Interview with SEKIGUCHI Kazuki – Selected Artists (Phase 1) of the NeW NeW Project

First, please tell us about your background. You graduated from the Art and Media Course in the Department of Information Design at Tama Art University, instead of the Department of Graphic Design, which many animation artists who have graduated from the same university tend to have chosen. Why did you choose this specific department?

SEKIGUCHI Kazuki (hereafter, Sekiguchi):
I’ve been drawing since I was in elementary school, and in high school, I majored in metal crafts at Tokyo Metropolitan Kogei High School, so I already knew that I wanted to pursue an art-related university. At the time, however, I hadn’t decided on a specific goal, so I was drawn to the Department of Information Design because it had a certain freedom—an atmosphere where you could do a bit of everything, in a good way.

I decided to pursue animation after taking a class by MIZUE Mirai. In that class, we created a hand-drawn animation with 24 frames per second, under the theme of metamorphosis. That was my first experience making animation, and I found the process really fun. Mizue also gave me high praise during the review session, which gave me great confidence.

Additionally, animation matched what I wanted to do. I had always wanted to create works with stories and was interested in picture books and manga, but I found panel layouts rather difficult. My style, which often doesn’t include human characters, also didn’t seem well-suited for manga. In contrast, animation unfolds in one frame at a time, and it’s perfectly fine if animals are the main characters. In this sense, animation was the ideal medium for me.

What kind of teachers and classmates did you have at university?

Sekiguchi:
Mizue creates hand-drawn animation, but many others were involved in VJing or motion graphics. I was especially helped by Professor HARADA Daizaburo. My classmates included MOCHIDA Kanta and Densuke 28-gou.

After graduating from university, you went on to the Animation Course provided by the Graduate School of Film and New Media at Tokyo University of the Arts, studying under Professor YAMAMURA Koji’s seminar. Why did you choose this particular seminar?

Sekiguchi:
The biggest reason was becauseMizue recommended it to me. I also wanted to make films with 2D drawings, so the seminar name ‘2D Animation’ caught my interest. In the seminar, I often consulted Professor Yamamura on ideas and showed him works in progress to get feedback. In particular, I often received advice on scripting and narrative aspects.

What kind of classmates did you have during graduate school?

Sekiguchi:
There were people who now work at the forefront of the field, such as TOMOKI Misato and FUKUCHI Akino. I was quite busy with coursework during graduate school, so I spent more time working at home than interacting with classmates. Even so, I have fond memories of doing group work in 3D classes and participating in an animation workshop in Thailand, where I had the opportunity to interact with local students.

What kind of activities have you been engaged in since completing graduate school?

Sekiguchi:
Since graduating, I’ve been working freelance, making animation. While doing client work for companies like TV Tokyo’s ‘Synapusyu (シナぷしゅ)’ and NHK Educational TV, I also make my own independent films in between. Client work often requires me to suppress my own art style and preferences, so I release that frustration through personal projects.

Which of your own works was a turning point for you as an artist?

Sekiguchi:
That would be The Life of Miyo (2015), which I created as my graduation project from Tama Art University. Up to that point, I had only made works based on school assignments, but this was the first time I could express something personal that I wanted to convey. It was also the first work that was nominated for a film festival.

Which of your works do you feel most confident about?

Sekiguchi:
After finishing any piece, I tend to focus on what I could have done better, so I don’t yet have a work I’m completely satisfied with. But if I had to pick one, I’d say Self-Honest Me (2016), which I made in my first year of graduate school. It won the Japan Grand Prix at the New Chitose Airport International Animation Festival and was well-received at other festivals, so I do feel a sense of achievement in that regard.

Next, let’s talk about your creative process. Can you tell us how you go about making a film?

Sekiguchi:
My starting point is always rooted in my real-life struggles. Whatever I’m going through at the time gets directly reflected in the characters. Since most such struggles arise from relationships and environments, the traumas, people, and environments causing these troubles naturally emerge when I explore a character’s troubles.

When I develop the story, I don’t write it linearly from beginning to end. I think of individual episodes separately, then later arrange and edit them together. By revising the material repeatedly over time, I eventually weave it into a coherent story.

