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New English textbook published for anime industry’s Animator Skill Test

Casey Baseel Aug 15, 2025
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NAFCA text covers the skills, both in drawing and speaking Japanese, that you’ll need to start an anime artist career in Japan.

Founded in 2023, the Nippon Anime & Film Culture Association, or NAFCA, for short, is an industry group that seeks to promote and improve the anime industry. Among its more specific goals is a desire to develop artist human resources by improving the technical standards, quality of work, and treatment of employees within Japanese animation production studios.

To that end, NAFCA administers the Animator Skill Test, a certification test held twice a year that serves both to let aspiring anime artists know what kinds of skills and knowledge will be expected of them in a professional setting, and also allows them to prove to employers that they have the capabilities they’re looking for. NAFCA also publishes study aids to help test takers prepare for the examination, and as a reflection of the increasing internationalization of the anime industry, they’ve just started publishing an English textbook too.

The Animator Skill Test Trace and Tap-Wari Test: Levels 6 & 5 is a fully translated version of the book of the same title that NAFCA also publishes in Japanese. As Levels 5 and 6 are the most fundamental test levels, the focus is on skills and knowledge necessary for in-between animation, entry-level work focused on filling in the gaps between the key animation frames drawn by more senior artists. That doesn’t mean there’s no skill required, though, as breaking down and drawing the incremental steps in how a character’s body, costume, and surrounding environment move in the transition from one dramatic shot to the next is what really makes animation animation.

Of course, one could argue that a lot of artists are self-taught, but even if you’ve already got the drawing chops, NAFCA’s English textbook still looks to be a valuable resource for any foreigner hoping to get their foot in the anime industry door, because the book doesn’t just cover technical drawing details. It also explains the roles and responsibilities of the different departments and employees involved in an anime’s production process. Not only is the workflow diagrammed, the explanations make use of key Japanese-language terms, the sort of workplace jargon that you’ll absolutely benefit from having a handle on but which you won’t find covered in standard learning-Japanese lessons for foreigners. Some of them are things you wouldn’t even be likely to find in Japanese dictionaries for native Japanese speakers, such as “sakkan check” referring to the primary animation director (the genga sakuga kantoku) reviewing the quality of key frames.

▼ It looks as though, despite being printed in English, the book retains the exact layout of the Japanese version, meaning you read the right page before the left, but with that being the style English-translated manga is published in, odds are it won’t be a major problem for anyone interested in working in the anime industry.

The book also explains base skills such as tracing, animating lip flaps and eye blinks, and how to read production time sheets. There are also sample test questions that serve as a check of your production skill knowledge as well as your understanding of the related Japanese vocabulary.

The 112-page Animator Skill Test Trace and Tap-Wari Test: Levels 6 & 5 can be ordered through Amazon Japan here, priced at 6,000 yen (US$40). With the Animator Skill Test having a total of 10 levels (split between in-between animation and design categories), this could be just the beginning of the in-English textbook series.

Source: PR Times, NAFCA
Top image: PR Times
Insert images: PR Times, Amazon Japan/NAFCA
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