The animation masters devotees on the moments they cant forget.
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
No living animator is as widely heroized by his peers as Hayao Miyazaki is.
He was amused by that.
He just passed me the ashtray with a cheeky grin.
Thebox-office toppingAmerican release ofThe Boy and the Heronwas the latest chapter of a 60-year-long career in animation.
Hes also a useful model in part because of howpersonalhis films are.
The whole show was a giant reference forSteven Universe.
She starts to drown, and Conan has to save her.
The animation timing is incredible.
Conan clenches his face, he gets his shackles off, he throws them off his feet.
He gets to Lana, and herocketsup.
Once they get to the top of the water, they shoot out meters and meters into the air.
I dont know if theres ever been any other sequence like that in anything.
You want so badly for them to survive and be free.
Its very dark anyway, but that sequence perfectly encapsulates the optimism and determination and calmness Conan has.
Theres a little psychic communication between Conan and Lana, but other than that, its wordless.
That could only be driven by the storyboards and by the animators.
Theres so much love in those drawings.
ThroughoutSteven Universe, our characters Steven and Connie were very Conan- and Lana-inspired.
We wanted to evoke the way that Conan and Lana love each other so unconditionally.
These action sequences are driven by that unconditional love.
Every night, people would show movies.
The first one I saw wasNausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and it blew me away.
And I remember just going like: The guy who did that beautiful, poetic film didthis?!
It was like finding out Sergio Leone had helpeddirect theBen-Hurchariot race.
It all kind of made sense.
It was one of those moments where you could see your hero evolving.
Thats much rarer in American TV where theres a team of storyboard artists.
Theres something very I dont know if itsromantic?
But being an animation nerd, its like, yeah, you want to do the boards.
The later in my years I get, the more I board.
It gives the storytelling that more personal touch.
Because he can draw so well, hell put alotof stuff on the board.
So when the scenes got a lot of stuff in it, it makes the episodes better.
When you look at other episodes not directed by him, they feel a little emptier.
This scale, the jumping, getting to the plane its really action-comedy.
Its not one-liners, its more about the physicality of it, which always appealed to and influenced me.
You see it from Tex Avery through all of Miyazakis stuff as well.
I was 24, 25, and I was trying to figure it all out.
Because its still done on a TV budget.
The choreography is great.
Everything is very clear, and its staged very simply because it has to be production friendly.
You know where to look.
Nowadays with CG, you might do anything, and somehow its still not as cool as that.
In Disney animated films, by contrast, they want to show acting and bouncy animation.
Everythings more driven, almost, by an idea of whats worth animating.
But with these films, the storytelling can be handled with the simplicity of beautiful, strong composition.
But everything else might be still, and the clouds are moving underneath.
Its such wonderful restraint.
I love when you see the shadow on the clouds.
Its inSpellbound, too, which Im working on now.
The shadow under her moves over the tops of the clouds really fast.
I cant really speak as an animator, because Im not an animator.
Then you add some movement to it, and suddenly its on another level.
I was really struck by that kind of clarity of visual storytelling.Nausicaawas where I first noticed it.
And youve got to remember, this is all hand drawn.
Its all by eye.
And Miyazaki has had a lifelong love of aeronautics.
His father was an aircraft designer, and he has a fascination with how airplanes move.
Thats doing your research.
We have a phrase in Hollywood: Only God creates from nothing, the rest of us do research.
Defending Dad
Genndy Tartakovsky:This is not a big action scene or sequence.
Nausicaa comes home, sees her father in trouble, and she starts fighting these knights.
The timing is super badass and very tight.
Its got this coolness to it.
I judge how good it is by that.Goddamn, thats a cool fightthats a feeling.
It looks like a little Pikachu, a raccoon-like thing.
He keeps warning her that even the babies are fierce and theyll bite.
And shes like, No, Ill be fine, itll be fine.
She puts her hand out, and it jumps onto her and runs onto her shoulder.
Itd be like having a rat on your head.
But shes so calm and gentle with it.
She puts her finger out to say, Its okay.
And of course, it bites her.
She goes, Mmf.
And then for me,heaven on earth, it licks her!
Like it says, Im sorry.
This was just a girl and an animal and a primal connection.
And its a battle over the health of the planet, which was also forward-thinking.
It was great to see a story that could say more than Wait for your prince.
Those robot guys just drop down as the castle disintegrates.
Its just amazing stuff.
All hand drawn, no digital.
Broadly speaking, I think Miyazakis influence on us at Disney was more about scale.
A lot of Disney movies are smaller.
We didnt actually say, Oh, this is a Miyazaki moment.
But those are the scenes that were inspired by his sense of scale and grandeur.
