Thursday, January 10, 2008

New Miyazaki Interview

Hayoa Miyazaki discusses his upcoming film on ghibliworld.com - they are not using any CG in this production.
Here's an interesting quote:
I always tell my staff that if they don’t like to draw by hand deliberately, then they should give up animation. It’s easy to distinguish if pictures are drawn by machines or human hands. If we give up the tough way, we will lose the richness in our art.

8 comments:

  1. Great find Victor! I love Miyazaki's work and can't wait to see this!

    I look at Studio Ghibli as kind of the Pixar of Japan. Brilliant.

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  2. Great interview! I love that quote you put up there too. I personally seem to appreciate a 2D animated movie just a little bit more than I do a 3D animated movie. There is just a special charm about it.

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  3. >>I always tell my staff that if they don’t like to draw by hand deliberately, then they should give up animation. Miyazaki<<

    Purists often claim 2D is the only worthy form of animation (Miyazaki seems to fit into that category) but there are so many mediums in which an animator can bring life to a character, and tell an entertaining story, it would be a loss to everyone if the claim were treated as 'gospel'.

    The quality of 3D animation today is so high (bringing in a new golden age of animation), and knowing that some of it's most talented animators couldn't create appealing 2D animation to save their lives, I'm hopeful ALL forms of animation will continue to be supported. Animation, as an artform and industry, remains vital because of ALL the diverse mediums it embraces.

    3D animation has given a tremendous boost to the industry, deserving the praise and support of anyone who wants to see animation as an artform continue.

    Matthew

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  4. If we could only all be as talented as Miyazaki. I'm quite content to keep my drawings in my sketchbook, personally. :) Nobody's going to be putting them up on the silver screen anytime soon, but that's alright with me. I don't think it makes me less of an artist to have decided to focus on 3D, instead of developing my drawing skills further.

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  5. He must be feeling better. I seem to recall him planning to retire after the last one.

    I'm glad they are going for a simpler story. "Howl" was rather enigmatic.

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  6. Hmmm, I don't know if Miyazaki was saying anything bad about 3D in that quote. I know that since I discovered photoshop, I haven't picked up a paintbrush. More and more artists (myself included) are using the computers As their main tool. It's quite scary. It kind of makes us Lazy, careless, and we take things for granted, The amount of times I've done something and thought, don't worry about it, you can "CTRL Z", or edit in photoshop is ridiculous. I think drawing is so important in any form of animation, even if it doesn't go beyond thumbnailing, I'm sure Places like Pixar believe drawing is a fundemental requirement.

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  7. When I was in art school studying design we spent at least an hour every day on figure drawing. Even though most of what we were going to be doing in our careers had nothing to do with drawing the teachers felt that drawing was the foundation of EVERYTHIING in the visual arts from type design to animation.

    I think that even if the final product comes from a computer, an understanding and ability to draw at the deepest level will result in a superior product.

    Arthur

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  8. I don't think Miyasaki means to offend any CG animator, after all, he's friends with John Lasseter and I don't think that's a fake friendship.

    After all, good CG takes many principles of good drawing.

    I think his quote deals more with artistic exploration, capturing ideas and creating deliberately. Something that's not as free in CG.

    It's a completely different thing to add color with the bucket tool in photoshop than using brushes and mixing colors and really feeling the stroke.

    Just a thought!

    Sant

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