What Exactly Does an Animation Director Do? - An Interview with Nokotan's Karin Omura

While most people have an idea what directors, animators, or scenario writers do, these are only a few of the jobs involved in the creation of anime. Many jobs in the industry are relatively obscure at best to outsiders. One of these that comes to mind is animation director. In order to shine a bit of a spotlight on this job and what it entails, I recently sat down with My Deer Friend Nokotan's animation director Karin Ōmura at Wit Studio's main office in Tokyo. Together, we talked about not only the details of her current job but also the path she took to get there.

Omura's interest in making anime started in her childhood. “When I was in middle school, I drew a picture for my younger brother. He was really happy and said, 'Wow, you're good at this! Thank you,' and I thought drawing pictures might be fun,” she began. “Around that same time, I first learned that there was a job called an ‘animator’ when I was watching an episode of a certain anime. [...] I was a little surprised to learn that anime is made by people and that's how I got interested in it—an interest that has continued to this day.”

Years later, Omura entered the industry and started from the bottom as an in-between animator. To describe what her work was, she first explained a bit about how animation is created. “There is a person called a key frame animator who draws the key points in the animation. After receiving the key frames from the key animator, an in-between animator ‘cleans-up’ the animation. They draw the pictures between the key frames so that the images move smoothly when flipping through them. That is the job of an in-between animator. When you first enter the industry, that is the very first job,” she laughed. “It was a very difficult job.”

During her time doing in-between animation, Omura drew an impressive amount. “I was told to try my best to draw 300 frames [a month] and then go home. I tried several times and feel like I reached 300. In terms of the number per day, how many is that? [...] 15 pieces? I think it's about that much, when it comes to animation.” Omura, however, didn't see this workload as anything special. “At most, I drew around 320 frames in a month... but that's still not that many, not really.”

After a year-and-a-half as an in-between animator, Omura was ready to take a stab at the next job up the ladder: that of key animator. But before that, she had to take a test to prove her skills. “I think it probably depends on the studio whether they have an exam or not, but at that time, at the studio I was at, there was something like, 'Please draw the specified layout and key animation within the specified time,' and you would submit it,” she told me. “The people at the studio at the time would look at it and if they felt that this person was good enough to do key animation, they would let them do it.”

Omura passed the test and began work as a key frame animator. Now, instead of making the animation connecting the key frames together, she was making those key frames from the ground up. “As a key frame animator, based on the storyboard, which was created by the director, I'd place the background and the characters and decide their movements,” Omura continued. “Then I'd start drawing the key points of the movements and match them with the timesheet—which contains the length of scenes and general timing of the show.” She did this job for the next four or so years.

At this point, Omura finally reached her current job as an animation director. But the question remains, what exactly does this job entail? “The animation director first meets with the episode director who says ‘I'd like us to proceed like this’ or 'the storyboard looks like this, but I want to do it this way,'” she explained. “After listening to those kinds of requests, the drawings that the key animators have made are passed around and the director and episode director make revisions.” With all the revisions considered, the animation director then makes further adjustments so the frames align with the character model sheets.

In a larger sense, Omura sees her job as making sure there is a solid base to build the rest of the anime on top of. “The thing to keep in mind is the division of labor in animation. There is the key animation, the in-between animation, the coloring, and so on. The key animation is the preliminary stage—that is to say it will be worked on by many other people, so I have to make sure that it is easy to understand for the next person down the line and the person after that.”

Omura spends much of her day checking and finalizing the key frames. This is measured not in frames or scenes but in cuts—i.e., a single shot that begins and ends with the camera “cutting” to a new viewpoint. As for the length of a cut, it varies greatly. “Sometimes it's just one frame, and sometimes it's 10 or 20 frames,” she told me.

As for her workload, Omura said the following: “I can do about three easy cuts a day. However, some of them are quite difficult and may take one or two days to complete a single cut. […] On a busy day? The most I've done is four or five cuts.”

Surprisingly, given the scope of her job, the people Omura works directly with most often are not the animators nor the directors. “The person I'm probably in contact the most with is the production assistant for a given episode. When I submit something or have a question for the episode director, I usually ask it through that person,” she continued. “Sometimes I go talk to the episode director directly if we are seated close to each other. But often we are on different floors and some people work from home” Omura laughed, “So basically, I often only talk to the production assistant.”

To conclude things, Omura summed up her job in one simple sentence: “The animation director's job is to make sure the characters in each scene match the character charts” So the next time someone asks you what exactly an animation director does, now you know what to tell them.

My Deer Friend Nokotan is available on Crunchyroll, Prime Video and Amazon Freevee, Tubi, ADN, Anime Onegai, and many streaming services in over 140 countries and territories.