Student Specifications for the Anime Training Program

Latest update: 10-June-2025

PROGRAM STRUCTURE

What

The Animation Training Program is a continuous, online mentorship with weekly meetings that takes a practical look at the major topics every animator needs to know in depth to become a professional inside the anime industry.

Why

Nowadays, there are many courses and tutorials on how to become an anime animator, that, however good, focus only on passive learning:

In many cases, the courses focus only on technical elements such as Japanese nomenclature or technical procedures and;
The course is impersonal, i.e,. there is no one to follow up or review the projects.

Our goal is to remodel this reality and create a program that encourages the students to actively engage in their learning process.

Training Format

The top-level an animator can reach in the Japanese pipeline is “Layout” (LO), which requires not just classic character animation skills but a broader understanding of everything on frame: character emotions, animated visual effects, volumes, and their light/shadows, understanding the storyboard and visual storytelling, basics of environment art, etc.

To help artists gradually approach that final level, we've created a cyclical program that covers the four main areas (subjects) of focus for animators: drawing, painting, animation, and storyboarding. The first cycle deals with the basic or most fundamental aspects of the four main areas. The second advances to more artistic and complex elements, and finally, the third cycle involves practicing the technical components necessary to master anime, such as workflow and pipeline.

Each cycle lasts one month. So, in the first month, you'll study drawing with a focus on the basic and fundamental elements. In the second month, you'll study painting, focusing on the fundamentals, and so on. When the second rotation begins, in the fifth month, the focus for the 4 major areas changes to artistic and complex aspects. In the third rotation, from the 9th month onwards, the focus shifts to more technical concepts. The benefit of this rotation-based methodology is that students can study continuously until they feel satisfied with that area. Let's say a student has done the program for 1 year and wants to focus more on the technical aspects. They could enroll in just that module and study that specific area again, gaining a deeper understanding of nuances that they might have missed the first time around due to a lack of experience.

When the student completes the training program and achieves a satisfactory performance, they receive a certificate of completion, which demonstrates that they can create animations in the anime style and also join a project working with this language.

Inverted lesson: The activities and theoretical studies will be done before the live sessions through set assignments. During lessons, the instructors will focus on feedback and complementary presentations. The key to our program is PEOPLE LEARN THROUGH PRACTICE! Self-learning, with instructor corrections.

Language: English

Instructors

Mar Exposito / Mar Kantoku (Director)
She holds a degree in Audiovisual Communication from Barcelona. In 2014, she moved to Japan and passed the JLPT N2. She later graduated with distinction from the 2D Animation department at Tokyo Design Academy, earning both honors and the Presidential Award for her work.

Since 2020, Mar has been running her Tokyo-based studio, leading a remote team creating anime-style videos for musicians, brands, and filmmakers worldwide. Her expertise lies in high-emotion character animation, storyboarding, and team management, bringing heartfelt storytelling and strong visual direction to every project.

Pedro Marcelino / Pedro Sakuga kantoku (Animation Director)

He's a Brazilian animator who has been working with animation and visual storytelling for more than 15 years. His experience includes 5 feature films, short films, animation for games, TV series, etc. Pedro started his journey with animation in 2009, and before that, built up a good experience as an illustrator and comic artist. After working for 10 years in the animation industry for Western productions, he decided to take a chance and venture into the anime industry. Since then, he’s been working as a director, animation director, and animator for anime productions.

From 2021 to 2024 Pedro had an important role working as head of animation and leading the first anime studio in Brazil - 555 comic. On this project, he was the director of the web animated series CRC Luna and Ame Kicks, both available on TikTok. Another important highlight of his career was the book Nausicaa and Bakhtin, in which he analysed the work Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa by Hayao Miyazaki from the perspective of the philosophy of Bakhtin's circle.

LESSON SCHEDULE

The scheduled start of the program is September 4th, 2025.
Lessons will be held weekly, every Thursday. Students are divided into two slots:

Slot 1: Thursday* 8:00-9:00 Japanese Standard Time “08JST Group”
Slot 2: Thursday* 19:00-20:00 Japanese Standard Time, the “19JST Group”

*Careful, since depending on time zones, this may be a Wednesday!

