Scarce. This big hardcover art book contains background paintings, layouts, character designs, vehicle designs, and more from the production of Katsuhiro Otomo's anime Steamboy. Over 500 color illustrations. Text in Japanese. Presumably a first printing, but the book is in shrinkwrap and cannot be verified without opening.The storyboards were published in their own book. This book covers everything else, including hundreds of background paintings.

Prologue

Art direction isn't simply about “art” or “paintings.” In animation, because the drawings resemble background art, they are often confused with it—but they are different.

Art direction begins with designing the entire worldview of the work. In Steamboy, the total number of cuts is just under 2,000. But rather than each cut having a single background image, many have two or three layers called “books,” and when you factor in the CG elements, the total number of components becomes too great to even count.

The story is set in late 19th-century Manchester and London. We went on a location scouting trip to the UK, but there were few buildings still standing from that time. While some of the design elements that remained in old train stations, the steam engines displayed in museums, and textures from old locomotives were helpful references, the majority of the setting had to be constructed from scratch.

The ideas for the townscapes and houses came from old photo books I bought at museums and secondhand bookstores during that trip.

At the start of production, some people even questioned why we would set the story in a foreign country from that era—saying that even depicting 19th-century Japan would be difficult, and doing it abroad was overly ambitious.

However, inspiration for a story doesn't come from having materials and settings all lined up in advance. If the idea seems interesting, you go from there—in short, you make it up. It sounds crude, but it's true.

Of course, we research local architectural styles, estimate what kind of furnishings would be appropriate for a family's income, look into clothing, and what seasonal flowers might be in a garden. We gather materials—but relying only on that results in nothing more than a collection of data. There's a famous story from the Kurosawa team's art department: the director himself would polish the floors and dirty the walls of completed sets.

To me, that doesn't seem like such a strange story. In fact, I think that's how it should be. I also design houses, towns, and mechanical objects—not only because I enjoy it, but because it's a ritual for me to enter the world of the work. I, too, want to polish the floors, but since there are no physical sets, I instead “polish” the drawings within the layouts and hand them over to Mr. Kimura in the art department.

Some animators and directors would say that when drawings are done in such detail, it becomes harder for the animators, and they'd prefer rougher sketches. So I did ease up at times, but I still drew in great detail for new or important scenes.

Working with Mr. Kimura and the art team wasn't particularly difficult. Thanks to the large number of concept boards Mr. Kimura had drawn before production began, the quality was already ensured. More than that, my main concerns were about the technical side—how it would look when textures were applied in 3D, or how the effects would be layered.

If someone asked me what a film shows to its audience, I would say: “its worldview.”

And most of that worldview is contained in this book. It's a spectacular sight.

Katsuhiro Otomo