I briefly touched upon my thoughts on Toshiharu Sugie in my Fairy Tail Animation Analysis a while back but now that i've had a lot of time to analyse his style i feel it's time i extrapolated upon my opinion of him. To start off here is the first of the series of sakuga MAD's i made of his work.
Toshiharu Sugie is one of the more prolific freelance animators around nowadays. Besides his work as one of the main animators on the first Fairy Tail series, he's known for working on a large number of shows at any given time. This is highlighted by the fact that while working on FT, he somehow found time to work on a lot of other shows which is probably how his style developed to the point it has in terms of how he generally tends to approach animating his cuts. As a fight animator his style i would say is one that makes the arcs of movement very clear. The sense of flow is generally great in his scenes though at times on some shows (a couple episodes of Saint Seiya: Omega) his work is hampered by bad storyboards. I personally don't think his work is very impressive in terms of his individual key frames per se but what i do love about his work is that his approach to animation is one which favours good movement over good individual key frames. This is the main thing that distinguishes his animation from the work of others. You can very much see that in the above video. Theres a very elastic quality to the movement as well as is seen in the cut from Fairy Tail episode 16 which depicts Gray and Lyon's fight near the end of that early arc.
Now lets go through each aspect f his style so that you too can spot a cut from him when you see it (not that it could be that hard after 4 sakuga MADs lol). The first thing we will look at is something he doesn't incorporate as often these days as he mostly does action but it's something i like nevertheless. The Toshiharu Sugie mad face. It's really quite something to behold.
While he obviously isn't the only animator that draws faces of this nature, i do find it amusing how exaggerated and comical they can get. Examples of places this is used often include One Piece where it is used liberally so this isn't the most distinguishing feature of his animation but an aspect nevertheless.
When it comes to Sugie's version of effects such as earth and debris, he's close to more recent folk like Nozomu Abe but with his own timing to make the debris move very differently to how Abe does it. The above gifs give the best example of his debris effects in action. I have seen him do it differently in stuff like Mass Effect Paragon Lost but it didn't really look as good as this variation. In that version the debris is more cuboid and doesn't look as good in motion. It almost always looks like as soon as the impact happens the debris flies out very quickly then slows down significantly to give us a clear view of it then the action speeds up again. In the instances where timing is more natural like in this example, it looks perfectly fine as well.
The next this that he does thats unique to him is how he animates smoke/dust when a character or an object is moving at high speeds. It is one of the things he uses A LOT so when you see this in an episode he worked on it most likely will end up being his work.
Unlike other animators, his variation of this effect tends to stay fairly uniform across all his work. In when the smoke starts to expand however he also does it in a very uniform style. The one sequence that will give the best example is this one from Saint Seiya Omega.
As you can see, after the initial impact the triangles expand into smoke clouds with the jagged edges coming in on itself to make the shaded detail. This type of detail is evident in his explosions as well. The last thing in terms of his effects in the manner in which he portrays spark effects when two blades clash. I personally enjoy his approach more so than many other animators because of the detail he puts into every single spark and how such a detailed effect makes the clashes seem more intense.
Next up is Sugie's explosions. The explosions range from 2 different styles. The first is a variation of the smoke cloud effects he does. Here's some examples of it.
I tend to view this as the flat variation whereas the second variation looks more 3 dimensional. There is a lot more detail and it looks a lot better. He only tends to use it on movies or higher profile shows. Heres some examples of it.
These are the main general aspects i look for when looking through an episode he worked on and when they aren't present it's hard to tell what he does in an episode. In these cases i tend to look for his character animation which may overall be one of his weaker points but he gets around it with the way he uses motion arcs as i mentioned earlier. Heres a few examples.
Thats the basic jist of it anyway. Overall i think he's a pretty solid animator who generally does good work. The worst cuts i've seen of his were in the very early Fairy Tail episodes but after looking through the vast majority of his work over the past decade i'd say he produced a lot of memorable cuts. He's not one of those guys that shows off constantly so he's always getting attention but he's part of the segment of the animation industry in japan that just put out solid work consistently for shows that really needed it which is why he stood out so much in Fairy Tail alongside guys like Hirokazu Hisayuki and Katsunori Kikuchi. As a guy that started when the industry was mostly trotting out mecha show after mecha show you can see his style is one that evolved to basically be something he could produce quickly but still look fairly good. I like his work quite a bit basically. Thats it for now anyway folks. Next post will be the second part of the DC Animation posts. Might be a week or so since i'm reviewing 10 movies rather than just 3 in that one. See y'all next time and enjoy my most recent Sugie MADs. Peace.
