Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese film director, animator, manga artist, illustrator, producer and screenwriter, having attained international acclaim as a maker of anime feature films beloved by many throughout the globe, and along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli, a film and animation studio also known by many. Many have considered him the Japanese Walt Disney.
In 1963, Miyazaki first started working at Toei Animation, working as an in-between artist and gaining recognition for his work (Drawing in-betweening frames) in Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon, he had found the original ending to the script unsatisfactory and pitched his own idea, which then became the ending used in the finished film.
It was the film "Princess Mononoke" (Also his first film to use computer graphics) that made Hiyazaki known in the West, being the highest grossing film in Japan until it was eclipsed by the blockbuster "Titantic", it was also the first animated film to win Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards. And then in came "Spirited Away", which topped Titantic's sales at the Japanese box office, winning itself not just a Picture of the Year award, but also an American Academy Award, making if the first ever anime film to win one.
I can't say that all of his films are meant for young viewers (Considering that there are quite a few scary elements being presented in quite a few of them, I feel that had I been younger, the beginning of "Spirited Away" where Chihiro loses her parents in a strange, terrifying world would have made me cry), Miyazaki has nothing but positive intentions (With themes of environmentalism, pacifism and feminism) with his stories when showing them to children (Despite how he himself also admits that he is pessimistic about the world), especially since he focuses on strong female leads and preferably more morally ambiguous antagonists with redeeming qualities, which is proven further when you reading some of his more memorable quotes.
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| "I'm not going to make movies to tell children, "You should despair and run away"." |
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| "I would like to make a film to tell children "it's good to be alive"." |
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| "The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it- I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever some evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics is hopeless." |
Miyazaki uses very human like-movements in his animation, with most of the art surprisingly done in water colors.
The process for the production of Miyazaka's animations are interestingly different to American animation with the script and storyboard being created together, and with the animation beginning even before these story is finished and while the storyboards are still in development (Some of his staff members must have shocked upon first learning about this). And despite how CGI was employed for "Princess Mononoke", Miyazaki almost always uses traditional animation for all of his animation thus far, and plans to stick with hand drawing on paper, as it is the "fundamental of animation".
"It's very important for me to retain the right ratio between working by hand and computer. I have learnt that balance now, how to use both and still be able to call my films 2D." as quoted by him.
And if the quality of his hand drawn animation remains this gorgeously top notch, I will support the man all the way! It is also a stern reminder that I shouldn't depend solely on digital animating and practice hand drawing frames on paper, it feels like ages since I did those flip book exercises...
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