And as compelling as Miyazakis characters are, its the flying sequences for me that really work.
The storm passes, and theyre out cold, drifting with their shadow against the clouds.
You get that whole sense of scale.
Theyre tiny compared to these huge cumulus clouds, and they just kind of bump into the castle.
Thats a really cool way of revealing something so grand after such a tumultuous journey.
Itsbump!Then theyre on a lawn with butterflies and flowers.
And then a giant robot comes in.
Shes bugging him, leaving flowers on his desk, and hes trying to work.
She goes off and sees one of the little sprites, the Mini Totoro, and follows it.
Animated films are so frenetic now.
Theyre all snappy dialogue, quick, constantdah, dah, dah, dah.
Thats stuck with me all these years.
I remember seeingTotoroin the 80s.
I was still at CalArts.
I went back to work on my final film there, and I just took a different approach.
I created this character and it got me hired at Disney.
Its not just this big religious epic.
Find something that grabs the audience and grounds them to an emotional connection.
When they finally find her, its magic hour and shes in the Catbus.
It was warm, comforting, and the picture of that world was so clear.
Its like Miyazaki went there and drew this, and came back and is just showing it to you.
I cant overstate enough the feeling that Iknewthis place somehow.
Because thats how I felt watchingTotoro.
I was like,I know this.
Dont just do ordinary green grass.
Really push it.So I did.
But theres a great purity in the way that Miyazakis films handle that kind of daylight that we recognize.
I know exactly what kind of summer that is.
Its just something you feel in your bones.
Thats because what actually happens is so tactile and understated.
They stand next to each other, theres a drop of water on his umbrella.
His whiskers move a little bit, and his eyes widen.
Its so subtle, but it captures the wonder of hearing the water and reacting to the sound.
What is this thing?
And of course, a Catbus shows up.
I love that you see the headlights in the distance and think,Its the bus.
Finally the little girls will get to see their father.And then the headlights suddenly do this weirdblip.
Its not moving like a bus in the distance anymore, and thats your first clue.
Then it starts to bounce and jump.
Totoro gives Mei a little gift and then crawls on, and then the cat bursts away.
It turns with those big lidded eyes and then runs off over the hills.
The headlights are just all over the place because its a cats head and not a bus.
I wanted that Catbus so much when I was a kid.
Its beautiful and simple and genuine and childlike, but its animated with perfectly minimalist discipline.
Perfect timing, to the frame, to make things the optimal level of accessible and identifiable and funny.
Its seared into our brains.
And then the bus-stop scene inTotorocomes along.
It shows you’re free to slow right down and still do something only possible in animation.
Its almost meditative, especially the little scene with the shrine.
This is the thing I always say about when theyrecreate this stuff in CG, even frame by frame.
Theres plenty of ways to do it.
But theres something about the fact that its hand-drawn that makes it super timeless.
I think that appeals to kids in its simplicity, but the sophistication is also very appealing to adults.
you’re free to see the craft there in front of you.
When we madeThe Secret of Kells, I wasnt as familiar with his impact.
Id seen some of his movies and the people on staff were talking about them.
We were aware of him.
I obviously had seen stuff years before, but I think it was coming through more subconsciously.
It was an influence that I hadnt put my finger on.
Those were the touchstones for the movie I had in mind.
He put that in the animation.
What that does immediately is say:This is not a puppet, this is not animation.
Kiki is listening to the radio on the grass.
She comes inside through a slat in the fence.
Thats not how everybody else gets into the house, but thats how Kiki gets into the house.
Then she has a conversation any 13-year-old would have with her mother, but her mother is making potions.
Thats no big deal.
This is the world they live in.
And then: Did you borrow your fathers radio again without asking?
Thats Miyazaki grounding the mundane that we all deal with every day.
Then she flies, and what happens?
She bumps into a tree and shoots off.
We see that shes not great at it, and shes going out into this big world.
But the scene says shes loved.
Use my broom, not yours.
Im wobbly on my broom.
That is hard to do.
They dont move, but you feel like they could.
So theres loaves of bread in the bakery.
Theyre cels, so when you watch the scene, you feel likeanyone could reach up and grab that.
Its a way of using the medium that is so subtle, but its super cool.
There are books on a table that look like you could pick them up, but no one does!
It lit my brain on fire because its such a simple trick.
Its not new technology.
This wouldve been available to everyone whos ever worked in animation.
But because of the language of animation, the audience is like,Oh, that could move!
Hes just a pig.
It has more impact than yelling and screaming.
You see his plane.
Its flying, but it looks like its basically alone.
And you see him looking around, wondering whats happening in that utter stillness.
