Animator makes a beautiful tribute to Hayao Miyazaki. Love the opening sequence!
About Hayao Miyazaki
Miyazaki is probably the most famous Japanese animator and director in the world, renowned for films like Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and Ponyo. Often called the Japanese Walt Disney (though apparently he hates the title), his film Spirited Away was the first Japanese anime film to win an Academy Award. The protagonists of his films are usually strong, young independent women. The majority of his films at his studio, Studio Ghibli, are hand-drawn:
The majority of Studio Ghibli films are made using traditional animation techniques. So what does this mean? EVERY SINGLE FRAME is hand-drawn by animators, before being put together to give the illusion of movement and create the film. This is a very repetitive and time-consuming process but the studio’s co-founder Hayao Miyazaki believes that “hand drawing on paper is the fundamental of animation”.
Despite Miyazaki’s preferred choice being hand-drawn animation, CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) has been used in several Studio Ghibli films. CGI can help animators with scenes that would otherwise be overly complicated to create using traditional animation techniques. In Princess Mononoke, digital paint was used to speed up the process and finish the film on time. My Neighbors the Yamadas is the only Studio Ghibli film to be entirely made using computer animation.