Masaaki Yuasa Sketchbook - Shin-chan Movies 4-6

Continuing from the previous post, here are rough translations of Yuasa's text commentary for Crayon Shin-chan Movies 4-6 (done through a mix of google translate, deepl, my own knowledge of Japanese and the subject matter and some additional research here and there)

p.57
Crayon Shin-chan: Great Adventure in Henderland (1996)
Director - Mitsuru Hongo
Concept art / storyboards / key animation - Masaaki Yuasa
The setting is an amusement park called Henderland. Along with a distinctive castle, we needed locations for the forest and town that spread through the park, so I got to work designing the whole setting. I got an image of the whole park in my mind, so I ran to my sketchbook as fast as I could, as if I were trying to copy it down. When I finished drawing it, I was happy that I was able to grasp the whole thing all at once. It's fun to draw buildings one by one, but I felt a sense of accomplishment at having drawn the whole thing, as if I had created a world! This was also the first time I got to fully participate in storyboards on a "Crayon Shin-chan" movie. When I see a scene that I storyboarded, I get a nice feeling, like a funny chemical in my brain. So "Henderland" was a big deal for me in that sense.

p.58
*Castle with legs*
I was watching a fantasy movie called "Lost Children" ["City of Lost Children", 1995?] and thought it would be nice to put legs on the castle. It was impossible to put long legs on the castle in the film, so I just put short legs.

*Muddy Castle* [can't figure this out]
There's a scene I like in a Disney movie where a building [becomes muddy/deflates/melts? ... couldn't figure out what exactly this is referring to]. I've used that idea in various works.

*Capsizing Castle*
I was thinking of a castle that turns upside-down underwater, but later realized that it wouldn't rotate like that without an axis, so this idea fell by the wayside.

p.59
*Hender Castle*
Designing the castle was tough. I had a lot of ideas, so I kept thinking, "what about this, or this..." and couldn't settle on a basic concept. After giving it a lot of thought, I settled on "a design that is chaotic, yet unified." I ended up using the shape of the house from Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" as the base. Then I crammed it full of the ideas I wanted to use.

p.61
*Castle with Rising Water Level*
I had an idea where the sea level only rises around the castle. It would be interesting if the only way to climb up the castle was to swim through the water, and those who can't swim wouldn't be able to get to the top. The inside is also filled with water, so you can swim to places you wouldn't normally get to.

p.62
*1st Poster - Rough*
I also drew the first poster for "Henderland." The picture on the right page was actually used. If I remember correctly, the designs for Toppema and Chokirin hadn't been finalized yet. The bottom row shows the four members of the Kasukabe Defense Force and the teachers.

p.64
Column 3
*Interesting Creator*
Around the time of "Adventure in Henderland" I really wanted to develop a unique style, and I admired artists with a distinctive look like Tim Burton. Eventually I decided it was too hard (laughs). After that, I became interested in directors like Paul Verhoeven, who basically directs flashy B-movies. It's not as classy, but it's amusing in an over-the-top way. In my later works, I was conscious of that kind of atmosphere.

p.65
*Overview of Henderland*
Henderland is divided into three theme parks. I hoped it would look vaguely like Mickey Mouse when viewed from above. *Numbers correspond to each location from p. 066 to 073.

p.66
*Rotating station*
When I researched trains, I found that they're quite fascinating and I understood how rail-fans feel (laughs). I was particularly interested in the turntable, so I used it in my concept art.

*Draw the entire park in a circle*
Henderland is set up to fool people by posing as a theme park like Disneyland, so I drew it partly as a parody. I drew the entire park from the entrance to the train going around in a circle. I didn't know if they would use everything I drew in the film, but I wasn't going to be satisfied until I drew what I had in my head. I guess I needed to visualize the whole thing just to convince myself.

p.67
*Countdown door*
As the train approaches, the doors painted "3, 2, 1" open as if counting down. We wanted to create an atmosphere of heightened anticipation.

p.69
*Simplify the clutter*
The look of the town was inspired by Toontown. Toontown is supposed to represent a drawn cartoon world, so the clutter and detail are stylized in a simple way. It's a "calculated mess." While keeping that in mind, I also based the town on Venice, which I really like.

p.71
*A sense of anticipation going through the tunnel*
The underwater tunnel builds excitement. Since it's an attraction, it's just an artificial underwater area. I designed this place picturing myself as a customer, imagining what it would look like on the train. The character with the big nose in Playtown is another Kveta Pacovská-esque design. I used to hate drawing this kind of weird picture, but by this point I was starting to get into bold shapes like this.

p.73
Column 4
*City in the background*
I went to Disneyland for location scouting before production started. I was a bit skeptical before I went, but when I got there, I was actually really impressed. The light parade, the music, etc. are all precisely engineered in a way to excite the audience. What impressed me most was the "Critter Country" area. The story is that the town is flooded after a beaver dam broke, and all the buildings were recycled from the waste materials. [note: this element is unique to Tokyo's Disneyland] I was so impressed that I wanted to create a design that would hint at that kind of backstory.

p.74
*Attraction - Underground Super Express*
Although only a signboard appears in the film, I was also thinking about the content of the attraction. When I went to Universal Studios Japan, I was fascinated by the experiential attraction that used video footage, so I drew a B-grade version of that. The round window on the ceiling is Leiji Matsumoto-style. The video monitor shows footage of mole robots attacking, and then the actual robot only appears when Masao is taken away. At the end, the robots attack all at once with guns attached to the seat belts. Masao, who left in the middle of the show, is waiting outside by himself with a souvenir as a thank-you for playing an active role in the attraction. I was happy to hear Mr. Hara, the director, say, "we can't use this in the film, but it's well-done."

