If you’re a fan of Akira or anime director Otomo Katsuhiro, you would likely have heard by now that he is working on a brand new sci-fi animated film titled Orbital Era. This is a kind of a big deal because it is the first time in 15 years that Otomo-san is directing a new feature film since the 2004 Steamboy.

While this is great news, what’s even more exciting is that the film is also hiring CG artists to work on it. The production of the film is once again handled by animation studio Sunrise ( which previously released Steamboy as well as Freedom ), and they are partnering with highly acclaimed animation house Yamatoworks to work on the CG for the film.

I posted a thread on twitter highlighting some information on the job offerings, but I’ll expand it in this post.

Otomo's new animated film Orbital Era is hiring artists ! This is not a drill ! Job ad link is here – https://t.co/MZgFmqVId1 ( tho not explicitly stated, Japanese language proficiency is more than likely required ) pic.twitter.com/oFStrpTFJO

— blauereiter (@blauereiter) July 10, 2019

For starters, proficiency in the Japanese language is a prerequisite ( in my opinion, have an equivalent of the JLPT N2 level at least – the real challenge will be the ability to comprehend Tokyo’s colloquial Japanese and also converse effectively, not to mention the understanding of animation lingo used only in Japan; this will more likely be picked up on the job ). While more and more studios in Japan has started hiring Jap-Eng translators, there is no mention of this in the job ad. Furthermore, having a good understanding of the language will make your experience much, much more immersive.

Various positions are available – modeling and rigging, animators, fx, lookdev. The studio is hiring both fresh graduates as well as artists with prior working experience, with the starting pay for fresh graduates set at 185000 yen + 5000 yen for monthly transport costs. That’s about 1700 USD a month.

The location of the studio is in Kami-Igusa, which is located on the Seibu-Shinjuku train line and part of Suginami ward in Tokyo. It is also where many animation studios are located, and they even have a Gundam statue just outside the train station ( which incidentally is owned by Sunrise ).

Prior knowledge of the software package Lightwave will be a plus, but not required. This is the same software I used when I was working on the Freedom anime series.

The person in charge of the hiring is none other than my director on Freedom, the awesome Morita Shuhei-san. If you are applying for the job, he will be the person you’ll be communicating with.

More details on the actual application process can be found on this link ( this will be a good litmus test for your Japanese language proficiency ).

This is a fantastic opportunity to work not only in the animation industry in Japan, but also on an Otomo film. I highly recommend any artist with a good understanding of Japanese to apply.