Art of Akira - Exhibition

Cels: The bulk of the animation was hand-drawn and painted onto transparent acetates or ‘cels’. In the case of Akira, these were animated at 24 frames per second. A record that still stands today.

Backgrounds: Hand-painted backgrounds from Akira are extremely rare. Sadly, many of them were used as packing material for the rest of the art, when the 50,000 individual pieces that survived incineration were shipped from Japan to the Unites States by Streamline Pictures in the early 90’s..

Key Master Set-ups: Complete animation set-ups combining multiple screen-used cel and background elements to recreate an entire shot. In the case of Akira, these may contain up to 10 cels and include multiple background elements moving in unison to create immersive parallax shots.

Douga: Theseare hand drawn illustrations that are traced onto cels to create the animation. Douga like this one were drawn by senior artists as indicated by the colourist’s notes on and around the illustration.

Genga: These are planning illustrations, often created by senior artists. They represent multiple aspects of the shot and indicate the directional movements of the animation, as suggested by the arrows and notations they contain.

INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION AND WEBSITE / 2014 -
As co-owner, curator and blogger with Joe Peacock
Press - The 'Art of Akira’ exhibit has been displayed at SXSW, Pixar Studios and Toonseum. It has also been featured all over the net, including CNN, in the Japan Times and on numerous blogs and websites around the world.