>>275
Yep, that was 100% him. Sure it was mentioned a few posts a go.
>>284
When it comes to anime, there are two main career branches people tend to go down.
Those that start off as artists and key animators, they move up to animation directors, then sometimes go off to being character/mecha designers. The more ambitious will then move up to storyboarding episodes, OPs and EDs, some stop here, others carry on to becoming episode/unit directors and will eventually come to direct main series and movies.
People who did this: Miyazaki, Imaishi, Obari etc.. They all have drawing skill.
Some animators don't move further that doing animation direction or storyboards and simply stay as key animators most of their careers. Yoshinori Kanada is a great example of this.
Now the other career line comes from having excellent vision and planning skills, but little actual artistic skill. So they might start off as project managers, or assistants to directors and then they will move on up to directing their own episodes. Some might learn how to scribble basic storyboards, others might just get someone else to do the drawings for them.
A good example of this career line is Mamoru Oshii. He simply focuses on the direction of story and characters, he leaves the drawing of storyboards to the artists and animators.
Yamakan is from the latter career path. As for how he got the job, well IIRC he came from a prestigious university, so that is probably how he got into KyoAni.