Meet the ani­ma­tion genius behind Ghost in the Shell

A qui­et­ly influ­en­tial fig­ure­head in the world of ani­mé, Shōji Kawamori is a direc­tor, cre­ator and mech design­er who is respon­si­ble for shap­ing a lot of how we visu­alise the bonds between humans and machines. A co-cre­ator and direc­tor of the long-run­ning series Super Dimen­sion­al Fortress MACROSS, Kawamori made his direc­to­r­i­al debut at the age of 23 with the fea­ture film Macross: Do You Remem­ber Love? work­ing on all ele­ments of the film, from con­cept and sto­ry com­po­si­tion to art direction.

Through his work in films such as Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost In The Shell, his fea­ture film Macross Plus, co-direct­ed with Cow­boy Bebop cre­ator Shinichi­ro Watan­abe, Kawamori’s designs have had a huge impact on movies in the west as well as in the east. With mecha designs that mix expres­sive­ness with sleek func­tion­al­i­ty, the style of his ani­mat­ed machines has been trans­lat­ed to west­ern audi­ences through var­i­ous means, even as one of the design­ers of the Dia­clone toy line, which lat­er became known as Transformers.

LWLies: There’s been a boom in the pop­u­lar­i­ty of ani­mé in the west, with some west­ern stu­dios even mak­ing their own. Has this had any impact on how the indus­try oper­ates, or how you nav­i­gate it? 

Shōji Kawamori: I think the evo­lu­tion is hap­pen­ing very fast, espe­cial­ly in terms of 3D CG ani­ma­tion. There are some movies that are in an Amer­i­can com­ic book style, but has some influ­ence from Japan­ese ani­mé in terms of the ani­ma­tion tim­ing. And it looks like those influ­ences have trans­lat­ed well. I think in the near future, nation­al bor­ders have less mean­ing and the evo­lu­tion will devel­op at a much faster pace, as the cre­ators around the world will be com­pet­ing or coop­er­at­ing with one another.

Many ani­ma­tion stu­dios have moved on from paint­ing back­grounds on paper to digi­tis­ing them or using com­put­er gen­er­at­ed imagery, often due to restric­tions in bud­get. Do you see a future for hand-drawn animation? 

I think hand-drawn ani­ma­tion is a very attrac­tive method of visu­al expres­sion and I am still very fond of it. How­ev­er, from an indus­try per­spec­tive, I imag­ine in about 10 or 20 years, it will be head­ing in the direc­tion of kabu­ki or noh or oth­er very old tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese cul­ture, as there are so many cas­es that whol­ly depend on the lev­el of each artist’s spe­cialised craftsmanship.

As the form has become more digi­tised, how has the process of ani­ma­tion changed with it?

I feel that digi­ti­sa­tion is very attrac­tive for my work in ani­ma­tion because there will be more tech­ni­cal free­dom for cam­era work, or I can add more com­plex­i­ties in the mechan­i­cal expres­sions. In the mid­dle of these changes hap­pen­ing in the pro­duc­tion process, a lot of con­fu­sion arose when the dig­i­tal work and hand-drawn work both became mixed togeth­er. But I enjoy change, so I over­came this con­fu­sion by just enjoy­ing the new process. By now it seems that a lot of staff have got­ten used to using both of this meth­ods in bet­ter ways, they are coexisting.

Have you made the move to draw­ing digitally? 

Usu­al­ly I still hand draw sim­ple rough sketch­es or design ideas, but when I focus on fix­ing or fin­ish­ing the designs, there are many cas­es where I use an iPad now.

Since the ​’90s, many projects have used CG ani­ma­tion along side the hand drawn, and the dif­fer­ence can some­times be obvi­ous. Do you think the two can ever be ful­ly inte­grat­ed together? 

I think CG and hand-drawn ani­ma­tion are going to be more and more fused. There are more cas­es where the artists brush up their work by hand over CG ani­ma­tions, and that tech­nique is becom­ing the norm. So it’s already going becom­ing a fusion of both.

Ghost in the Shell is known for its anx­i­ety and para­noia around the increas­ing sym­bio­sis between tech­nol­o­gy and man. How did you look to express this? 

