My Melody & Kuromi | What’s your favorite scene? | Character Sculpt Lead & Animator Leina Muramatsu

My Melody & Kuromi｜What’s your favorite scene?｜Character Sculpt Lead & Animator Leina Muramatsu

I’m Leina Muramatsu,
Character Sculpt Lead and Animator. I also worked in Creative Development. I initially worked on
developing character sculptures, and later I joined as an animator. My favorite scene is in episode 11,
where the building gradually collapses. The building is floating in the air. After a certain incident, it begins to grow mold, deteriorate,
and eventually fall apart. It’s an action-packed scene. The biggest challenge was figuring out
how to make it feel like it was happening in the sky. The floor of the building cracks, but the prop makers struggled to create the effect. It was built like a puzzle, with calculations
to make each piece appear to break apart gradually. It was fine that the building broke apart, but we had to think about
how to film the sky emerging through the cracks. We installed lighting underneath to make it look as if the characters were
really above the clouds. For the building walls, we also discussed how to make them slide. We hung them from a pole and moved them just a few millimeters at a time
to create the effect of the wall cracking. To create the mold, we used wool felt and other small, rounded, cotton-like materials, which the character sculptors dyed. We also needed to create large areas of mold,
which had to spread quickly, so other staff prepared a lot of it, and I animated the mold
by pasting it in place on the spot. It’s a serious scene, so I had to express
the character’s emotions accurately. Otherwise, the tension
wouldn’t come across to the audience. I tried to put myself in Kuromi’s shoes, but without becoming too subjective. I kept the bigger picture in mind, repeated the process
over and over, and animated the scene that way. If I had stayed only in Kuromi’s perspective,
the acting might have become self-centered. Character sculptures have a certain weight to them, and their limb lengths and designs
are different from those of humans. Most importantly, I wanted to animate
movements that only this character could do. Just making them move like humans
isn’t always the right answer. In fact, I feel their movements become convincing
precisely because they aren’t human. It’s not just about realism. I want to express what the unique qualities of
the character’s body and limbs can do. Even with the sense of desperation, I wanted
the characters’ poses to feel both beautiful and cute, balancing those two aspects. When I was a child,
I used to play with stuffed animals and dollhouses. To me, stop motion feels like an extension of
that kind of play, but seeing serious adults build
epic scenes full of tension was truly fascinating. When you watch the finished film, the characters run and move as if
completely naturally, like it’s just what they would do. But every single one was made by hand, and I hope that comes through when you watch it.

Unraveling the appeal of the Netflix series “My Melody & Kuromi” – What’s Your Favorite Scene? We’ll take a look at the behind-the-scenes of creating a work through “favorite scenes” chosen by the production team. In the 8th episode, Muramatsu Rena, a work development, character design supervisor, and animator, will appear. We bring you the thoughts that were put into the scene and episodes from the time of production ✨ Original work: Sanrio Director: Misato Asaki Screenplay: Nemoto Muneko Theme song: LE SSERAFIM “Kawaii (Prod. Gen Hoshino)” Production: TORUKU from WIT STUDIO Streaming: Exclusively streamed worldwide on Netflix (12 episodes, approximately 13 minutes / each episode) WIT STUDIO official website: https://www.witstudio.co.jp/index.html WIT STUDIO official social networking site: https://twitter.com/WIT_STUDIO TIK TOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@wit_studio_offical INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/wit_studio #Melodykuro on Netflix #mymelodykuromi #Melodykuro relationship #WITSTUDIO #TORUKU