Introduction

For years I wanted to create animated cartoons with my own characters and stories. In 1998 I got my first computer and started to explore the internet searching for animation and animators. First I tried creating cartoons films in gif format (Epic Failure). Later I came across several websites that feature Flash Animated cartoons.  Most of the animated shorts were created by just one person. Macromedia Flash (Now, Adobe Flash) was exactly the tool I was looking for.

The next few months I did lots of self-training to understand how Flash works and if I could use it to make my own short films. I wanted to do something different, more serious and longer than the others. I wanted to create something with a cinema like feel to it, something that could change the way people look at flash animation. Back then, there were almost no tutorials on character animation in flash; most of the tutorials consisted of using flash to develop websites.

I studied what animators could do in flash, research the techniques they used and finally after months of training, I decided the best way to learn to make short films is to actually create one. This is the birth of Genryu’s Blade. Genryu’s Blade was my first fully animated short film created with flash. It was aired on TV and viewed online more than 7 million times in 2001-2002. Since then that number probably has increased greatly. Genryu’s Blade is one of the Flash animated short films that help start and build the Flash Animation Medium and community to what it is today.

Recently I updated Genryu’s Blade for YouTube ,  Vimeo HD viewing and the launch of this website.  Viewers asked about the “Making of Genryu’s Blade” article,  so here it is; originally written (Oct 2001) ,  revised on (Aug 2009).

Production Diary Outline

Select a Production stage below to see my process…

■  Concept/R&D
■  Pre-Production
■  Production
■  Post-Production
■  Distribution