The production of our drug

[susanoo13]

Well that title wouldn't catch to much now would it...but I wanted to come up with something unusual so there it goes.

I have been watching anime for about 10 years or so and a lot of it and just like on the supermarket most of us just come and grab the food without thinkng really about how it got there and the value and effort of the many people that were involved in making it possible to our conveniance to simply go to a certain place and just get what we need, I didn't think to much what is the proccess that is taking place in the creation of the shows that I so like to watch?

This is a thought that ran through my mind in the past couple of days when I read the credits - I couldn't understand a single letter of but what I could understand is that there was a lot written so that means a lot of work was done so that I could sit in front of my computer, relax and have a great time watching it - I know that it really is a lot less altroistic than what I might have made it sound since this is still a business which operates for money although it's money is mostly used for making more pieces of art or more series whatever you would like to call them.
My believe is that we are not so far from the day that every anime would be an ova in terms of much less restriction and not limited to a certain amount of episodes per season just like a manga isn't and also will be a lot more widespred in terms of building assistance studios overseas to share work with anyone willing to join the effort of this creation, I would not yet share how did I come to this belief which this is just a minor part of it since this would be completely off-topic.

So assuming I have a somewhat correct picture in my mind which I'm sure I don't have, first we have a producer and a director and they either come with an original idea or choose a manga that either they like or see that is successful and they go and buy the rights to produce a series to it if the magazine that has the manga agrees to it and than it becomes green lit for animation...or is it something completely different and being green-lit for animation means that the magazine is now giving the authorization to anime studios to purchase the manga rights of production to the highest payer?

Next someone which I don't know what his job is is deciding how will the animation go, will it be 12/13 episodes, 24-26 episodes, more or an OVA and maybe where will it end in relation to already existing material of the manga.

After that there are other studios or teams that are much smaller which do key animation, animation, in-between animation, second key animation, finish animation and I really have no idea what is each of those and although everything here is written in sort of an informative text form it was all supposed to be questions such as:

What are those kind of animations - which role does any of those do and how do they complete eachother?

What makes a studio want to produce certain series as OVA's instead of a series?

To my understanding it takes about 2 months to create an avarage episode, how much does it take to produce and episode like Bleach 166 for instance, is it the same time but the animator/team of animators is/are simply that much better(all his episodes are incredible) or does it take double the time?

How do you see the anime world evolving in terms of technology, for those of you who might work in animation or learn animation, do you see in the last few(4 for instance) years new tools that make the work easier or more realistic or do you believe that the best tools to create anime are already in grasp and we see better animation due to everyone simply being more talented over time?

If you do see tools such as those could you please give an example or an experiance that you had when you had a hard time animating something and then came a tool that made your work that much easier. no need for the name of the tool or such since this is only informative for my curiousity

Thanks in advance for your answers the time it takes to read