Once the story is finished, I write it out as a text, then use that to create a storyboard. At the text stage, I’m very serious and focused on the theme of ‘struggle,’ but when storyboarding, various leaps and new ideas emerge, and the overall shape of the work comes together. The screen composition is mostly finalised at this stage too.

Although the themes in my works are deeply personal, I want the audience to feel something from them, so I try to elevate personal problems into objective, universal themes.

Your unique character designs are one of your work’s main highlights. Can you talk about that a little?

Sekiguchi:
Most of my characters’ heads are similarly shaped elliptical, so the shape and design of their ears becomes a key factor for differentiating each character and giving them some sense of personality. I decide the shape of their ears based on what sort of animal I want them to be, so if it’s a cat, I add triangular ears; if it’s a rabbit, I add long ears. As for color, since my backgrounds tend to be grayish, I choose bright and vivid colors for the characters so they stand out.

Up until The Body Swap Center (2018), I didn’t think much about the reasoning behind each character’s appearance. But when I screened that work at the Indie-Anifest Film Festival in South Korea, an audience member asked, “Why did you make this character a fox, even though foxes have a negative connotation of being deceitful?” Since then, I have tried to design characters with intent. For example, in my new work, Turns to Green (tentative title), which deals with the theme of jealousy, I chose a cat—an animal that symbolizes jealousy in the context of the Seven Deadly Sins.

The voice performances in your works are also very compelling. How do you direct the voice actors?

Sekiguchi:
For instance, in Self-Honest Me, I cast a child actor from Himawari Theatre Group. I asked them to speak in a natural tone, avoiding the kind of exaggerated intonation typical in professional voice acting. Rather than giving detailed instructions upfront, I find it suits me better to let them try a take first and then fine-tune the performance through feedback.

Could you tell us about the tools and materials you use?

Sekiguchi:
For animation, I use TVPaint Animation and After Effects. For backgrounds, I use CLIP STUDIO PAINT and Photoshop. For drawing, I’ve been using TVPaint Animation since Self-Honest Me; before that, I used Photoshop. Currently, I’m experimenting with analog drawing for my new film. I draw line art with pencil or pen and plan to use acrylic gouache for coloring.

You’ve done a lot of client work as well. How did that start off?

Sekiguchi:
In my second year of university, I worked part-time drawing animations for ROBOT Communications Inc. I added these works to my portfolio, which soon led me to receive offers for commissioned works. Recently, many people who have contacted me often tell me that they came to know my work through animations such as Mukanshin Ikan Ikanman (2021) from the Shimajiro Wow! series or Wow Wow Wow – First Lies (2021) from NHK E-TV’s Miitsuketa! series.

Can you tell us about artists or works that have influenced you?

Sekiguchi:
I’ve been influenced by the manga artist FUKUMITSU Shigeyuki. His style of laying bare his personal life is a bit frightening to emulate, but I find it captivating. When I first started making animation, I watched a lot of Royal College of Art (RCA) student works on Vimeo for reference, such as Eamonn O’Neill’s I’M FINE THANKS (2011). Though not specifically a RCA work, Natalia Chernysheva’s Le retour (2012), also left a strong impression on me. I also admire YAMAMURA Koji’s consistent creation of new work and Felix Colgrave’s approach of funding his projects via crowdfunding, handling everything from animation to music on his own.

You’re raising a child while making your work. How do you balance the two?

Sekiguchi:
It’s gotten easier now that my child is in daycare, but I still have limited time, so I try to be efficient with my work. Specifically, I treat 10:00 a.m. to 15:30 p.m. as my work hours, and use the rest of the day for picking up my child, doing housework, etc. I also spend about an hour before bed reflecting on the day’s work. Additionally, since being selected for the NeW NeW program, I’ve had more opportunities to communicate with people overseas, so I now study English from around 10 p.m. to midnight.

Finally, can you tell us about your upcoming project currently in development?

Sekiguchi:
Up until now, I’ve always worked alone, but for my new project, I want to collaborate with more people. I’m currently writing the script for Turns to Green and receiving feedback from others as I go. I’m also learning from the scriptwriting and revision processes of fellow NeW NeW-selected artists like HIRANO Ryo and KANEKO Isaku.