Guest post by VizWorld’s Social Media Strategist, Matthew Breeman

Japanese artist-animator-director Hayao Miyazaki

Japanese artist-animator-director Hayao Miyazaki – Creative Commons image by worldchaos81

In the world of animation, Hayoa Miyazaki is king. Though probably not as well known by name as the creator of Mickey Mouse, he can be called the Walt Disney of Japan. His fame, certainly for the professional animation community, is legendary: according to Pixar animator John Lasseter, Miyazaki is “the world’s greatest living animator”. However, his title may come to rest with his latest effort: after a career of 50 years, Miyazaki has decided that his 2013 film, The Wind Rises, will be his final.

The Wind Rises was the highest-grossing Japanese film in Japan in 2013 and received critical acclaim from film critics. It won and was nominated for several awards, including nominations for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year. The film is currently in wide spread release in the United States in a dubbed version. [editor’s note: VizWorld mentioned the film in our article about Academy Award Nominations for Best Animated Feature for 2013]

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It is believed that the Miyazaki was inspired to become an animator after watching the 1958 film The Tale of the Wind Serpent,  which is considered to be the first modern anime. In 1963, he got his first job at Toei Animation working as an in-between artist. Inbetweening or tweening, as it is called in most animation software programs, is the process of generating intermediate frames between two images to give the appearance that the first image evolves smoothly into the second image.

Miyazaki gained early recognition for pitching an alternative ending for Gulliver’s Travels Beyond the Moon, (1965) which became the ending of the movie when it was released. After a few successful projects he co-founded Studio Ghibli with Isao Takahata and Tokuma Shoten. In 1997, Miyazaki signed a distribution deal with Disney to expand the showing of his work to the west, yet allowed Miyazaki to maintain creative control. Through Studio Ghibli he released his most famous and successful works such as Porco Rosso (1992), Spirited Away (2001) and Ponyo (2008).

Miyazaki’s used a traditional style of animation, where each frame was drawn by hand. Despite the increasing use and popularity of CGI (computer generated images) for animation, he still used pen and paper as the foundation, right up to his latest feature.

In an interview with Roger Ebert, Miyazaki explained his animation process, “We take [handmade] cell animation and digitize it in order to enrich the visual look, but everything starts with the human hand drawing. And the color standard is dictated by the background. We don’t make up a color on the computer.” With CGI, in both 2D and 3D animation, animators work almost exclusively on the computer, from digital tablets and drawing programs to sophisticated banks of computers to render complex lighting, motion and 3D imagery. Miyazaki eventually did use CGI in his work, but for no more than ten percent of the finished work in each of his films. Miyazaki preferred a hands-on approach to his animations. This way he felt had control of everything on the screen, while allowing him to have an incredible amount of detail in each frame. When watching a Miyazaki film, pause it and examine the frame like a painting. The amount of detail in the frame will become clear, using the painter’s eye, rather than whether or not the CGI artist has elected to have the computer render a particular area of the image.

Miyazaki had criticized CGI animation in its early days, describing it as “fake”, “thin” and “shallow”. Since that time, he has become more accepting of CGI, even going on record saying that he enjoys Toy Story. His stance on CGI now is that it opens the door to new animators. It also has the potential to exceed the capabilities of what the human hand can do. When he watches animation made on a computer, he describes it as magic. As for himself and using these newer methods, he stated that it is a bit late in his career to start learning CGI.

Traditional, hand-drawn 2D animation is what Miyazaki was taught and became its master. Considering that he maintained that tradition all the way through the production of his latest, and sadly, last film, he was preserving a dying practice. He accepts the fact that traditional animation is on its way out—at least for the production of large scale studio projects. Animation, however, is not going anywhere. Traditional animation will still be used, though probably not in the large scale that Miyazaki has done. Digital 2D animation products for commercial and amateur use, such as Toon Boom Studio, Anime Studio, and others, rely on foundational knowledge of the fundamentals of hand-drawn animation. Miyazaki’s art and works will be an inspiration and guide for many animators to come.

 

Six films by Hayoa Miyazaki to watch: