So there are samples from exactly one female emcee. Boo.
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Maybe here...
Youtube interviewShichiro Kobayashi 5 min
Master of the Background 5 min. Short inadequate segments from Figure 17 at the very end
Kobayashi has been an art director in anime for forty years and over a hundred series. Angels Egg, Aoi Hana, Berserk, Blood+, Ashita no Joe, Detroit Metal City, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Simoun. I would have liked to link to his work, but most stills are faces closeups figures. Recommend Utena, Simoun, Figure 17 as peak of his work.
Art direction = backgrounds. Not merely distant landscapes, but cityscapes, walls, schools, forests. A rule for animation, movement looks good when it is simple bright colored planes (characters) moving against more detailed backgrounds. The better the backgrounds, the simpler the character design can be, so time and money can be spent on animation
Currently watching Figure 17, about two 4th grade girls joining aliens in a fight against bug-eyed monsters. More than half the show is slice of life, 4th graders doing kid stuff and learning 4th grade life lessons. Girl lost her mother in her childbirth and has troubles with guilt and self worth.
Takes place in Hokkaido in fall, and has an idyllic, pastoral, arcadian atmosphere. There are lots and lots of frames without people in them, or frames with small figures in big landscape, or moving within birch forests. Mountains lakes creeks. Done in pastels or watercolors, very rough washes with much blank space and gradation in fill. It very very much looks noticeably "drawn" thus making the moving characters look more real.
Rustic farm houses. Schools. One thing I noticed was the meticulous attention to wear in plaster woodwork walls, scratches stains watermarks gaps.
Hundred and hundreds of frames for 26 episodes, and I am curious as to how you avoid unconscious patterns in the bark on a birch that would be noticeable as unnatural.
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It very very much looks noticeably "drawn" thus making the moving characters look more real.
That's interesting. I hadn't realized that the noticeably drawn background had that effect before, but now that I think about it I realize that's very true.