always planned to make a roughly five-minute animated story for my university graduation project, and I had kept that idea until I consulted Gom. Because of that, when it came time to make an MV, I couldn’t bring myself to create something with weak storytelling, so I decided to make the story just as important as the visuals. Even though it is an MV, I wanted the story to be depicted as clearly as possible. To do that, I had to convey almost the entire video without dialogue. What had originally been planned to be around four minutes ended up becoming seven before I knew it. Including cuts used only in the trailer, I produced about 140 cuts in total, handling everything myself: story development, storyboards, animation, backgrounds, 3DCG, compositing, and more. I also participated in lyric writing, added sound effects, and wrote the dialogue. I had mostly only drawn illustrations, so I didn’t have much experience with video production, and there was no one I could ask about how to make things. When thinking up the story, I first imagined the scene’s visuals and how it would be produced in my head, and prioritized whether I could actually make it myself. When I had a specific idea, like wanting to have glowing butterflies flying in 3D, I would research how to make it and judge whether it was feasible. I had never touched 3D before, but I managed to learn the basics and simple operations. As for drawing, I had only played around with Ugo Memo 3DS in junior high school, but I gradually became able to draw somewhat better, and my overall drawing ability improved quite a lot. During the year and a half of production, I sacrificed everything: play, socializing, and a normal human life. Wanting to avoid any regrets over my once-in-a-lifetime graduation project, I pushed myself to my limits. As a result, I came to think, “I worked hard because it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, but I never want to make anime alone again.” In the future, I don’t plan to make an animation longer than 20 seconds by myself anymore. If I were to do something like directing or storyboard direction, I think I would also need to study how commercial anime is made. With the cooperation of people one would never expect for what was just a university graduation project, the quality of the music and character voices rose to a level that was hard to believe, and I felt a lot of pressure. That probably made things even more painful, but without that pressure, I think I would have settled for less in some parts. Of course, looking at it now, there are things I think could have been done better, but I gave it everything I had at the time. Because I hadn’t really worked hard for entrance exams or club activities, this became the first thing in my life I could say I truly “worked hard” on, and it became an important work to me. However, this is only the first work of Euluca Lab., so I think that someday I’ll need to create something even greater that I can say I worked harder on than this. Software used Animation, backgrounds, compositing: CLIPSTUDIO EX Background processing: Photoshop Compositing: After Effects 3DCG: Blender Editing: Premiere Pro *This is the full version of the work, but I think you may enjoy it even more if you watch the trailer before viewing it (or even after). Trailer https://youtu.be/SFhDPB74fK0