Its all of his friends, and he knows that theyre dead.
This is the moment that he sees them pass on.
And its done very quietly.
That really hit me when I saw it.
It was an early use of computer animation to augment the hand-drawn animation, but its still really timeless.
Miyazaki was wise enough to keep a hand-drawn look even when he used computer elements.
Ashitakas arm becomes infected with the darkness thats all around the forest god.
Its not likeTom and Jerrywhere they get knocked on the head and then the next minute theyre okay again.
Tonally,Princess Mononoke,Totoro,andSpirited Awayare all very different, but theres animism they share.
Everything has a kind of life, a kind of spirit.
Theres a verisimilitude to the worlds he creates.
He doesnt use cartoon tropes.
We wanted it to be an action fantasy like that.
That is why we wanted to have things like the characters eating and drinking.
In the boar sequence, there are these three young farm girls, and theyre all wearing sun-shade hats.
But the shot Im talking about is when the three girls notice whats happening and begin to run away.
I wasnt finding work, and my wife and I went to see it.
We had heard a ton about it, so expectations were already high.
We went to a theater in Santa Monica on a Tuesday.
(I still remember it was a Tuesday!)
The theater was half empty.
Thats the holy grail, when you’re free to be a prophet in both lands.
The sequence that takes my breath away to this day is the moment when No-Face eats the frog spirit.
At this point in the film, there have been hints of brutality, but weve been treading lightly.
And then it turns into a horror movie and an action film.
Its a true fairy tale in that way.
It escalates and it escalates and it escalates.
No-Face starts out as a peaceful-looking design that becomes grotesque, with a gigantic mouth.
He starts eating people, and the reaction shots of people running away are pure horror.
The camera is trying to keep up with this thing coming at you, relentlessly.
And if you watch it with no sound, its still really scary.
I remember watching it in the theater and going, I cant wait to watch that again.
And then finally letting go and being at peace with oneself.
Theres a balance between beauty and fear and compassion that happens in that sequence thats remarkable.
And with no words, by the way, its all visual.
Play that at my funeral.
Theres so many wonderful animation techniques in Calcifer.
There are no organs inside a fire.
Theres no mouth pocket, but youbelieveall of it because of the attention to detail of the movement.
There is one moment when the castle is falling apart.
Calcifers gesture of love is this last lift that brings the castle back together.
The flame grows gigantic, almost like a flaming bodybuilder, with pecs.
This character who begins as a small little campfire gives everything he can to save this home.
Theres danger, theres intimacy, theres magic, theres heart fluttering.
He shoots it completely from Sophies point of view.
Thats your first introduction to Howl.
All of the details Miyazaki puts into this sequence make us feel what Sophies feeling.
He emphasizes things like the glittery jewelry that Howl is wearing.
He animates a glint to them thats the first thing you notice when Howl enters the shot.
He also animates Howls beautiful hair falling in front of his eyes.
Every time he turns his head, that hair moves fluidly with him.
You get this fluttering feeling of first love, of attraction, of danger.
Miyazaki treats the feelings of girls and women in a lot of his stories seriously and sincerely.
He puts as much love and effort into this moment as he does with his action sequences.
He was just trying stuff.
The first time I saw it, I was blown away by the artistry, but I didntgetit.
Today, when I think ofPonyo, the running sequence is the moment I think of.
That sequence is him saying,Hey, Im still fucking Miyazaki.That Ponyo run is insane.
Itsthree-quarter perspective, the camera is moving,everything is moving,the speed!
Im sure theres a cemetery with animators who died animating that sequence, because holy cow.
Some of the animation its really masterful but hes clever with frame rates.
And thats so magical; thats really Miyazaki.
The specific animator whom he assigned to that scene,Shinya Ohira, is incredible.
He has a very unique style.
You see it peppered in a lot of Miyazakis work.
He also did theopening ofThe Boy and the Heron the firebombing sequence of Mahito running through Tokyo.
Its all fluid and energetic.
There was a difference of opinion between how Mahito would slice and dig his blade into the fish.
Miyazaki would never verbally criticize what I did.
It should be drawn like this.
Thats not what I had in mind.
Kiriko is very well practiced in gutting a fish, so she just hops on and does her thing.
Mahito is not that well practiced.
Hes supposed to be clumsy.
That was a result of going back and forth between Miyazaki and the key animators.
He tends to embellish sequences like that.
Rebecca Sugar:When a lot of people say realism, they mean line mileage.
So many ofThe Boy and the Herons most subtle and interesting animal actions are clearly so carefully observed.
That has so much power to it.
Those references to real people and real creatures and real, experienced moments come through so profoundly.
But through all of it, it has tofeel honest.
