Theres plenty to gawk at in Netflixs animated feature Ultraman: Rising, from explosive inner-city battles to adorable baby kaiju Emis cheeky smile and her explosive poops.But another mesmerizing feature in Emmy Award-winning director Shannon Tindles latest animated achievement up for Annie Awards consideration with voting this week is Ken Satos hair. As if the heartthrob character needed yet another feature for viewers to drool over.VFX supervisor Hayden Jones sure thought so.One of the things we knew we didn't want was a full hair simulation, where every strand is there, he says. It would break the effect of the stylization.The animation design on the film, produced by Netflix Animation, Tsuburaya Productions and Industrial Light & Magic, falls somewhere between comic and cartoon, hand-drawn 2D and 3D graphics. The film centered around main character Ken Sato whos trying to live up to his fathers legacy as Ultraman while balancing his celebrity status and sudden promotion to adoptive kaiju father is full of highly emotive characters with defined 2D face lines and superhero fight sequences with plenty of hand-drawn effects layered onto more traditionally rigged 3DCG animation.So, it makes sense that, when it came to the characters hair, fluffy and soft textures werent going to cut it. We had these solid surfaces, and we got them to move correctly, so they felt right, shares Jones. But, still, the look was really elusive. Shannon brought forward quite a lot of great Japanese actor references where they all had these beautiful hairstyles that were quite slicked over, and they had these highlights that ran down the parting. We were like, That's it. Thats what weve got to create.Just because the hair had to fit into this manga-adjacent animation, didnt mean it couldnt stand out, as Jones puts it, with some hot highlights.It was an interesting challenge, but the look dev team worked with the composite team and we just all pulled together, says Jones. We were really pleased by the end. I would love to have hair that is that beautiful.As stylized as it is, Ultraman, a property that created in 1966 by Eiji Tsuburaya, also has deep roots in Japans history and Jones felt it was important to connect their feature films style with not only something visually delicious, but something authentically Japanese. And the line work on both the characters and background settings was a massive part of that push. When you start investigating how manga and anime have informed each other over many, many years, you start projecting it into, Where can we take it? Where can we push that technique next? says Jones. And you always want to know where historically it's been, so that you can start innovating from a set point. With line work, it's very specific. Sometimes there's hard outlines, smaller, thinner lines to define smaller structures. Getting that balance right, when you pay attention to it, instantly looks like you've brought a manga or an anime to life. If you get it slightly wrong, it starts looking more like an American comic. We really wanted to make sure we were being as culturally authentic as we possibly could, so we put a lot of care into all the really small details like that.The contact shots that launch sequences from 3D to quick 2D frames when Ultraman gets hit or hits back was another detail pulled from fight sequences in many anime series that Jones wanted to incorporate into Tindles film.We started out working with the lighting and compositing teams to see if this kind of transition was something we could do automatically, notes Jones. And, actually, you cant do it automatically because its so dependent on performance. Sometimes its two frames, sometimes its three, sometimes its even four. It depends on how you want to adjust the contrast. Sometimes we invert the whole image. It really has to play to the action and the story beat.But even though each scene had to be art directed, Jones says the transitions, while tedious, were extremely enjoyable.Because youre trying to shock the viewer with this visual stimulus that connects the punch or whatever is happening, he says. It was great fun. Another small detail that gathered inspiration from classic Japanese anime like Akira and Cowboy Bebop, which Jones became known for on the team, were the lens flares used in film. Of course, pulling from 2D references and then translating that lens flare tradition into 3D, like most things with Ultraman, required balance.Its a big part of the story and was just as true for all of us working on the films style, says Jones. We were looking at the TohoScope lenses developed in the 50s by Toho Studios and how they deal with lens flare. They have these beautiful anamorphic lens flares. Thats the real world. And then we were looking at Akira on the other side where you have these hand drawn, super stylized lens flares. We thought, How do we merge these two worlds together?Jones and his team created a toolset with massive geometric shapes that moved in a way that reflected aspects of both TohoScope and Akiras lens flares. Jones was even given the production team title, Emperor of the Lens Flare.Every lens flare was art directed by me and it was an absolute joy to direct every single one of them, says Jones, I pride myself on my lens flare. Theres a shot where Ken's approaching the camera on the motorbike and the lens flare does the full Akira where it just radiates out. I love that shot.He adds, There's a kind of DNA of anime and manga that runs vividly through the whole film. It is a love letter from all of us at ILM to the thousands and thousands of talented artists who have been creating these films for years. Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.