Kon's storyboarding was impressive (I'm struck by how wildly differently artists work) but I was delighted to discover Munro—what a hilarious and also strangely poetic piece of work. "I'm only four!" "How long have you been feeling this way?" 😭❤️
The voices were incredible. Makes me miss old films—the elocution was totally different back then. Arguably so much better, more interesting...
I'm so curious about your process for discovering/selecting work to highlight in your issues—and how long it takes to write a weekly post.
Munro is such a wonderful film -- glad we could introduce it to you! And the voices are an absolute highlight that we kind of overlooked in the write-up. Deitch's son Seth voiced Munro, and every other voice was reportedly done by Howard Morris, who's really just world-class throughout.
As for our process, it's pretty messy. A lot of it comes down to personal interest and preference -- we find Satoshi Kon and Munro fascinating, for example. We look for good stories, and for angles that other publications might not have offered before. Also, it's not very tidy, but we do maintain a list of potential topics that we check each week. Some stuff (like the Madeline write-up) is decided and written at the last second, though.
One other key is that our Substack and our Twitter account feed each other in unexpected ways. We've discovered so much during the almost-two-years we've done @ani_obsessive on Twitter. If something has resonated on Twitter, or if there's animation or a story unsuited to tweets that we've been dying to share, it usually gets put on the list.
The bulk of each issue is usually written on Friday and then over the weekend, these days. Writing is generally done by one person (that's me, who also handles the communication!). Images, news gathering and other tasks get divided up. Not sure how the hours break down, but it's more than you might expect. Segmenting the newsletter has been *crucial* to making this work. It may look long when it's done, but creating each section feels like a sprint. That sense of hitting milestones through quick bursts of effort keeps momentum and morale up.
For "written at last second" or just over a weekend, the issues are impressively edited. I empathize on the "more than you might expect" in terms of hours in. Have you ever done an AMA? I have so many more questions! 😅 Like how many are on the team? Are you all friends who are animation nerds? What was the origin story for Animation Obsessive? Where is ani_obsessive based? etc...I can't be the only one?
Thank you! And, believe it or not, you're one of the few people who's ever asked!
We're good friends who also happen to be family. The world of animation has always interested us -- we've been fans of folks like Kōji Yamamura since the 2000s. The last couple of years have been a crash course for us, though.
Back in August 2019, we started sharing animation on Twitter as a hobby side-project, partly as a way to recuperate after a long, draining job experience. We wanted a place to talk about the animation we loved. Especially obscure stuff like Yamamura's work, Soviet cartoons and Chinese films like Feeling from Mountain and Water. We figured the absolute ceiling for it would be around 5,000 followers, if we were lucky.
It's more than an understatement to say that Animation Obsessive surpassed our expectations. Even our first tweet did better than we thought it would. So, we just decided to keep pushing and try to grow it until we couldn't anymore. Once the pandemic exploded, we were fortunate to have Twitter to keep us busy. Every day, we still look at how far the account has come and kind of marvel at what's happened.
We branched into Substack more recently, starting back in February 2021. Covering animation in a more long-form way is something we'd considered since early 2020, but we didn't think blogs or Medium would work. Substack seemed like it had a bit more potential, although we kept our expectations extremely low. Like the Twitter account, our newsletter keeps growing, so we're seeing how far it can go!
As for who's involved, Twitter is mostly just the two of us, and we do most of the Substack work as well. When you take into account the whole newsletter process (ideas, proofreading, etc.), three people contribute each week. It's definitely a team effort and would be too much for any of us to handle solo.
Where do you guys even get all the production materials from? I collect animation related (art)books myself, so I think I have a reasonable grasp on what the market has to offer. But the content you guys post (e.g. concept art of niche feature films from China, cels from Russian early post war animation) looks like you actually happen to own the physical objects that are then being scanned and posted.
Notwithstanding the above: I really appreciate what you guys have been doing. I haven't been into animation for all "that long", but even I noticed obvious divide between animation fandoms, e.g. west vs. east. It's great to see people who are passionate about animation no matter its origin, because, as ironic as this might sound when taking the concept of the modern "open minded and inclusive" world into consideration, it strikes me as a comparitively rare disposition .
Thank you so much! Staying open and curious is really important to us, and we hope we've helped to expand some people's horizons about what animation (and art) can be. That's really been our goal from the start.
As for the production material, it comes from a vast number of different sources, online and off. A lot of it isn't available in English, or is hidden in out-of-the-way places. For example, we shared some storyboards for The Snow Queen in our latest piece for Substack -- those came from the digital collection of Moscow's State Central Film Museum. We can't say we haven't taken a hair dryer and an X-Acto knife to an art book in the past, either.