I main­ly designed attack heli­copters and a gun­ship for that film. It was not just a mecha, so when mak­ing it I imag­ined the wings of rap­tors such as hawks or eagles. And I also added a bit of Russ­ian flavour. It’s more a real­is­tic mil­i­tary mecha style that you don’t often see, but it also changes. By includ­ing the process of trans­for­ma­tion, I tried to design it so that it this trans­for­ma­tion has an impact that speaks to your sub­con­scious mind.

Since the time of Ghost in the Shell and the first iter­a­tions of the Macross series and its sequels, the inter­net and social media have become dom­i­nant forces. What changes has this brought to how you envi­sion futur­is­tic designs?

There should be a dif­fer­ence between real world prod­uct designs, and the designs in the films. How­ev­er, there is not enough dis­tance between art­works from design­ers around the world, with the inter­net and social media becom­ing so pop­u­lar. There’s a pos­i­tive side to it, that peo­ple have bet­ter skills and bet­ter qual­i­ty over­all because of that abil­i­ty to share. The neg­a­tive side is that as a result all the art­works are start­ing to look the same. Some­times it feels like cur­rent soci­ety has so much con­tent so that they will be swal­lowed up by this sea of infor­ma­tion and dis­ap­pear. I think we have to be care­ful about dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing from oth­er works and at the same time keep­ing in mind the func­tion­al­i­ty, of the designs, and cre­at­ing some­thing that appeal’s to people’s emo­tions and minds.

Sim­ply hav­ing a com­put­er cal­cu­late the prop­er answers to the aero­dy­nam­ics of cars and air­planes means all the designs end up look­ing sim­i­lar, espe­cial­ly if you only focus on func­tion­al­i­ty. So I try to come up with some­thing that would move peo­ple, as well as work­ing on to ful­fil the func­tion­al needs. And at the same time, we need to express the theme of the work.

Ana­log inter­faces seem to be key in works like Macross Plus, there’s a lot of detail in how these machines func­tion. How do you bal­ance style and func­tion­al­i­ty; the real world and the con­text of the story? 

Ana­log inter­faces are main­ly impor­tant when mak­ing films. In film, it doesn’t look inter­est­ing if you don’t visu­alise the how the main char­ac­ters in the sto­ry inter­act with mecha. So you usu­al­ly have more ana­log inter­face. If it’s a nov­el, you can express its func­tions and prin­ci­pals in the sen­tences and talk about them in there. So the prin­ci­ple of how a dis­play works or how it sends out the sig­nals with­in the brain. But if it’s a film, the audi­ence has to see and know those at a glance, so ana­log inter­faces are heav­i­ly used.

Nowa­days it is real­ly dif­fi­cult to find bal­ance with the con­text of the real world. There is no need for such exag­ger­at­ed design if you want it to be ​‘real’, but it doesn’t look inter­est­ing. So, for exam­ple, I try to set up a par­al­lel world, or come up with some laws in that world, or a set­ting where AI is dan­ger­ous. If I’m work­ing as the direc­tor of the film, then I think out and invent the con­text or set­tings. If I am only work­ing on the design for cer­tain film or work, I try to think out some­thing inter­est­ing that match­es to the world view or set­ting that oth­er peo­ple made, and how peo­ple could catch on to that prin­ci­ple just by watch­ing it.

These inter­faces also rep­re­sent a point of con­tact between human and machine. Have you found that the bal­ance between the two has shifted?

There are many young peo­ple who are addict­ed to mobile phones. It used to be Per­son­al Com­put­ers a while back, but now you can car­ry them any­time now, so many peo­ple claim that you can’t live with­out them. In my case, if there’s some time to spare dur­ing work, I like to have a ​“no inter­face day”. I cher­ish my time of not inter­fac­ing with any­thing, and try to retrieve sens­es that humankind would used to have from time to time. But this tech­nol­o­gy is essen­tial in cur­rent soci­ety, and I wouldn’t deny any fur­ther developments.

For you, what’s the most impor­tant part of cre­at­ing a machine? 

Just ded­i­cat­ing your­self to orig­i­nal­i­ty. Orig­i­nal­i­ty in the design, and in the world it lives in. And, as I men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, I would just like to keep cre­at­ing things that appeal to peo­ple emotionally.

The film sea­son Ani­mé Human Machines hap­pens at Bar­bi­can Cin­e­ma from 12 – 30 Sep­tem­ber. Shōji Kawamori will give an illus­trat­ed talk on 17 Sept and intro­duce Ghost In the Shell on 18 Sept. Ani­mé Human Machines is part of the Barbican’s Life Rewired season.