Questionnaire on animation into live-action movies

Hi guys ^^ I'm new, but glad to be here!

First off, from animation into live-action movies? What do you think of them?

Im actually studying this subject for a postgraduate degree in design at uni.
Im looking at how a lot of movies based off animations turn out unsuccessfully. looking closely at the ones based off Japanese animation (or anime) as they tend to do the worst in the cinema. (finding out why, and exploring ways to improve them it, is the core of my study)

I have spent the year creating a series of movie characters based off anime characters, and now i need some feedback to see of they work (or don't) in order to forward my research.

i have made a short google questionnaire (almost all multiple choice) where you can see some movie posters i have designed for the characters and rate them accordingly to how well you think they would work in a film.

Anime is quite abstract a lot of the time, with wild hair and abilities that don't lend themselves as well to real people as they do to drawings. So i have had to compromise a little on some of the characters to make them more appropriate for live-action.

Here is the questionnaire:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...ySY5g/viewform

I would really appreciate if you could fill it out it would help forward my research immensely.
dont worry if you haven't seen, or don't know much about anime, you've seen movies and thats more than enough :P

So let me know if you think these characters would work well as live action adaptations of the characters in the questionnaire.

if you have any questions ill try and answer them if i can ^^

You've not done yourself any favours bud.


You've joined the site, posted to 25, then immediately put in a link.
Ok, your intentions are noble, you're not a spammer, but posting filler so you can post a link is frowned upon on MoFo.

__________________

I know and I do apologise, it isn't behaviour i would usually condone. But failing my course because i cant get feedback for me to forward my research is even more frowned upon. (and costs significantly more)

but that doesn't mean i have no intention of continuing being a member of the community here, I do love movies to pieces (if i didn't i wouldn't be doing this as my topic).

But i see where you are coming from, and apologise for it.

Well the superhero movies managed to transition well from comics, in this case there are stylized modifications they did in the heroes costumes to look better in live action with more subtle colors.

Also, there are many cases of successful adaptation of Manga into live action. Thing is that most Manga adapted into live action has more realistic art style than Manga usually adapted into animation.


For example, Thermae Romae:



(Japanese actors playing Romans)

The animation:

I think you are confused. First, what do you mean by unsucesfully? It's not true that Manga adaptations don't turn out well to popular audiences. There are many box office hits based on Manga, in Japan. While simultaneously most of the most popular animations are also based on mangas.

In the west I think it's because the population of english speaking countries have issues regarding foreign culture so that they cannot understand Japanese popular culture and products adapted from it, so they try to make a movie like DragonBall Evolution which was an American movie, that lacks any of the qualities that made the claimed source material a monument o Japanese pop culture. The issue was simply that obviously if you do that it's not going to work.

I have looked closely at the transition from superhero comics to movies, and you are 100% correct!
If your'e interested, one major factor that helped them transition, was that there are so many variations of characters. The joker for instance has been drawn so many different ways, for such a long time, by so many people, that now the joker has no distinct appearance.

He has his green hair and purple suit of course, but you can now put that on anyone and they can be the Joker (Look at Heath Ledger's Joker vs Jared Leto's, both are the joker, and both are good, but neither one looks anything like the comic books, and no one questions that because there are so many variations of the Joker, even in the comics themselves.)

Anime has less Variation, shows like Naruto, Bleach, Dragon Ball Z and One Piece, have been around for over a decade, and the drawing style has barely altered. Even when going from manga to anime, there is far less change than going from superhero comics to cartoons. So when we do see a live-action anime, it is a bigger step for us to grasp visually than seeing batman in live-action.

Also shows with a more detailed drawing style will transition easier, as theres less room for creative licence.

and yes! some anime have transitioned very nicely to live-action, Rouroni Kenshin was a good one, and even Speed Racer has been done very well.

I hope I'm not confused, I've just spend a whole year studying it, that would be embarrassing...
I am mainly talking about 'unsuccessfully' in the western world, people left live-action movies such Attack on titan, literally laughing (and attack on Titan is far from being a comedy). In my mind, that is an unsuccessful translation of the manga/anime.

Not just the Japanese ones either. The last airbender is another one. Avatar the animated series, is american. But when they tried to turn that into a live action, people still couldn't stand it, and it had nothing to do with Japanese pop culture.

There are plenty of things in Japanese popular culture that have been widely accepted in the western world, (for example there are more manga readers in the world than comic book readers). Pokemon is also something that has been so ingrained that most people believe it to be american. Emojis, and even phrases like Kawaii, are used widespread.
The internet is causing a lot of cultural merging, and the barriers you are talking about are I think are less potent than you imagine.

