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Our latest Showcase select was created as a branded short for Japanese publishing house Kodansha. \u201cIn Light Hole books, manuscripts, and other paper materials take on three-dimensional forms, gradually building an entire world,\u201d Director of Animation Takuro Oishi<\/a> told us.\u00a0<\/p>\n The film was produced by Geek Pictures and directed by Toru Katori<\/a> after being selected by Kodansha from roughly 150 submissions from creators around the world. It draws from a range of Kodansha\u2019s manga titles including well-known works like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Initial D, and Attack on Titan.<\/p>\n Here books, manuscripts, and printed pages aren\u2019t just referenced\u2014they\u2019re used, folded, stacked, and assembled into forms that gradually take over the frame.<\/p>\n \u201cThe animation itself is created by constructing cities and characters using paper printed with the contents of actual books and manuscripts published by Kodansha,\u201d Oishi said.<\/p>\n The progression is straightforward but effective. Flat pages become objects. Objects accumulate into spaces. By the time the film reaches its later moments, what began as a surface has turned into a fully alive, action-packed world.<\/p>\n \u201cWe built the world using Kodansha\u2019s publications, and created it using the IP owned by Kodansha, incorporating those same publications.\u201d<\/p>\n From the opening scene in which a live actor connects with a Kodansha book that begins to literally light up her world, you understand that the\u00a0 filmmakers aren\u2019t starting from neutral materials. When the main character enters the new universe where she and everything in it are animated from the pages themselves, the kinetic scenes that unfold feels less about designing from scratch and more about reorganizing something that already exists.\u00a0<\/p>\n From there, stories that have already been told in multitudes of ways continue to reform here again and again. \u201cWhat begins as a story on a sheet of paper transforms into various forms and eventually starts to influence reality.<\/p>\n \u201cNothing is impossible\u2014this piece expresses Kodansha\u2019s approach to storytelling, where anything can be created.\u201d<\/p>\n That being said, one of the bigger challenges the team faced during production was that approach to the overall composition as a kind of collage: \u201cPreparing each individual cut took a great deal of time,\u201d Oishi told us.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAdditionally, for shots like the giant\u2019s arm, we incorporated 2D animation-style expressions into stop motion, which made developing the shooting method for those sequences particularly difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately the success of the piece and the way it overcomes these hurdles proves Kodansha\u2019s approach to the art of story craft intrinsically\u2014maybe nothing actually is impossible.<\/p>\n You can catch Light Holes on Kodansha\u2019s official website<\/a> and YouTube channel<\/a>. For more about the making-of, check out the short video below.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n