Idle thought: Turning 4-panel mange into anime

[jlazar]

With a lot of 4-panel manga being turned into anime lately, a thought crossed my mind:

Do you think that during early production of the anime, they cut up the original manga strips and then lay them out on a bulletin board like storyboards?

It would seem (to me) this would be a good way to see what gags from each strip would go together into a single episode and how to pace the available strips out over the planned number of episodes.

Thoughts?

[something]

Depends on the show, but by and large I'd think that the 4koma panels are so sparse on information, and storyboards so much more demanding of information, that you wouldn't get much more insight out of it than from just reading the manga by itself. After all, most of the panels in a 4koma are text and various facial expressions. Perhaps for an unusually artistically intricate 4koma it could work better...

Taking K-ON! for example, they really took very brief 4koma gags and wove them into a whole seamless episode. The strips that contain the gags covered in an episode would likely give you a few percent of the real "stage directions" (eh, need a better term) and all implied by a storyboard.

It might be used in the super early stage of production, I guess. I'm running on pure speculation here at any rate.

[Suwako Moriya]

Originally Posted by something

Depends on the show, but by and large I'd think that the 4koma panels are so sparse on information, and storyboards so much more demanding of information, that you wouldn't get much more insight out of it than from just reading the manga by itself.

Yeah, I would not be surprised if they just keep a "copy" of the manga on hand for research purposes. There's also the matter of using logic in regards to certain strips.

If strips 44-55 form a single storyline, it's best to keep them together. Alternatively you might have stand alone strips that in theory could be inserted anywhere without much problem.

Sometimes you'll get the strips adapted more or less in order like with K-ON! for example.

Other times you might get the following for example. Let's merge strips 17, 33, 92, and 77 together. GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class was kind of like this in some regards.

The most important thing in 4-Koma adaptation is the following. First, they keep doing it. Second, it's done by studios that give proper respect to it. Also, for the record I'd be happy if certain 4-Koma got an anime.

[Dicrel Seijin]

I could see it happening....

I remember trying to do this a while ago with Azumanga Daioh. I had the anime paused on the TV and I was leafing though the volumes to see what was included and not. It was interesting to see what 4-koma became running gags and which ones were expanded into significant chunks of an episode.

I've recently been reading K-ON! and the 4-koma has made me want to check out the anime. If I wind up loving it half as much as I love AzuDai, then it will have been a worthwhile purchase.

[something]

Not a 4koma actually, but I'm watching one of the extras for Aria the Origination, where the producer notes one of the panels from the manga was cut out, and pasted right onto the storyboard.

Okay, nothing earth-shattering but it made me think of this thread.

[kijakusai]

Originally Posted by jlazar

With a lot of 4-panel manga being turned into anime lately, a thought crossed my mind:

Do you think that during early production of the anime, they cut up the original manga strips and then lay them out on a bulletin board like storyboards?

It would seem (to me) this would be a good way to see what gags from each strip would go together into a single episode and how to pace the available strips out over the planned number of episodes.

Thoughts?

Many parts of the Hetalia manga are drawn in the 4-koma or so-called story 4-koma style. I have seen and read the e-conte (storyboards. e+conte=drawing+continuity.) for the Hetalia anime. The storyboards for Hetalia are not the original manga strips which were cut up. They are drawings drawn by the director. It seems that the director consulted the Hetalia manga for mise en scène, though. In fact, he said that he brought the flavour of the storyboards close to that of the Hetalia manga.

Speaking of manga and storyboards, as to a manga artist's having trouble with drawing storyboards for an anime, Shirow Masamune, who co-directed Black Magic M-66, wrote an article about it.

Shirow Masamune wrote:

　今後若干は現れるであろう僕同様の「ド素人であるにもかかわらずコンテを描きたい誰かさん」の為に書いて おく。まったく手を出さないで観客の１人になるか、あるいは最低限原画をこなせる能力を十分身につけてから 手を出すか、２ツに１ツをお推めする。