Along with the production updates and posts about my recent trip to Japan I wanted to also start posting about some content I have been watching. While in Japan, I saw several advertisements for all sorts of shows. I took pictures of several advertisements and decided that I was going to watch some of these and check out their production value.
My typical process has been to wait until series come to the States so I could watch them while I work since they would be dubbed already. However, when I go to conferences and such people have had access to some of these titles already by watching them on simulcasts. Secondly, it also puts me about a year or two behind current production techniques and such. So, I made the decision that I am going to start to watch a little bit more stuff and focus on some of the production value in these series.
The first title I decided to check out was Tari Tari. I had never really watched a series about school life or anything along those lines in anime before. I have been mostly a Shonen/action fan. To give you an idea of some of the visuals for Tari Tari, check out the opening here.
To provide you a quick synopsis of the story, Konatsu is a girl who wants to start a new school choir club after not being able to perform in the current choir club. Since she needs several members to start, she is able to recruit enough people to start the choir and sometimes badminton club. The group then practices in hopes of performing at the school festival.
Over the course of 13 episodes we see the group come together and we also have episodes that focus on each character and some of their history and past events.
Since my presentation at SGMS this past year was about CGI in anime, it was good to see several of the techniques I talked about used in the show. There are several shots that involve 3D environments, and 3D objects such as cars filling the streets. The character animation is well done. The coloring and effects in the environment are very well done. As you can see from the opening, there are beautifully painted backgrounds throughout the show.
There are even several nice subtle effects in the show. Shots that use depth of field (blurring of the background to focus on the foreground), subtle camera shakes and even lens flares in outside shots add some really nice production value to the series. You can tell that the series is newer based solely on the production value of the show. Throughout the series there are several really nice panning shots that seem to have several layers of depth in them. Tari Tari has scenes that are very brightly colored and even some scenes that are muted due to rain, that still look very good.
Tari Tari was a great show to see a wide variety of CGI techniques throughout the short 13 episode series. The series also didn’t seem to have much filler in it at all. If your looking to see some beautiful artwork and have time to fit a short series in, you can check it out on crunchyroll and be sure to keep an eye out for some of the effects 🙂 Production update coming on Monday!