Fullmetal Alchemist: Sacred Star of Milos Key Animation Book.

I received the key animation book for FMA: Sacred Star of Milos a few days ago and I’d thought I’d post a few pics on the blog. The book itself is supervised by animation director Kiyotaka Oshiyama (credited with task in katakana above the rest of the ADs which credited in kanji) and character designer/chief animation director Kenichi Konishi. It has an interview between the two of them, along with a feature on how to read time sheets. The middle of the book also features an interview with Tomohisa Shimoyama, Shintarou Douge, Yoshimcihi Kameda, Gosei Oda, Daisuke Mataga, and Kazuhiko Yabumoto.The book at the end has some editorial notes by Konishi and Oshiyama, surrounded by photos of the staff.

The book is fairly extensive with key animation, key animation corrections, settings, original background art (背景原図), and layout corrections (with the untouched key animation provided to highlight the difference of before and after the layout has been corrected).

It looks like the book is running out of stock in fairly short order, which is no surprise given how good the animation is for this movie. I’d recommend grabbing a copy as soon as you can if you’re interested.

Redline Sakuga MAD

A few weeks ago I purchased the Redline Key Animation book on Amazon JP. I had planned to do a detailed breakdown of the shots that were indentified in the book and make a blog post about it, but I decided to team with XMuradX to make another sakuga MAD together. It’s a much better experience to see a MAD with the names in the bottom left than reading a technical breakdown.

The book itself is set up like an art book, using an entire page to show off one or a few key animation frames instead of a usual key animation book which would show off all of the key frames in that particular cut. As a result, you don’t get to see the full sequences that these great animators came up with Takeshi Koike’s direction, but it’s a worthwhile purchase if you enjoyed the film. I posted some pictures on my Twitter account a while back: