An animated music video that further expands the world of the ending theme for BEASTARS FINAL SEASON Part 2. While following Legoshi’s life, it also incorporates imagery of SEVENTEEN, and the newly produced footage is longer than the version used in the ending theme. The color palette was chosen to match each scene and concept, using soft tones for female fans and deeper, stronger tones for fans of the original work. Building on our previous animation production in PS, we also incorporated Moho for about half of the process. The hand-drawn, frame-by-frame approach remains the same, but it now gives a stronger sense of paper-doll-like joint connections.

Concept In a world where the species you are born into determines the course of your life, Legoshi and Haru were beings destined to walk separate paths. Even so, they are drawn to each other, reaching out to one another amid the instability of interspecies romance. Though uncertain, Legoshi keeps moving forward, confronting his inner conflict and instincts. And beyond that, with everyone cheering him on, he continues to run straight ahead. Technique This work was created through a wider range of experiments than ever before, combining commercial production methods with independent, handmade approaches such as rough drawings, hand-painted backgrounds, and real paper confetti. While retaining the collage-style animation in which each sheet and every individual part is moved piece by piece, it also continues to explore ways to adapt to a greater variety of works.

This animation was created for the advertisement and exhibition of “Animal Exhibition” (Special cooperation: National Museum of Nature and Science), held at PLAY! MUSEUM. Featuring taxidermy specimens from the WHO ARE WE exhibition kit for this exhibition (Yoshimoto Collection), it is composed to bring the specimens to life as they make their way to the urban exhibition venue during the night. While continuing to produce animation in PS as before, I increased the proportion of background work done with AE keyframes, taking on the challenge of moving the main characters clearly while also coordinating the background with them. This time, thanks to meeting a collaborator who could handle a certain amount of the animation work, I was able to make time for shooting, and have begun experimenting with incorporating light and shadow in an illustration-like way. In the illustration, I am challenging myself to use color to express the changing time of day.

A story that follows the fate of a bird accidentally eaten by a pet cat. As it retraces the consequences of acting on instinct alone, it moves back and forth between an unknown world and reality. Created using a sequence of images, based mainly on Photoshop’s three basic operations: move, rotate, and warp transform. In this work, which was my first to be made with the help of others, I lowered the barrier to making animation by using only Photoshop’s basic functions, and worked together with people who had never created animation before.