I lied, Here's 2024's art summary.
I'm really very proud of myself this year, to be honest. Not only for expanding or experimenting more with my art and compositions but also with design :]
I'm also happy that I can be this happy with art months old.
Something beautifully, cruelly ironic abt the essentials bracelet swatches being the nonbinary flag, but there being no nonbinary swatch 😭😭(this is entirely lighthearted, I hold no ill-will about it lmao)
What I like about Natsukis route is that they speak to eachother without tropes when they really get into a conversation, like ACTUAL teenagers. For some reason it felt really refreshing.
Witch Hat Atelier director Ayumu Watanabe on the challenges behind the anime adaptation:
“I thought, ‘This would definitely be incredibly difficult to turn into anime. So when the adaptation offer actually came to me, my reaction was, ‘What a reckless undertaking.’”
The director explained that the manga's dense artwork and intricate worldbuilding made simplifying the visuals almost impossible without losing the identity of the original work.
“One of the series’ greatest strengths is that level of detail,” he said. “As a fan myself, I didn’t want to see that reduced just because it became animation.”
Watanabe further described the anime as a major challenge for the staff, particularly due to the sheer amount of linework and movement required in every scene.
“In anime production, there’s usually a tendency to settle on ‘this is enough detail,’ but for this project, we decided to throw out that way of thinking. That meant drawing far more and demanding both higher quality and quantity from the staff. It was a huge challenge.”
The way I noticed this INSTANTLY. I was like "so u have to be british to be a witch" lightheartedly in the first few episodes. But truthfully its an amazing way to depict that division
'WITCH HAT ATELIER' English ADR Director Emily Fajardo used accents to build the world and tell a story
"There is a clear class divide. There are a lot of social differences between these groups of people, and I wanted that to be immediately audible, and accents are a very good quick way to do that"
"In English, we automatically associate different history and class structures with these sounds, and so Coco and all the outsiders that she lives with all have the standard American accent."