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“Pour my soul into the shot to move the hearts of audience.”
Yasuhiro Otsuka

Yasuhiro
OTSUKA

Yasuhiro
OTSUKA

Profile
Born 1969 in Gunma Pref., Japan. His filmography includes 3DCG films “Appleseed” and “EX MACHINA”, and a video game series “Ryu ga Gotoku”.

Genre of specialty

My specialty is in conveying drama in full CG work through a series of conversation scenes. I also have a lot of experiences in both live-action and CG composite works, so I would say that my specialty is also in making the final composition more polished. I have also done many works in designing titles for pachinko/pachislot, game cinematics, and video banner for events.
I would like to make something in a totally new way and that would surprise audience. After I started working in films, an idea formed in my mind: I want to make a film that could affect the viewers’ life and behavior, just like how films affected me. That would be the coolest work. I would be happy if my works can really move an audiences’ heart.

The most memorable work

It would be “Appleseed”. That was my first film in which I was involved with in its entirety and it was a challenging start utilizing many new techniques. It was not key frame animation. It was motion capture which involves capturing the realistic motion created by a real actor. Modeling the background in full 3DCG was hard because it had so many details. However, the characters were in cel format which was a familiar format with less detail. Combining all of this was totally new so no one knew what it would look like, it was ambitious work. We knew that it would be controversial since so many elements were modernized that it no longer looked like a traditional animation film. Having said that, I was very proud and knew that this could be a turning point for the next generation of films once the film was released.

Career Path

  1. 1996Career start

    Joined Digital Frontier. Worked mainly as a general artist on CM.

  2. 1999Year 3

    Worked on his very first film “Gamera 3: Awakening of Irys”.

  3. 2002Year 6

    Created VFX for the film ”Ping Pong” and opening animation for the Nippon TV program “Shinso Hodo Bankisha!” Provided updated contents several times after the renewal of each season.

  4. 2004Year 8

    Worked as a CG director on the film ”Appleseed”.

  5. 2006Year 10

    Worked as a CG director for the cut scenes in the game “Yakuza 2”. Afterwards, worked on most of the remaining series.

  6. 2007Year 11 - Present

    Worked as a CG director on the film “EX MACHINA”.
    Currently working as a CG director for mainly games and pachinko/pachislot.

Personal life

Yasuhiro Otsuka I am a father of two little kids so my off times is spent on activities to help release their extraordinary energy – play at the park, go to the museum or the zoo, and recently I could finally take them to the movies. Sometimes I play my acoustic guitar to make the kids dance. These days I am also really into watching NHK drama series in the morning, stretching my painful and stiff body out and then go to work.

The entertainment product(s) that changed my life

Although I have been involved with many works that have impressed me tremendously, my life was most likely changed by the TV drama “Kagayake Rintaro”. I was involved with the opening work through my old company. Instead of motion control camera, we did camera tracking from live-action plate then combined it with 3DCG background, which is a standard technique these days, but it was a challenging experiment back then since the software we used which does back calculation for finding camera position from frozen frame was only just released. I used to work as a software salesman, so this was my first experience working at a job where I had to create something.
If I were to have a life long career I strongly believed that I would want to be a film maker.