Saturday, January 23, 2016

ARCHIVE POST: Tokyo Anime Fair 2010 (Megapost)


*The following is a repost from my old blog: Sketches of Skye
27-03-2010

The 2010 Tokyo Anime Fair is over now but Gestalt Publishing was represented on the floor by myself and a small entourage of Gestalt for-a-day people (no one needed to know). Now that the carnage is over I can report on what we saw there.


Buyers were rife on the floor, people representing foreign companies that redistribute films in English. But I wasn't there for that. I was invited by the super nice people from usagio and got to meet a heap of talented people in Animation, Motion Graphics, Design, Illustration etc. etc...


On top of Usagio and their whimsical and cute style, I would like to introduce a few of the people that I met which I am sure are bound to impress and inspire;


Takahashi Koya's works in particular impressed me a great deal. The animation in his showreel is made completely in After Effects. Outta the box with no plugins. Really, you have to watch it.



Ohrys bird/ Anime Tronica Co. Ltd. are fantastic. Musicians who made their own music videos, found they were so good at it that they started making more for other bands. And then animation for Ad agencies and so on and so forth. Their story is one I love.

Ishikawa holdings have been making some great animations some of which I had seen a year or so ago on niko niko douga (Japanese YouTube with more wtf) while not the funniest, this 'advertisement' for The Grand Guardian Tokyo mansion (apartments) I can't forget.

There are many more people I met and hope to keep in touch with, but for now lets move on to other aspects of the Anime Fair. Amongst all of the booths on the floor one in particular stood out shining and bright from the skimpy cosplayers, Animated figures and such. And that booth was the Behemoth booth; the company who brought usAlien Hominid and Castle Crashers
available on Xbox live and coming QUITE soon to Playstation network. Seriously, All gamers  need to get this. Tis' porn. Pure Porn.

I was lucky enough to meet with Dan Paladin - the artist behind Castle Crashers and other great games (pictured above, with dodgy looking me). I told him that his working videos helped inspire me when I was working on SquareEnix stuff. He helped me quite a bit and I think he appreciated me telling him this. These guys are awesome. Seriously awesome, nice hardworking dudes and I wish them the best of luck in the future (not that they need it). 





So he drew me the picture to the left and I offloaded the Gestalt comics library onto him and then left for more booths. Or to be more correct, collecting loot. And my oh my, there was loot to be had. I ended up with more than I could alone carry. 10 or more DVDs and my personal favorites being some gorgeous oversized Studio 4˚C (who worked on the Animatrix for those un-familar with Anime - and their AWESOME work) Genius Party books.


The experience of the Tokyo Anime Fair was great and the contacts made were... well, how can you measure something like this? I will definitely be attending next year and feel as though I have enough inspiration (and freebies) to last till then. TAF2011? I recommend it.

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