Over the Sky | Image Gallery | Artbooks | Last Exile Aerial Log | 054
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.
IN: After all, you had planned just a business meeting in Tokyo but you intended to go back home, didn’t you?
Murata: On the contrary that restrained me from going back home for a whole year so when I eventually returned back home all the houseplants had withered already. There was no green when I arrived. A heavy sacrifice indeed (Note 4).
IN: The fact that the production was working almost in a rush to animate things in parallel up to episode 4 would make me think that the opening was some sort of conceptual summary, but now you are telling me that the episodes were produced with the opening as a model. It’s quite unusual, isn’t it?
Chigira: Episode 3 requested a total of 2 weeks drawing, but with Mr. Murata introducing some corrections along the way. In a sense Mr. Murata’s product supervision is everywhere.
Murata: There were many scenes in which I had to draw key frames in the middle of the editing of the layout. It seemed like there was no way to fix them as they requested more time and effort than expected. 24 hours had not been enough, so I had to stay at the studio another day to take care of the editing, being the designer. It was the first time I personally experienced a hard time like that (laugh).
IN: There were many things everybody could understand even without knowing the model-sheets. Being a gunman like Mullin was a traditional and historical job, however I thought that a free Vanship courier was a completely new type of job that could be understood only watching that incredible animation.
Murata: The Vanship courier job was intended as being about ten years old. I wanted to provide some more details about it.
Incredibly detailed model-sheets to support the story
IN: The mecha design is quite accurate, down to the smallest detail.
Murata: Mr. Kobayashi, who worked on the mecha design, seemed particularly worried before entering the Exile [project]. Although he liked the design of the Vanship very much, considering all the content he had to work on, he almost had the clear perception that it was a tremendous workload. To draw so detailed model-sheets was no easy task at all, so he took his time thinking about it till the very last moment.
Suzuki: The detail put into the Vanship instrumentation is one example. The need for consistency and logic are apparent on all the model-sheets. It’s just that if you start drawing model-sheets in this way, you have to keep up to such quality standards for the rest of them.
Murata: There is no cheating when it comes to machines. Just seeing things adapted into devices of this world, whatever principle they are based on, the viewer knows that it should move in this way or work in that other way. You look at an old car and you immediately know how it works. So, even if it’s just animation, it’s not that simple. I think that Mr. Kobayashi has the amazing ability to create model-sheets where the mechanics can be understood just looking carefully at them. He’s the best at that. For example, if I ask him to draw a gun he comes up with a model that really functions as a gun and at the same time is unique to that world. From a simple description of the settings he ponders over it and determines if a functionality is possible or impossible, how far he can go and where he must stop. It’s quite interesting that also Mr. Maeda had the same ability, so he produced a set of incredible model-sheets as well. “Mr. Renji, this indicator is from a Bugatti (Note 5), isn’t it?” he said as he immediately recognized some vintage stuff.
Suzuki: That’s right. Mr. Maeda asked me, being an expert [on military stuff], “What about the Silvana’s deck?” to which I answered explaining that “It’s an armoured iron deck mooring small aircraft”. With that simple piece of information he realized he needed to draw the housing for the mooring wires. He had a perfect understanding of how this world should look like.
Murata: Yes, yes. For example, with Mr Kobayashi’s sketches of the vanship during maintenance, Mr. Maeda’s description of the Silvana, we took our time to discuss the mechanics so that we could agree “let’s do it this way” and draw things quicker. Being in charge of the characters, it was interesting that we could figure out things together. Both of them were quick workers. An amazingly precise picture came up in about 1 hour and I was surprised to be asked “what about this?” while still drawing some characters.
Chigira: That’s right. Every time I saw them coming back to me I could only think of their work as SO COOL, SO COOL. What an attention to detail, they were not just sketches. They were so good.