Welcome . I've just sent my opinions off. I really enjoyed doing that – never seen or heard of the animation before but it was easy to dip my toe in the water. I'd be interested to know what particular aspect of design you're studying because your attention to detail in recreating these characters really impressed me. You're acting as a graphic artist; designer and typographer; costumier and stylist…the list goes on — good on you !

The reason most live action reboots suck is because the source material, majority of the time, was created for animation. You can get away with things in animation you can't get away with in real life, so a design that seams bad ass in animation can look absolutley stupid in real life (i.e. Kaneki from Tokyo Goul.). But event then, the characters you mentioned in the questionnaire, no matter how they look, won't translate onto film well because their actions were meant for animation. A perfect example of this is in The Last Airbender. The fights in the show were always quick and full of energy, real people can't move like that, so all the action in the movie is slow and awkward, and no amount of visual effects can fix that, it would just make it look worse.

What's also interesting is when the reverse process happens – live action to animation. Talking of costumes, when the Doctor Who animation Real Time was created, it would have been impossible to keep rendering the Sixth Doctor's multicoloured outfit, so a new all-blue, plain costume was invented. It was good but arguably the character does lack some punch without that familiar attire.

Well, I think it was a fairly good movie adaptation. In Japan it did really well in the box office at 17th place: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/intl/ja...yr=2015&p=.htm

Nextscorcese dealt with that.

To some degree but western culture, specially in the Anglo-Saxon countries, still is very resistant to foreign culture.

For example, the average Japanese reads about 350 times more manga than the average American reads comic books*. But manga sales in Brazil are not 350 times bigger than American comic book sales but approximately similar (in Brazilian bookstores manga occupies about the same space as English language comics), even though it's enormously larger as a medium. It shows the incredible bias western culture has to western cultural products (Brazil is a western country, by the way). Japanese visual culture has left a much higher impact on other Asian countries like Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines than in UK and the US.

*I took manga sales and comic book sales and divided the number of pages sold by population: in 1995 1.7 billion manga magazines were sold in Japan, each is 300 pages long on average (some are 500-700 pages long), that's about 500 billion pages read by 120 million people or 4,000 pages per person per year, in the US in 1995 it was about 120 million comic books, each about 25 pages long on average, sold to 270 million people so that's about 11 pages per person per year.

Finished answering your questionnaire. Funny that I have never actually watched Naruto even though I am a huge fan of manga in general although I am a bit elitist so I don't read or watch stuff that's popular among teenagers but not popular among the nerds.

I don't think that shounen action would work well in live action, stuff like Dragon Ball it's pretty much impossible to do in live action well (although Matrix Revolutions and some superhero movies (Man of Steel) had some fights resembling Dragon Ball). Some manga that I think would work well in live action:

Gunnm: Battle Angel Alita
Ghost in the Shell
Nausicaa (would perhaps look rather like Lynch's Dune visually)
Akira (with 200 million dollars of special effects)
Lone Wolf and Cub (already done in live action)
Vinland Saga

Gunnm and Ghost in the Shell have scheduled full scale Hollywood treatment, although James Cameron keeps saying he is going to adapt Gunnm and at this rate he is never going to do it.

Thing is manga doesn't work with "brands" like American comics do. Manga is based on individual authors and their individual style: Dragon Ball characters are drawn in Akira Toriyama's style, while animation in Japan is taken more seriously than in the west so they try to be more careful in adapting manga to maintain the visuals of the original authors. Although there are substantial changes involved in some cases.

Harder you mean.

There is plenty of great live action manga adaptations, I think that Oldboy is perhaps the best one:



The characters don't look remotely like the ones in the manga.

The world of animation to live action is truly a hit-and-miss concept. Some have worked and some are complete bombs. There are so many factors that have to come into play, including finding a worthy director who is willing to make it work and casting is key as well. Plus, story is key. To make an adaptation work, especially manga, it is important to have the core elements and if they are going to add some twists, make sure it connects well.

The good:
The Rurouni Kenshin trilogy by Keishi Otomo. Great casting, frenetic action scenes and the back-to-back second and third films have an amazing villain in Tatsuya Fujiwara's Makoto Shishio with Takeru Satoh driving the trilogy as Kenshin.
The Assassination Classroom film series. I am currently reading the manga and just started on the anime, but I got to see both live action films and they are nicely done well IMO.

The okay but could have been better:
Attack on Titan - Part 1 starts out promising but then part 2 seems rushed and isn't exactly as good as the first part.

The ugly:
Dragonball: Evolution (screenwriter Ben Ramsey made a public apology this year, seven years after its release and has since redeemed himself as an action film director with Blood and Bone being one of his best films)
There is a proposed web series called DBZ: The Light of Hope and the pilot is up online and actually looks pretty decent...heck, it's better than DB: Evolution.

I also need to make 25 posts, sorry guys...