Toshiharu Sugie is one of the more prolific freelance animators around nowadays. Besides his work as one of the main animators on the first Fairy Tail series, he's known for working on a large number of shows at any given time. This is highlighted by the fact that while working on FT, he somehow found time to work on a lot of other shows which is probably how his style developed to the point it has in terms of how he generally tends to approach animating his cuts. As a fight animator his style i would say is one that makes the arcs of movement very clear. The sense of flow is generally great in his scenes though at times on some shows (a couple episodes of Saint Seiya: Omega) his work is hampered by bad storyboards. I personally don't think his work is very impressive in terms of his individual key frames per se but what i do love about his work is that his approach to animation is one which favours good movement over good individual key frames. This is the main thing that distinguishes his animation from the work of others. You can very much see that in the above video. Theres a very elastic quality to the movement as well as is seen in the cut from Fairy Tail episode 16 which depicts Gray and Lyon's fight near the end of that early arc.
Now lets go through each aspect f his style so that you too can spot a cut from him when you see it (not that it could be that hard after 4 sakuga MADs lol). The first thing we will look at is something he doesn't incorporate as often these days as he mostly does action but it's something i like nevertheless. The Toshiharu Sugie mad face. It's really quite something to behold.
While he obviously isn't the only animator that draws faces of this nature, i do find it amusing how exaggerated and comical they can get. Examples of places this is used often include One Piece where it is used liberally so this isn't the most distinguishing feature of his animation but an aspect nevertheless.
When it comes to Sugie's version of effects such as earth and debris, he's close to more recent folk like Nozomu Abe but with his own timing to make the debris move very differently to how Abe does it. The above gifs give the best example of his debris effects in action. I have seen him do it differently in stuff like Mass Effect Paragon Lost but it didn't really look as good as this variation. In that version the debris is more cuboid and doesn't look as good in motion. It almost always looks like as soon as the impact happens the debris flies out very quickly then slows down significantly to give us a clear view of it then the action speeds up again. In the instances where timing is more natural like in this example, it looks perfectly fine as well.
The next this that he does thats unique to him is how he animates smoke/dust when a character or an object is moving at high speeds. It is one of the things he uses A LOT so when you see this in an episode he worked on it most likely will end up being his work.
Unlike other animators, his variation of this effect tends to stay fairly uniform across all his work. In when the smoke starts to expand however he also does it in a very uniform style. The one sequence that will give the best example is this one from Saint Seiya Omega.
As you can see, after the initial impact the triangles expand into smoke clouds with the jagged edges coming in on itself to make the shaded detail. This type of detail is evident in his explosions as well. The last thing in terms of his effects in the manner in which he portrays spark effects when two blades clash. I personally enjoy his approach more so than many other animators because of the detail he puts into every single spark and how such a detailed effect makes the clashes seem more intense.
Next up is Sugie's explosions. The explosions range from 2 different styles. The first is a variation of the smoke cloud effects he does. Here's some examples of it.
I tend to view this as the flat variation whereas the second variation looks more 3 dimensional. There is a lot more detail and it looks a lot better. He only tends to use it on movies or higher profile shows. Heres some examples of it.
These are the main general aspects i look for when looking through an episode he worked on and when they aren't present it's hard to tell what he does in an episode. In these cases i tend to look for his character animation which may overall be one of his weaker points but he gets around it with the way he uses motion arcs as i mentioned earlier. Heres a few examples.
Thats the basic jist of it anyway. Overall i think he's a pretty solid animator who generally does good work. The worst cuts i've seen of his were in the very early Fairy Tail episodes but after looking through the vast majority of his work over the past decade i'd say he produced a lot of memorable cuts. He's not one of those guys that shows off constantly so he's always getting attention but he's part of the segment of the animation industry in japan that just put out solid work consistently for shows that really needed it which is why he stood out so much in Fairy Tail alongside guys like Hirokazu Hisayuki and Katsunori Kikuchi. As a guy that started when the industry was mostly trotting out mecha show after mecha show you can see his style is one that evolved to basically be something he could produce quickly but still look fairly good. I like his work quite a bit basically. Thats it for now anyway folks. Next post will be the second part of the DC Animation posts. Might be a week or so since i'm reviewing 10 movies rather than just 3 in that one. See y'all next time and enjoy my most recent Sugie MADs. Peace.
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