Over the Sky | Image Gallery | Artbooks | Last Exile Aerial Log | 053
Murata: Oh, not really. At first all the details of the story were not fixed yet, so I was told it revolved around Alex and his life devoted to battles. As soon as I created his character design I submitted it, however the scenario for the story had already changed so they hurried me to introduce some corrections.
All the crew members of the Silvana needed more “modern” outfits than those of the people from Anatoray or Disith, so their military uniforms were inspired by the industrial revolution era. They resembled those of the special forces who receive the most advanced equipment, like experimental units. Although I adapted the design - originally intended for the outer space - so that it looked good for the sky, the 3D staff introduced techniques to draw the sky and the clouds that I was not familiar with. Therefore some already finished characters and mecha did not integrate well and had to be redrawn. That’s when I turned to Mr. Chigira for a consultation.
Chigira: We talked about what we wanted it to look like and came up with various sketches to make it looking awesome again. Indeed the setting was difficult to work with, but I am glad we chose the sky.
Murata: To make the fight scenes look great on screen I thought that the sensation of speed is the most important one to give the true feeling of flight. If you think about it, it is impossible to do it in space, that’s why I strongly insisted to move the setting to the sky, where a small fast aircraft like a vanship can give the actual sensation of speed. In fact, it is the movement of things in the background that produces the sensation of the clouds and the sky moving. The 3D staff worked hard on this. I only identified this opportunity from the start, but it was the effort of Mr. Chigira and the staff that eventually transformed this idea into reality.
Chigira: That would have been something extremely hard to accomplish in the past, but at that point with the 3D we were able to properly include the moving clouds background.
The opening video, a comprehensive worldview
Murata: Small ideas were continuously coming out because Mr Hirata (Note 3) almost every single day showed up and insisted in telling me “I made this” about the opening.
IN: Even looking just at the scene on the landing deck, it makes you realize it is a critical operation because you have aircraft floating in mid-air.
Murata: That maneuvre is impossible if you fly only by dynamic lift. In outer space such a critical operation is quite complicated. Here I wanted to reproduce that sensation of floating.
Chigira: The opening became the touchstone for our work. Since it was so packed as to say “let’s show everything at once!” it put the staff under pressure, although in a good way.
Murata: Until then, most of the staff did not know what kind of setting we were working on, so I think that the opening footage was able to provide a common view to the whole staff on what we wanted to actually achieve. That’s it. It was a good thing that Mr. Hirata sat next to me. Seeing his work in the making, I could really talk about many things, for example the movement of the clouds. Since it is water vapour, I wanted it to move in a certain way. In that case Mr. Hirata exclaimed “No no, it’s better this way. Forgive me for today”, so I fixed the movement the way I was told, working very hard till midnight and then I came back to him earnestly asking “what about this”. It was a really good thing that we could help each other like that.
Chigira: He changed it completely despite saying “I fixed it slightly”.
Murata: Seeing the clouds moving and the wind blowing during the opening I felt like I had to keep up with that example so I remade the design, also the 3D group did the same so it seemed like we were competing against each other. I really wanted to make something at least as good as theirs.
Chigira: Oh yes, all the people involved in LAST EXILE worked with such feelings.
IN: Why did you choose to entrust Mr. Hirata instead of dealing with it by yourself?
Chigira: There is always a lot of work to do before the airing. You can’t do it all by yourself. That’s why it is fundamental to involve other people. On the contrary doing it all by yourself will eventually take you to a standstill. Looking at how things usually end up, if the director spends too much time on the OP and ED the rest of his work is delayed, so we came to the conclusion to leave them to the other people so that I could focus on the rest. Nevertheless, it happened that the first episode was late, so I had to ask Mr. Hirata for help.
Murata: I remember. The script of the part A of the first episode was completed on January 6th.
Chigira: I remember it well, after all it just happened last year (laugh).
Murata: Yes, how can I forget it (laugh).
Suzuki: Looking at the actual work, episodes 1 and 2 took longer than the rest of the episodes.
Murata: For instance episode 4 had few characters appearing and the script was prepared in advance rather quickly, however at that time the characters for episode 1 and 2 were not ready yet. So when the script for episode 1 came out it startled me that all the characters from the Silvana had to appear already. There were even characters nobody asked me for, so I almost wanted to die. At first the crew members of the Silvana had low priority because they were requested at a later time, but then the production told me “please provide all the crew members as we want to show them all from the very start”. That surprised me for sure as I replied “Nobody told me about that before”.
