アニメーションラウンドテーブル～Knights of the Animation Roundtable～

*English translation below

アレです！またブログを書くことになりました。1か月前くらいに書くべきでしたが、先延ばし先延ばしでこんなタイミングに…

私はこれまでの2年間、CEDECでゲームアニメーションのラウンドテーブルを担当していました。今年も応募しましたが、残念ながら落選…
私が作ったアニメーターのSlackチャネルで、「CEDECでラウンドテーブルできなくなった」と伝えたら、「じゃあ、アレさんが別でやればいいよ」という反応があったんです。
じゃあ思い切ってやってみよう！と開催を決意しました。

まずは会場の用意。ボスからあまた会議室の使用許諾をもらい、Eventbriteでページを立ち上げ、Slackで広報しました
それほど人が集まるとは思っていなかったのですが、最終的には24人もの人が集まってくれて、びっくりしました。

私のラウンドテーブルは、他の日本のラウンドテーブルとは一味違います。私自身はほとんど話さず、参加者のみんなさん同士で話し合ってもらうスタイルを取っています。私はただ、次に話す人を指名していくだけ。課題は付箋に書き込み、ホワイトボードに貼っていきます。どのテーマを話すかは、一緒にMCをしている人に選んでもらって進めていくようにしました。

今回はたくさんのテーマが出ました。
「アニメーターの仕事はどこからどこまで」
「新しいアニメーターの育て方は？」
「スタッフとコミュニケーションはどうとっている？特に日本語が母国語じゃない人の場合は？」などなど。

CEDECのラウンドテーブルより参加者は少なかったけど、課題の付箋数は今回が一番多かった気がします。また、CEDECだと60分以内にルールを説明して、実際やって、そして名刺交換まで行うので、いつもはじまってから数分で終わる感覚になります（名刺交換、ネットワーキングは大切です！前回のブログを読んでみてくださいね）。

今回は2時間も話せたのに、まだ短いと思った人が多かったようです。正直、アニメーションの話なら一日中ずーっとしても飽きないと思います…
いろんな会社の、いろんな人たちが何をどう考えているかを聞くことができ、とても楽しい時間でした。みんなが同じような悩みを持っていることを共有でき、おそらく参加者のみなさんも安心できたのではないかと思います。

参加者からは「またやってほしい」という声もたくさんもらいましたので、冬頃にまたやろうかな？と考えています。あまたオフィスが増床中なので、次回はもっと広い会議室でできるかも。次回開催をお楽しみに！

（アレ）

Knights of the Animation Roundtable
Aaaannnnd, we’re back.

Hi, Are (Ah-ray) here again, back with another blog.  I was supposed to write it about a month ago, but procrastination is my middle name, so here we are.

Some of you may know that I have been part of the Animation Roundtable at CEDEC for two years.  We tried to apply again this year, but we didn’t make the cut sadly. I was honestly pretty upset at this, because I had hoped that the Animation Roundtable here would blossom into something similar to the Animation Roundtable at GDC.  But CEDEC is a small event, and they want to vary the entries each year, so I think that’s why we didn’t make it in.

A lot of the participants from previous roundtables are members of a Slack channel for animators that I made a couple years back.  When I told them that we didn’t make it into CEDEC this year, they were very disappointed. Somebody joking said that we should just make our own roundtable.  The more I thought about it, the more it seemed possible, so I decided to try.

I, of course, needed a venue for the event, so I asked the big boss if we could use one of the meeting rooms here at AMATA.  I was very happy that he obliged. I made a pretty lame Eventbrite page and posted it to the Slack channel. Then I waited for people to sign up.

I was only expecting a handful of people to come, but in the end we had 24 participants(myself, and 3 other AMATA animators included)!  I was absolutely floored at the turnout.

If you’ve never been to one of my roundtables(and I’m sure most of you haven’t), they are a little different.  I don’t really talk much. In my mind, the whole point of the roundtable is for the participants to talk with each other, so I am more of a Vanna White (only Americans will get that…) style MC; I just point at the next person to talk.  I have anyone who has something they want to ask write a question on a post-it note, and we put them all on a whiteboard. Then, I have my partner MC (who can actually read handwritten Japanese…) pick a post-it to talk about.

We had a TON of different topics this time, ranging from “Where does an animator’s job start and end?” to “How do you train new animators?” to “How to communicate with staff, especially if their native language isn’t Japanese?”  Even though there were less people than we have had a the CEDEC roundtable, I think we may have gotten more post-its! It was really cool to hear about how different companies and different people approach these subjects. I think everyone felt relieved to know that they were going through the same problems as animators from other companies.

I can’t go into TOO much detail about what we talked about, because the things that were said were for that room’s ears only!  If you want to know the juicy details, you’ll just have to come to the next one.

Normally, at CEDEC, we have 60 minutes to explain how the roundtable works, actually have the roundtable, and have some time for business card exchange at the end (cause networking is important!  See my old GDC post). It always feels like it is over only a few moments after it began. This time, even though we spent TWO HOURS talking, it still felt too short. Honestly, I kinda feel like we could talk about this kind of stuff for an entire day and STILL want more, so it can’t really be helped at this point…

I think everyone left very happy with the roundtable and many people have requested that I do one again.  I think the next one will be some time in Winter or so. We may have to find a bigger venue though, cause this time we had the meeting room nearly at full capacity! I hear AMATA may be expanding again, so maybe there will be a large meeting room on the new floor…

Are(Ah-ray)