Yutaka Nakamura

   Yutaka Nakamura is an animator, designer and cinematographer with works including key animation on projects such as Cowboy Bebop, Space Dandy, Fullmetal Alchemist, Soul Eater, and many more. Nakamura is especially well known for his dynamic and unique action sequences, and is considered in animation circles as one of the greatest action cinematographers of his generation (No surprise there). Having the freedom to storyboard his own scenes, he mixed a unique action cinematography and animation timing to create distinctive action scenes in animation. One of his most notable animation works includes the last action scene in the movie Sword of the Stranger.

  I had first chanced upon the man whilst researching Stranger of the Sword... well, more specifically, I had first come across him in one of LeSean Thomas' many spotlight posts in the past but had only decided to take proper notice of him during this period whilst working on The Bond of Four. And I have since then heavily referred to his works whilst working on my own animation's cinematography, most specifically for my fight scenes. Granted, I will never be able to do anything as gorgeously complex as any of his works, but it has most certainly inspired me to push myself just a little harder whilst figuring out the choreography for the fight scenes themselves, especially during the final scene itself.

   One thing that I would absolutely love to learn more about is his process in storyboarding such incredibly detailed fight sequences. Does he use any references whatsoever? I mean, I can certainly believe that the man has been able to choreograph scenes from scratch after years of experience, and again, that is just so inspiring to us animators. Just, what is his thought process exactly when working on a scene? Everything is completely done traditionally and by hand, the details, the perspective shots, everything. Especially in a day when computer animation technology is being so heavily utilised, masters such as Yutaka Nakamura still storyboard and animate his scenes frame by frame and with paper and pencil... If I am right, only the colors and backgrounds are done with computers (Just a little adjusting here and there really to further enhance camera movements during a certain scene, nothing too extreme).

   Animation fans have found ways to identify which animator works on which scenes in a film or show, and one of Nakamura's defining qualities when it comes to his works is how his debris design tends to look in his scenes. Everything that explodes or blows up will have giant cubes flying all over the place, it is notably blocky if not more cartoonish in appearance when compared to how debris might be drawn by other animators if you look closely enough. And another one is the fact that his weapon animations tends to move as fluidly as water (Refer to the very first gif set above or even my write up on the Stranger of the Sword for examples). There is also something particularly distinctive about his camera work, which you can once again see from the gif examples, and to this day, is the one thing that still leaves me absolutely floored no matter how many times I look his works over for reference and inspiration. There seems to be a noticeable focus on feet in his camera works, which is certainly not something many others tend to focus on too much in any sort of media when you think about it.

   I also do feel that a lot of details are sacrificed for the sake of more quality (Or fluid) animation, which makes me all the more appreciative (If I appreciate this guy any further, percentage approval would be infinity, to be honest) over the fact that Nakamura pays an equal amount of attention to character details as he does with his animation and complex choreography. The details on a character are never so heavily sacrificed that they would become completely unrecognisable during certain scenes. A lot of animators think that such a thing could be sacrificed during certain scenes, particularly during more fast-paced scenes (And I believe that FLCL might have been guilty of that a couple of times). And so once again, this places Nakamura above many other big name animators, seeing that he considers every single detail and places so much love and care to every thing he does.