Hello fellow Art Nerds, welcome back to another video! Today I'll be drawing Hayao Miyazaki while
telling you some fun facts you may or may not know about him. He was born on January 5th, 1941 in
Tokyo, Japan. He's a Japanese anime director who has multiple critically acclaimed and popular movies.
He's best known for being the co-founder of the film and animation studio,
Studio Ghibli. Miyazaki's father was director of the manufacturing company Miyazaki Airplane.
The company built parts for Zero fighter planes, which gave Miyazaki a strong love of flying.
This interest in planes and flying influenced almost all of his artwork. He gained an education
in economics at Gakushūin University, Tokyo in 1963, but instead began to work as an entry-level
animator at Toei Animation -- a division of the Toei Studio in Asia's largest producer of animation.
There he met Takahata Isao and Ōta Akemi. Takahata would become his best friend and business partner,
and Ōta would become his wife. Miyazaki worked on multiple projects during his time in Toei, including
Wolf Boy Ken, and in 1968, The Little Norse Prince. He would leave Toei in 1971 with Takahata, and the two
would continue to work for many studios during the 1970's. During this time, he worked on short films
for Panda! Go Panda, and his first full-length film in 1979, Lupin III The Castle of Cagliostro.
Miyazaki's art style started to become more recognizable in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind,
which originated as a monthly manga strip he wrote for Animage magazine from 1982-1984.
Later it would become a film released in 1984 that was directed by Miyazaki and Takahata.
Being fairly successful, the two decided to make their partnership more permanent and launched
Studio Ghibli in 1985. In 1986, Ghibli released their first film Castle in the Sky in Japan.
Nausicaä was released in the United States as Warriors of the Wind, but the edits and poor dubbing made the
American release virtually unwatchable. Because of this, it took nearly a decade before Miyazaki
considered another western release. Despite this, Ghibli continued to release movies in Japan.
My Neighbor Totoro released alongside Grave of the Fireflies in 1988.
Following those were Kiki's Delivery Service in 1989, and Porco Rosso in 1992. While all of those
were critically acclaimed, it would be Princess Mononoke's 1997 release that broke Japanese
box office records. This movie showed a couple of Miyazaki's recurring themes, such as the conflict
between industrialism and the environment, and the spiritual world living alongside humans. In 2001,
Miyazaki released Spirited Away -- it won the top prize at the 2002 Berlin International Film
Festival. It won best Asian film at the Hong Kong Film Awards, and was named best animated feature at the
2003 Academy Awards. In Japan, it won best picture of the 2002 Japanese Academy Awards and replaced
Titanic as a top grossing film in Japanese history. Spirited Away follows the story of a young girl,
Chihiro, when she wanders away from her parents and accidentally enters a world of spirits and gods.
There she's given the name Sen, and must try to reclaim her name and return to the human world.
In 2004, Howl's Moving Castle was released, also being nominated for an Academy Award in 2006.
In 2005, Disney released a new western adaptation of Nausicaä on DVD. This version includes the
original Japanese audio, as well as a new professionally recorded English dub. This
was the first time the film was released in its original form to the United States. 2008 marked the release of
Ponyo, a film aimed at younger children, which was different from what Ghibli films had done before.
However, it was still the top box office draw of 2008 in Japan. Miyazaki co-wrote
screenplays for The Secret World of Arrietty in 2010 and From Up on Poppy Hill in 2011.
The Secret World of Arrietty was based on the novel The Borrowers by Mary Norton, and From
Up on Poppy Hill was adopted from a manga and was also directed by Miyazaki's son, Gorō.
In 2013 was the release of The Wind Rises, based on Miyazaki's manga of the same name.
It was nominated for an Academy Award in 2014, however this would also be when Miyazaki
would announce that The Wind Rises would be his final feature length film before his retirement.
Instead he worked on a short film, Boro the Caterpillar for the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka.
This retirement would be temporary however, as in 2016 Boro the Caterpillar would be
expanded as a full feature length film -- this was Miyazaki's first completely computer animated film.
After this, Miyazaki would announce his retirement once again.
In 2015, he received an honorary Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
In 2017, Miyazaki would announce another film he would be directing, How Do You Live?, coming out
of his retirement once again. This sparked a bit of an inside joke amongst artists
where Miyazaki was compared to a cat, being completely indecisive about the decision to retire.
2020 marked the release of another completely CGI film, Earwig and the Witch, directed by Miyazaki's
son. However, unlike all the previous Ghibli films to date, this film was received mostly negatively
as it didn't capture the signature Miyazaki charm. Part of what made Ghibli
film so recognizable were its painted backgrounds, and completely 2D animation.
Today Miyazaki is still hard at work with his team creating How Do You Live? despite the pandemic. The
producer of the film, Toshio Suzuki was interviewed by Entertainment Weekly for news about the film,
and he stated that "we are still hand-drawing everything, but it takes us more time to complete
a film because we're drawing more frames." He states that Totoro was done in 8 months with 8 animators,
however, because of the larger workload they're only able to do around a minute of animation per
month with 60 animators. As of the interview, they'd completed 36 minutes of the film and hope to get
the film completed within the next three years. Miyazaki's work has inspired young artists and
animators of all generations his films becoming a staple of Japanese pop culture worldwide. Despite
being 80 years of age, he continues to create films and inspire current artists and artists to come.
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