Kon's storyboarding was impressive (I'm struck by how wildly differently artists work) but I was delighted to discover Munro—what a hilarious and also strangely poetic piece of work. "I'm only four!" "How long have you been feeling this way?" 😭❤️
The voices were incredible. Makes me miss old films—the elocution was totally different back then. Arguably so much better, more interesting...
I'm so curious about your process for discovering/selecting work to highlight in your issues—and how long it takes to write a weekly post.
Munro is such a wonderful film -- glad we could introduce it to you! And the voices are an absolute highlight that we kind of overlooked in the write-up. Deitch's son Seth voiced Munro, and every other voice was reportedly done by Howard Morris, who's really just world-class throughout.
As for our process, it's pretty messy. A lot of it comes down to personal interest and preference -- we find Satoshi Kon and Munro fascinating, for example. We look for good stories, and for angles that other publications might not have offered before. Also, it's not very tidy, but we do maintain a list of potential topics that we check each week. Some stuff (like the Madeline write-up) is decided and written at the last second, though.
One other key is that our Substack and our Twitter account feed each other in unexpected ways. We've discovered so much during the almost-two-years we've done @ani_obsessive on Twitter. If something has resonated on Twitter, or if there's animation or a story unsuited to tweets that we've been dying to share, it usually gets put on the list.
The bulk of each issue is usually written on Friday and then over the weekend, these days. Writing is generally done by one person (that's me, who also handles the communication!). Images, news gathering and other tasks get divided up. Not sure how the hours break down, but it's more than you might expect. Segmenting the newsletter has been *crucial* to making this work. It may look long when it's done, but creating each section feels like a sprint. That sense of hitting milestones through quick bursts of effort keeps momentum and morale up.
For "written at last second" or just over a weekend, the issues are impressively edited. I empathize on the "more than you might expect" in terms of hours in. Have you ever done an AMA? I have so many more questions! 😅 Like how many are on the team? Are you all friends who are animation nerds? What was the origin story for Animation Obsessive? Where is ani_obsessive based? etc...I can't be the only one?
Thank you! And, believe it or not, you're one of the few people who's ever asked!
We're good friends who also happen to be family. The world of animation has always interested us -- we've been fans of folks like Kōji Yamamura since the 2000s. The last couple of years have been a crash course for us, though.
Back in August 2019, we started sharing animation on Twitter as a hobby side-project, partly as a way to recuperate after a long, draining job experience. We wanted a place to talk about the animation we loved. Especially obscure stuff like Yamamura's work, Soviet cartoons and Chinese films like Feeling from Mountain and Water. We figured the absolute ceiling for it would be around 5,000 followers, if we were lucky.
It's more than an understatement to say that Animation Obsessive surpassed our expectations. Even our first tweet did better than we thought it would. So, we just decided to keep pushing and try to grow it until we couldn't anymore. Once the pandemic exploded, we were fortunate to have Twitter to keep us busy. Every day, we still look at how far the account has come and kind of marvel at what's happened.
We branched into Substack more recently, starting back in February 2021. Covering animation in a more long-form way is something we'd considered since early 2020, but we didn't think blogs or Medium would work. Substack seemed like it had a bit more potential, although we kept our expectations extremely low. Like the Twitter account, our newsletter keeps growing, so we're seeing how far it can go!
As for who's involved, Twitter is mostly just the two of us, and we do most of the Substack work as well. When you take into account the whole newsletter process (ideas, proofreading, etc.), three people contribute each week. It's definitely a team effort and would be too much for any of us to handle solo.
Where do you guys even get all the production materials from? I collect animation related (art)books myself, so I think I have a reasonable grasp on what the market has to offer. But the content you guys post (e.g. concept art of niche feature films from China, cels from Russian early post war animation) looks like you actually happen to own the physical objects that are then being scanned and posted.
Notwithstanding the above: I really appreciate what you guys have been doing. I haven't been into animation for all "that long", but even I noticed obvious divide between animation fandoms, e.g. west vs. east. It's great to see people who are passionate about animation no matter its origin, because, as ironic as this might sound when taking the concept of the modern "open minded and inclusive" world into consideration, it strikes me as a comparitively rare disposition .
Thank you so much! Staying open and curious is really important to us, and we hope we've helped to expand some people's horizons about what animation (and art) can be. That's really been our goal from the start.
As for the production material, it comes from a vast number of different sources, online and off. A lot of it isn't available in English, or is hidden in out-of-the-way places. For example, we shared some storyboards for The Snow Queen in our latest piece for Substack -- those came from the digital collection of Moscow's State Central Film Museum. We can't say we haven't taken a hair dryer and an X-Acto knife to an art book in the past, either.
Wow so much of this is amazing. Thanks a ton for the peek into origin story and for sharing who you are.
This is great to read. Well done guys.