Stuff I Like: The fascinating anime of Hayao Miyazaki

SOURCE Francesco Mugnai - Click here to go to original post

Maybe the name of Hayao Miyazaki is unknow to your ears and eyes, because it is a little bit hard to remember the sounds and spelling of japanese language. This article is trying to put in your memory the name of Hayao Miyazaki.

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) is a filmmaker and cofounder of Studio Ghibli (animation production). When he was young drew airplanes for Miyazaki Airplane, a enterprise owned by Hayao Miyazaki’s uncle and developed a lifelong fascination with aviation and flying machines, a recurrent theme on his films.
In April 1963, Miyazaki got a job at Toei Animation. He played an important role as chief animator, concept artist, and scene designer.
Miyazaki co-founded the animation production company Studio Ghibli with Isao Takahata in 1985.
For Television, in 1974 Mizayaki created the scene design and layout of Heidi, girl of the Alps. This anime serie is based on Heidi of Johanna Spyri. Miyazaki directed six episodes of Sherlock Hound, an Italian-Japanese co-production which retold Sherlock Holmes tales. These episodes were first broadcast in 1984-85.
He was widely known with the film Princess Mononoke, but he had a long time directing movies: The Castle of Cagliostro, 1979; Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, 1984; Castle in the Sky, 1986; My Neighbor Totoro, 1988; Kiki’s Delivery Service, 1989; Porco Rosso, 1992; Princess Mononoke, 1997; Spirited Away, 2001 (winner, Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, 2002); Howl’s Moving Castle, 2004 (nominee, Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, 2005); and Ponyo, 2008.
I strongly recommend you to watch the movies with a lot of attention to the details. It was amazing for me to pause the movie and see every detail of the room of the wizard in Howl’s Moving Castle, with tons of amulets hanging in the walls and ceiling. Or be scared with the demon snakes on the film the Princess Mononoke, which by the way, is a mix between traditional animation (hand-draw) and computer graphics. Since Princess Mononoke to Ponyo Mizayaki used the mixed techniques and now he had shifted to traditional animation only.
As The Guardian said:” In the past he has been vocal in his criticism of computer-generated imagery, describing it as “thin, shallow, fake”. These days he seems to have made his peace with the beast. He admits that he likes Toy Story because it opened the doors to a new breed of animation and even admits to using CGI in his own movies (but never more than 10% of the finished print). “Actually I think CGI has the potential to equal or even surpass what the human hand can do,” he says. “But it is far too late for me to try it.”
I am leaving you with some images from his movies, but you must remember to watch at least Princess Mononoke. You are gonna be fond of him.