Amin Abbas

DUBAI: Japanese CG director Morihito Abe has recently worked on Rick and Morty’s latest video short for Rick and Morty ‘The Great Yokai Battle of Akihabara.’

Speaking exclusively to Arab News Japan, Abe of Yamatoworks, INC. shared the story of his work on the latest short, saying: “I was approached by Joseph Chou, the representative of SOLA DIGITAL ARTS, who proposed two projects to me, and I chose this one because I thought the characters were lively and it looked fun.”

“Originally, I liked this show so much that I ran for the position of CGI supervisor and director. I’ve watched every episode of it. It’s my favorite series because of the many little touches of science fiction works in it,” he added.

Abe said there was a large amount of dialogue for the character. “It was both fun and difficult to make it work as a cut while adding body language and direction that was typical of Rick and his team.”

“I paid special attention to the facial models, expressions, eyes, and mouths. The entire team went through a trial-and-error process to incorporate the unique mouth shape and eye expression, different from Japanese animation without compromising the quality of hand-drawing, which is difficult to reproduce it with CG,” he said.

Abe explained that since Rick and Morty is already popular, so he managed to incorporate Japanese animation techniques

“Although this is a short story, there is a lot of details in it. The story moves at a brisk pace and is easy to understand, so don’t think about difficult things and enjoy the roller coaster ride,” he added.

He said the reaction from overseas regarding the short was great through the comments on YouTube.

“I was very happy about it as we have received high praise from the core fans of Rick and Morty in Japan as well,” Abe told Arab News Japan.

Yamatoworks, INC. was established in 2012 with “great respect for the tradition of Japanese drawn animation, we are striving to master character animation in 3DCG as well.”

About distinguishing Yamatoworks, INC. animation from other animation studios, Abe said: “Among the 3DCG studios, we are proud of the fact that we have adopted the traditional Japanese method of drawing. The representative of the studio himself is a director of drawing animation, and the entire studio is challenging various expressions without being bound by the framework of CG.”