Students must consistently access one of these two slots. They can’t change from one to the other if they miss a lesson. Each slot has a different channel or role on Discord.

Weekly Timeline Example

1) On a Thursday, after the live lesson, Pedro delivers the assignment to students through Discord so they can prepare for the next one!

2) Within 5 days, students submit their work (upload to their assigned Drive folder).
During this assignment period, students can also ask questions in the Discord community.

3) On the last 2 days before the next lesson, Mar and Pedro take a look at deliveries and privately discuss what should be the focus for the next day's lesson (considering what students struggled with the most) as well as who will be the "leader of the lesson" and who will be the "assistant".

4) On the 1h live lesson:

The lead instructor corrects roughly 10 of the students' works: due to time constraints, corrections consist mainly of notations and not a full, detailed redraw. Just like in the anime industry pipeline!

The assistant instructor keeps track of students' text-chat messages, fills in gaps, ensures the instructor is on time to finish, gives logistics and relevant support, and makes art comments if something feels relevant.

As a general rule, the lead instructor will be Pedro. Mar will be the lead instructor when Pedro is absent or the topic feels closer to Mar's expertise.

And after the lesson... the weekly cycle restarts!

5) Lessons recordings are shared on Google Drive after a copyright check (some things are OK for livestreaming but not for recording-and-upload-and-share).

Recordings of lessons are meant to be made available for 1 week after they are uploaded. However, due to copyrights, some lessons’ recordings may not become available or be modified. We encourage students to come to the lesson in person!

Breaks and Holidays

Instructor breaks: Each live session has 1 or 2 Instructors online.
This is to enable instructor breaks, sick leave, and similar absences. So each lesson has Mar, Pedro, or both.
Or guest instructors! If a guest instructor joins or completely substitutes the regular instructors (Mar/Pedro), students will be notified promptly as circumstances allow.

The minimum is that each regular instructor (Mar/Pedro) does 12 lessons out of 16 for each cycle (4 months).

Student AND instructor holiday period:
-2025 August 11th-17th (1 week)
-2025 December 22nd to Jan 4th (2 weeks)
-2026 April 27th to May 3rd (1 week)

So, 4 weeks of break total.

Pricing

The program is set at 37,500 JPY monthly per student.

ENROLLMENT

Application Process

Step 1) The applicant fills in all required information in the form.

Step 2) One instructor reviews the portfolios and application content, decides if the applicant has passed the screening, and notifies the other. That other instructor reviews applicants to give final approval.

This step includes a recommendation on whether a student is selecting the right cycle based on their goals.

Step 3) When the applicant has been screened, ATP’s production assistant emails them to say whether they were accepted.

If accepted, Maru Exposito will prepare a WISE Payment link so the applicant can pay for the relevant ATP cycle(s). Their slot will be held for 7 days. Applicants lose priority if the payment does not arrive by that date.

Step 4) After the payment's arrival is confirmed by the Studio, the student receives the Discord server invitation (if they’re not on the ME Community on Discord already). Then, once they join, Mar or a mod will give them the special “role” in Discord to access the community's hidden area (for ATP).

Trial Run

-There will be two trial lessons on Maru Exposito Community Discord server on:
31st July 2025 19:00JST, Pedro leads and Pedro assists
14th August 2025 08:00 JST, Mar leads and Pedro assists

-Up to 10 applicants who have passed portfolio screening can participate. It is a free lesson so it doesn’t matter whether the applicants have paid or not the cycle fee at that time. However, paying students have priority. These applicants will have their art reviewed by the instructor.
-The art needs to be sent to the instructors as late as 3 days before the trial.
-The lesson will be recorded and shared on YouTube later on.

These trial lessons serve two purposes:
1- To test logistical aspects
2- As a sample of how the program will be for students.

Scholarship Student

-One person from all applicants will be awarded a scholarship if they are selected to participate in the scholarship selection process.

-This student can skip the ATP cycle’s payment step, but the rest of the enrollment procedure is the same. If they paid to secure a slot, they will be refunded.

