An animated bunch

In most people’s minds, the complex of office towers at Eastwood City is thought to mostly house call center operators, maybe a few real estate brokers, perhaps some executive types as well.

But surprise, surprise: Cyber One Tower, part of the IBM Complex that was one of the first developments in the now-thriving hub of Megaworld’s Eastwood City, actually houses a group of artists and computer graphic designers who are making the world safe for anime.

Specifically, they are the 100 or so Filipino artists who draw and animate hit Japanese TV shows like Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon for Toei Animation Phils. Inc.

Most of them are fairly fresh out of college, young and talented, and lucky enough to land a steady job with one of the most stable animation studios of Japan. Toei started outsourcing its animation work to Manila back in 1986 and, through a partnership with EEI Construction, the connection has only become stronger. EEI’s role was mostly finding and training local talent. Back in those days, clear plastic cels were shipped back and forth between Tokyo and Manila; now it’s mostly email files zipping back and forth. And since then, Toei has relocated its offices from the corner of Ortigas Ave. and C-5 to the more lively setting of Eastwood City. Toei now owns the Philippines animation branch 100 percent (EEI’s no longer in the picture, though their general manager and human resources head still work for Toei), and it’s successful enough to keep a staff of 100 artists cranking out the cartoons year-round.

One of the veterans at Toei is Jay “Jose” Fournier, a key animator who leads me through the offices of Toei. If the average age around here is 20 to 23, well, Jay’s maybe a decade older. So he knows all the ropes.

First, there are key animators. They meet with Japanese artists who present storyboards for the upcoming shows; their job is to do rough layouts and drawings that will be translated into animation boards for coloring and scanning.

The in-between artists (or IBs) complete the actual animation movement between panels, after cleaning up the initial rough drawings. The completed animation is checked by a reviewer, then it’s off to the painting section.

The colorists work with a variety of tools, though computer programs like Paintman and good old Photoshop are favored. They can add depth and detail to line drawings, using illustration techniques subtle enough to suggest a watercolor painting, or brightly-lit enough to bring to mind high-tech Tokyo nights.

I watch the artists bent over flat, lighted computer panels, working with computer stylus pens to render changes in each succeeding frame’s action or add washes of color to flat drawings. It seems a lot different from the old days of Claymation and flip books. I ask Jay if animation’s any easier to finish these days, with all the technology. He says it’s slightly quicker, but it still takes about two to four weeks to polish every half-hour cartoon episode.

It’s refreshing to see that, at its heart, anime still relies on draftsmanship: each artist knows his role and specialty, and they think carefully about each move. The drawings are still made by humans, after all. Computers can’t do everything (thankfully, otherwise these guys would be out of work).

I was also surprised to find a number of woman animators. Gerardine De Los Reyes is one of them: she took her love of drawing and anime shows like Dragonball Z and turned it into a career. “I found out there was a studio here that made the very cartoons that got me hooked.” She finished a multimedia arts program at St. Manille College (“It wasn’t animation per se, it was a hodgepodge of things : photography, 3D graphics, web design”) and learned the rest at Toei.

Like most employees here, she’s nurturing a pet project, and dreams of creating her own story someday. Last summer, she helped with a drawing workshop for kids. “I would teach them how to draw anime characters they see on TV, give them tips on how I do my drawings.”

Other employees I met, like Alwyn Cruz, Philip Edward Reyes and Nicky Albert Quemado, are working in Toei’s newest division, 3D graphics, which tackles special videos and advertising projects. Some, like Philip, took up engineering before doing animation. It helps to have a good sense of space and proportion here. Others, like Alwyn, whose dad is a painter, followed in their parents’ artistic footsteps in a more high-tech setting.

John Paul Eli Tan took up engineering as well, then studied animation: “I found it was the only type of work I really enjoyed.”

We hear about animators earning top dollar at Disney and Pixar, but Toei animators start out with a humble salary — somewhere around P8,000 a month — a figure they can build up by doing “quota work,” earning bonuses for surpassing a monthly quota of drawings. There are other perks, such as yearly bonuses and cash prizes for most productive department. But Jay is more philosophical on matters of money: “It’s really the passion” that keeps animators going.

However, “a stable salary is a bonus for anyone,” he quickly adds. The fact that Toei has survived through the Asian crisis of 1997 and other turmoils — while other foreign animation studios have folded up and pulled out — says a lot about the company’s commitment, and the commitment of its artists.

And it doesn’t hurt to be in a high-tech, high-profile environment like Eastwood City. The animators rattle off the things they like about Eastwood (“The movies…” “The video arcade…” “The book stores…” “The ambience and security…” “The mall is pet-friendly…”), but they point out they don’t hang out at the bars and eateries so much when the working day is done (“Beer’s too expensive!”).

Actually, as tempting as it is to think of artists as “night people,” the folks at Toei are nine-to-sixers (“if they can help it,” says Fournier) just like any regular-hour office workers. They don’t have the luxury of partying hard every night, and they can’t really be lumped in with the call center crowd whose workday begins at around 10 p.m. Perhaps there will always be “day” people and “night” people. And it’s better that way, maybe.

It makes for an interesting mix, with the presence of these artists, some of whom have watched Eastwood City grow from a small industrial park to the “live-work-play enclave” that it is today. I wonder if Megaworld Corp. chairman Andrew Tan originally foresaw such a roster of professionals that would include call center operators, fitness experts, restaurateurs and animators — all nestled in one Filipino Sim City of work and all-night fun.