It Felt Like It Would Never End…(January 24, 2024)
I’m translating posts from my old blog into English and publishing them on Tumblr.
Production time: about four months
This project took much longer than I expected to finish. Part of that was because I was designing a new character, Kaeru, and part of it was because I was exhausted from work. I also found myself getting burned out on animation and spending time on other things instead.
While I was working on it, I constantly felt like, “No matter how much I draw, there’s still more to draw.” It was exhausting.
I made Kaeru’s hands much more detailed than they needed to be, and drawing Beres was difficult too. Having to animate so many tall, human-proportioned characters was much more demanding than I expected. I might simplify Beres’s design next time—especially the jagged fur under his eyes. There are just too many little spikes around his face, and they’re a pain to draw over and over again.
After uploading the video to YouTube and adding subtitles, I noticed that I had forgotten to add a sound effect to the scene where Kaeru clasps her hands and says something like, “Then let’s do this.” I could have fixed it and reuploaded the video, but I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble.
I’d wanted to create a character based on the combination of a ninja and a toad for quite a while. (I actually wrote this episode’s story after finishing Kaeru’s design.)
The “ninja × toad” motif comes from Jiraiya Gōketsu Monogatari, although I’ve never actually read it. The reason is simple—it’s extremely expensive. The modern Japanese edition consists of two volumes and sells for around ¥58,000–¥63,800. (There is a Kindle edition available, though.)
A more affordable option is Jiraiya Setsuwa, which is considered one of the sources of the Jiraiya legend. Modern Japanese editions are available for around ¥4,000. And if you mainly want to see the classic rivalry between the frog, slug, and snake, there are also old films such as Ninjutsu Jiraiya and Gyakushū Ōrochimaru. The DVD for Gyakushū Ōrochimaru costs over ¥20,000, but Ninjutsu Jiraiya is available for around ¥5,000.
As soon as I started sketching ninja-toad character designs, I realized they all looked far too much like Greninja from Pokémon.
So I kept redesigning her to move further away from that resemblance.
First, I gave her a more human-looking face instead of an actual frog face. The frog features became a hood worn over her head instead. Even then, she still looked too much like Greninja. I wanted to keep the white section on her outfit and her toad-like legs, so I wasn’t sure what to change next.
Originally, she covered her mouth like a stereotypical ninja. Eventually I removed the face covering and covered her eyes instead. That turned out to be exactly the right decision. She instantly looked much less like Greninja, and somehow became much cuter. (She even reminded me of one of the characters from Waku Waku 7.)
At the time, I spent an incredible amount of effort worrying about making sure she didn’t resemble another character too closely. But now, after seeing games like Palworld become massively popular, I honestly don’t care nearly as much anymore. Looking back, I wonder why I was so obsessed with avoiding every possible similarity.
She originally wore a bright red scarf, but I realized that made her look too similar to Karol—not only visually, but even their names sounded somewhat alike. So I changed it to a black collar with a reversible scarf that’s a different color on each side. I still think a bright red scarf looks great on ninja characters, but compromises had to be made.
About the Character Voices
Until now, I’d only modified my voice using GarageBand’s pitch and formant controls. Since every character is voiced by me, and I’m not exactly a great voice actor, they all ended up sounding fairly similar.
This time, I processed Beres’s voice using a new voice changer that I recently bought. Once I realized how similar Oose and Beres sounded, I knew I had to do something about it.
In my previous animations, I’d always used music that I composed six or seven years ago.
This time, however, I wrote a brand-new piece for the cooking scene.
While working on the animation, I got tired of drawing all day and thought, “Maybe I’ll take a short break and compose something I could also use in this project.”
That “short break” somehow turned into spending two entire days of my weekend writing music instead.
That was exhausting in its own way.
Ableton Liveで作曲。ゲームボーイの音をエミュレートしたPAPUを使用。1分30秒くらいの曲を２ループ。
After uploading the track to SoundCloud, I noticed that the beginning of the song sounded clipped, so I re-recorded it and uploaded it again. Even now, I feel like it’s still clipping slightly. The original WAV file plays perfectly on my computer, so it may just be an issue with SoundCloud’s playback. Or maybe I simply need to leave a little silence before the music starts.
One of my favorite video game tracks is “Monster Dance” from the Famicom Disk System game Famicom Grand Prix II: 3D Hot Rally, and it served as my main source of inspiration for this piece.
That said, I don’t think the songs actually sound alike. Once again, I spent too much effort worrying about making sure it didn’t resemble another piece of music. In hindsight, that was probably unnecessary. I could have borrowed at least the triplet feel without worrying so much.
I create animations as a hobby. Since I produce everything on my own, my upload frequency is very low.
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