-The scholarship student will have access to 1 group of lessons (08JST Group or 19JST Group, to their choice) for 12 consecutive months from the start of the training.

These are not 12 cumulative months. So, if lessons start in early September 2025, students will have access until late August 2026. Lessons do not accumulate if, within that consecutive year, there is a period where lessons are not happening.

-Application deadline for scholarship students is July 31st.

-The scholarship student will be notified as late as 1 week before the program start date.

Grading System

All students will be graded after completing three full cycles (12 months) and, if they are successful in meeting the minimum requirements, will receive a PDF to certify their program achievements. If students enroll in only one subject or cycle, they will receive a specific certificate for that cycle and subject.

Evaluation process

The focus of our program is to train artists so that they can work in the Japanese animation industry and/or create their own projects in the language of Japanese animation. As such, the assessment method will be rigorous and detailed to fulfill this objective. Everyone who works as a professional animator knows that artists need to be highly developed and technically proficient, but they also need to be responsible, open to criticism, and highly organised. To encourage this, in addition to specific technical guidance, soft skills will also be evaluated.

Therefore, the final grade will have two parts:

Part 1 - Soft skills
Intrapersonal skills such as the ability to communicate well, organization, openness to feedback, interpretative skills, capacity to work in a group, etc.

Part 2 - Hard skills
Specific skills for animators, such as drawing skills, colour-painting skills, the ability to tell stories with images (storyboards), and the ability to bring drawings to life (animation).

PROGRAM CONTENT

3 cycle's meaning
Basics/fundamentals
Intermediate/advanced
Technical

Cycles order
Drawing
Painting
Storyboard
Animation

Cycle 01

Drawing - Cycle 01
1. Structure of the human body vs anatomy of the human body
2. Head structure in perspective/Eyes - anime style
3. Realistic hands/Realistic feet
4. Hair - anime style

Painting - Cycle 01
1. Color theory and digital painting variables
2. Color palette
3. Realistic painting
4. Expressive painting

Animation - Cycle 01
1. Animation principles part 01 - Settings
2. Animation principles part 02 - Design
3. Animation principles part 03 - Movement
4. Extra principles

Storyboard - Cycle 01
1. Sequential art
2. Visual storytelling
3. Turning a video into a storyboard
4. Turning a storyboard into a video

Cycle 02

Drawing - Cycle 02
1. Draping of clothes (dresses, loose shirts, skirts, hoodies, etc)
2. Shadow - anime style
3. Forced perspective with foreshortening
4. Realistic Background - anime style

Painting - Cycle 02
1. Painting of organic/natural objects - part 01
2. Painting of organic/natural objects - part 02
3. Painting of non-organic objects - part 01
4. Painting of non-organic objects - part 02

Animation - Cycle 02
1. Hair animation
2. Wide clothing animation
3. Effects animation
4. Camera animation

Storyboard - Cycle 02
1. Thumbnails
2. Beat board
3. Visual narrative typology
4. Finishing styles and levels

Cycle 03

Drawing - Cycle 03
1. Character sheet
2. Expression/posing sheet
3. Prop sheet
4. Background board

Painting - Cycle 03
1. Style frame painting
2. Board painting
3. Character Design painting
4. Color script painting

Animation - Cycle 03
1. Layout
2. Genga
3. Douga
4. Shiage

Storyboard - Cycle 03
1. Ekonte - part 01
2. Ekonte - part 02
3. Animatic from Ekonte - part 01
4. Animatic from Ekonte - part 02

Program Changes and Cancellations

1- This schedule may change if students struggle or are interested in a slightly different direction, or for similar reasons. If changes are significant, we will attempt to notify students in advance.

2- Lessons will be adapted around holiday breaks when applicable.

3- To ensure the program operates at its best and instructors' schedules are respected, lessons can only officially start when a minimum number of portfolio acceptances and students are reached for each available group. With that, we’d like to point out that the starting date can be postponed until that happens. However, once a student’s portfolio is approved and the payment process is completed, their slot will be secured and updated on the new schedule.

On the other hand, if Maru Exposito cancels the program due to unforeseen circumstances, the student’s payment will be refunded.

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