French anime website, Catsuka recently featured the Light of Love anime video and its director, Jamie Vickers on its pages, giving a bit more insight into the origins of the video (which was in fact a pilot for a television show). From Google Translate:

Jamie Vickers is one of those rare leaders foreigners working in Japan in the background. I had already relayed his demo tape, which allowed to realize that he hosted for people like Koji Morimoto (on Dimension Bomb in Genius Party Beyond) or Masaaki Yuasa (on Kemonozume). And doing research on anything else, I came across a video clip passed unnoticed, he realized, design and animation in the (fire) Daisuke Nakayama Studio Realthing: Light of Love to Yameen and Lady Alma. We could already see the clip in his demo tape, with a new name – The Sound of Fire – and presented as a pilot.

The Light of Love anime video was in fact a slice of a pilot called “Sound of Fire” originally based on the song “Fire” from my album, Never Knows Best. The video was designed, directed and animated by Jamie and produced by Japanese anime studio, RealThing in the Shibuya Ward of Tokyo, Japan. The video’s executive producer was Yujiro Funato. And of course there was a cast of talented artists who have helped bring the video to life:

Production – Realthing
Executive Producer – Yujiro Funato
Producer / Creative support – Norifumi Fujita
Direction / Animation – Jamie Vickers
CGI Direction – Mayu Hirano
Animation / Color Design – Yuko Ueno

Thanks to Catsuka for featuring the video.

Check out Jamie’s 2010 animation reel directly below, and the Light of Love video follows.

I trekked out to the Shigureden museum in Arashiyama, Japan — within Koyoto — and close to the corporate home of Nintendo. Here, the founder of Nintendo, Sekiryo Yamauchi has created an interactive museum which at the time used the Nintendo DS to interact with live installations. The entire building and all of the interactive installations are based on a Japanese anthology of poems.

We were fortunate enough to have an attendant present that spoke English. This was not normally the case, so if you are considering going, just assume you will be “on your own”, as English-speaking translators are not normally on hand.

When you walk in (after removing your shoes, of course) there are huge LCD panels on the floor. As you navigate the floorscape with your DS in hand, the Wifi tracks your position over an interactive map of Kyoto. Your DS is represented by a virtual bird which you can see in the video. As you walk around, the bird will circle or migrate towards focal points of Kyoto. When we came across Nintendo HQ on the map, Mario popped out with the iconic “coin” sound. You’re also doing this at the same time with other people, which is really cool because it becomes this social experimentation in traversing this interactive field, your DS serving as a “GPS”/Navi/Pokedex:

There’s a lot of interactive content. Unfortunately for me, it was all in Japanese. But it was pretty bugged out. The building had some dope architecture.

It was also an interesting trek/walk to get to. Kyoto is definitely worth checking out, especially if you want to see Japan beyond the bright lights of Tokyo.

Peep the video. Here’s the website with the sick rock garden jawn:

http://www.shigureden.com/english/index.html