I may have gone a little overboard here. While sifting through the frames of Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira, I discovered more beauty in the film than I thought it had to offer (and I knew it offered quite a lot).
It seemed impossible not to freeze my screen at any given moment because any isolated moment could be considered artistic in itself. When we see stills in hand drawn animation, we are reminded that these images actually exist in some concrete form - a strangely antiquated concept in our computer dominated world (try imagining an original frame from Toy Story and we become deeply confused).
Akira consisted of around 160,000 animation cells, accounting for its hyper fluidity and mesmerizing sequences. Some 5,000 of these cells are owned by this guy, who featured them at "The Art of Akira" exhibit in Pittsburgh a little over two years ago. All of this has been adapted, of course, from Otomo's manga-epic of the same name, tallying in at 2,146 pages.
I myself have condensed the film into one hundred separate shots - which seems a rather fair statement given the numbers that have preceded. I imagine this number being an unusual amount to work with, and don't suspect any future updates to feature so many. Is this visual overload or an appreciated effort? Let me know if you'd like (I'd like to hear!), but enjoy the chaos in the end.
Note: there are, of course, numerous spoilers ahead, just as a heads up.
Establishing shots like these almost beg to be frozen. They bombard the eye with detail; like a Where's Waldo or Eye Spy book. As already stated, these shots are taken from drawn images which would otherwise be static. But when they're converted to film (and each image is repeated twenty-four times per second), these pictures start moving! That's really so interesting.
