Mirai Millennium OP

POSTED BY DANNY CHOO On Fri 2011/11/04 13:59 JST in Mascot

We've seen Mirai Suenaga animated in anime guest appearances such as Twin Angel and Mayo Chiki but finally we get to see her animated in her own anime series called Mirai Millennium - and before I forget - this 2560px x 1440px wallpaper lives here.

Those of you who read the earlier post will have seen the making of the opening sequence that I've produced with JC Staff. The opening sequence was produced in about 4 weeks of intensive work on a very tight budget. The first version that we see has been modified to be the opening of Culture Japan Season 2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-M7dC94Kv8

The character design of the anime versions are created by Kazunori Iwakura who is also responsible for titles like Railgun, Toradora, Sky Girls, Kimikiss, Daphne in the Brilliant Blue, Shakugan no Shana, Hidan no Aria and more.

Here we see our 4 main characters (from left to right) Haruka Suenaga, Mirai Suenaga, Eiji Seiun and Kanata Hoshikawa. Detailed design references in the Mirai Millennium Design post and character profiles currently live here.

The scenario is almost complete but I want to reveal it with some visuals which I should hopefully get round to in January after season 2 of Culture Japan has settled down.

And here are some of the screenshots from the opening. JC Staff done all the character animation cells and I produced the rest with Pinax. Budget for the OP was taken from the Culture Japan production pool which is not a lot in the first place - this is why you will notice that we've reused a lot of elements in the various cuts.

The work done by Mirai Fusion was mostly created in 3D Max, Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere.

JC Staff provided us with mov files with transparency. Each animation sequence is only a few seconds long but I requested JC to make the frames loopable.

The whole OP was originally going to be a single looping walking sequence but seeing that I was asking JC to do just the animation, I could cut costs by doing the rest myself and asking JC to do different cuts.

Folks who are interested in producing anime can do so on a tight budget by leaving just the animation to an anime production company - then do the backgrounds, editing and sound yourself - from all those skills you picked up from Google Sensei.

If I asked JC Staff to do the whole thing then it would have cost at least 4 times more. But even if I did have the cash, doing it alone is always the preferred choice which is required to pick up experience. One can pick up skills for free from the Internet but experience is something that you need to sacrifice your own time and money for.

The theme song is called "Sukirai" which means "like and hate" and is sung by Mirai Suenaga - the voice actress for Mirai being Utaco.

The OP features clips of Culture Japan dotted around the place.

All of these full HD screenshots (1920px x 1080px) have been uploaded to my Google Plus account for you to play with.

Mirai's after-school-hours classroom cut.

These two ladies are in Episode 3 of Culture Japan Season 2.

The fate of mirror planets...

This is what Mirai-chan wears for sleep and design is based on what my daughters wear at home.

The ball shaped object is Retrokyu - is not only Mira's companion but also transforms into her Retrograde Suit.

Mirai about to slice n dice with her Millennium Blade.

Mirai looks over the city - its been a while since the Millennium Gates mysteriously stopped functioning.

I could not afford to have the other characters animated at this time so they get the still treatment ^^;

The OP scrolls for quite a bit to enable me to fit in our sponsors logos. The highway gates you see in the middle of the screenshot were supposed to have some sort of lighting or wording on the black bits - but didn't get enough time to get round to it.