p.78
*Henderland's Mascot*
I was also assigned to come up with a mascot character, what's now known as a "yuru-chara." I had a hard time with this. (laughs) I tried to draw a variety of mascots, but I couldn't decide which one I liked best. The characters that were chosen were one with horns sticking out from the top and sides of his head like Astro Boy, and a character with horns sticking out from both sides like Uran-chan. The eyes are another nod to "Sesame Street."

p.79
*Don't forget to take cartoony leaps*
The plot had a scene of Makao and Joma dancing ballet, so I made it look like a theater. Mr. Hongo liked the circular design of the castle, so I tried to draw the inside of the room in a cartoonish way, not forgetting to take leaps. Sometimes when you do too much research you can get bogged down in realism, so I consciously tried to mix in things that weren't realistic.
[I feel like there's some key phrase that doesn't translate directly here, something like "flights of fancy" or "making a break away from reality"]

p.80
*Castle chase*
This is the scene where the okamas and Shin-chan are chasing each other. I thought about how to call back to the ballet scene again here. I like to insert quick gags during running chases.

p.82
Crayon Shin-chan Movie: Pursuit of the Balls of Darkness （1997)
Director - Keiichi Hara
Concept art / key animation - Masaaki Yuasa
With this film, the director baton passed from Mitsuru Hongo to Keiichi Hara. Mr. Hara tends towards a realistic sensibility, so I tried to make the setting closer to the real thing. But since it's set in the real world, it was difficult to research the locations, so I couldn't draw a large number of settings. Also, after "Great Adventure in Henderland" I began to think seriously about wanting to direct. Basically, the director decides which ideas to use, so I could have more control than just doing concept art. Around this time I started wanting to use my ideas in my own films.

*Kung fu action*
I thought about staging some action on the beams in the house. I was thinking of Hong Kong kung fu movies where they use wires to run along the wall. Mr. Hara likes things to be realistic, so I was conscious of martial arts movement as a reference point.

p.83
*Magariya* [a specific historic L-shaped type of Japanese house]
It's like an old lady's house or a country house you'd see on TV. The bathroom and toilet don't appear in the film, but I drew them because I can't grasp the setting if I haven't figured out the whole thing.

*Tricks in the toilet*
This is a device I actually saw in a building. It was designed to allow people to escape through the toilet in case of enemies. The toilet goes down to the ground and you can escape through the floor.

p.84
*Tamayura Village*
It was decided that the setting would be a village in the mountains of Tohoku. I was born and raised in a flat area with no mountains around me, so it was quite difficult for me to come up with this.

*Building with a giant clock*
The climax of the film takes place in a high-rise building. Mr. Hara envisioned Odaiba at the time of development, where a single building stands alone in a big open space. The building itself was based on the Umeda Sky Building in Osaka, which has an observation deck and a giant clock. I thought about using the clock for action, like how scary it would be to climb to the top of the hands and feel as if you were about to fall off.

p.85
*I'm not good at precision-drawing*
I also drew heavy machinery used in construction sites and building. This is just a rough sketch to communicate the idea, but it was really hard to make the final clean drawing for submission. There were so many windows to draw, and I had to draw them all one by one, and if they were distorted, I had to redraw them all from scratch... It was one of the hardest things I've ever done.

p.86
Crayon Shin-chan the Movie: Blitzkrieg! Pig's Hoof's Secret Mission (1998)
Director - Keiichi Hara
Concept art / key animation - Masaaki Yuasa
The scale of "Pig Hoof's Secret Mission" got so large that it was difficult to wrap my head around the whole story and create the concept art. Despite the vast scale, the story took place in real locations so there wasn't really much major design work to be done. At this point I was designing to satisfy the director, Keiichi Hara. The main assignment was for the airship design, and Mr. Hara had to narrow down a few selections from the many design proposals I submitted.

*Lots of space to move around*
It seems there's only one manned airship in Japan at the moment, and it was difficult to find information about it. Until I did my research, I had assumed there were lots of people inside the balloon (laughs). When I looked into it, I found there actually was a small gap inside for people to get through, so I had them move through that gap. But I think mine has more space than a normal airship.

p.87
*Airship - Draft*
After Mr. Hara narrowed it down for me, I finally chose a design that looked like a bird's face. I wanted it to look realistic to some extent, but also have an interesting design.

p.89
*Airship - Design proposals*
The circled pictures are the designs Mr. Hara chose. Usually, even when I come up with a lot of design ideas, I try to narrow it down myself, but this time I kind of liked them all. Since Mr. Hara is a realistic person, I was curious what kind of shape he would prefer, so I asked him to look at several designs.

p.90
*Embarrassing torture*
I drew this because I was assigned to come up with a torture method. When it comes to torture, you can get pretty creative. In the film, a CG model was used. Another idea I had was to force them into strange poses and make them embarrassed. This would require the torturer to strike the same pose.

p.91
*CD-type design*
The big main computer is a silhouette of a CD. The reason for this is that at the time, my own idea of cutting-edge technology was a music CD (laughs). Since the setting was a laboratory, I had to make it feel cutting-edge.

*Musician controls*
The keyboard room is below the main computer. Keyboards surround you and you operate them with your whole body. You feel like a musician playing many keyboards at once.

p.92
*Buriburizaemon's Misdeeds*
It's a "public embarrassment" kind of image. The lower right picture shows an out-of-place toupee. People around him are trying to avoid looking at it.