Hayao Miyazaki and the Anime Art Style

Hayao Miyazaki is by far one of Japan's best known animators. Although he is primarily a storywriting and film director nowadays, he has worked on several of his own projects in the past, incorporating his own style while staying within the boarders of Japanese animation (also known as anime or japanimation). Both the Japanese culture and his own personal life have contributed to many of his best films, including Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Whisper of the Heart, and Kiki's Delivery Service. Since the time when he began to work for Toei animation in 1963 to the present, he has produced various films when topics such as Vietnam, the landing on the Moon, and Persian Gulf War, and the breakup of the Soviet Union were on the world's mind.

The face is one of the most obviously distorted and yet does have proportion. As in real faces, the eyes lie in the middle of the head. (Listen, I'm revealing the secrets of anime artistry to you novices!) Most of the time, the region above the eyes is partly or totally coved by bangs of hair. This hair can vary from normal colors to outlandish, but the only reason for that was because many artists were bored with only drawing characters with dark, brown, or blond hair (in manga, the artists could only have black and white, see?) Some examples of other hair are bright red hair, purple hair, blue, and even green hair. The facial mass' propotions, the area with eyes, mouth, and nose, are heavily dependent on how large the eyes are. As always there is some room for variations, but most anime artists stay with this rule.
The rest of the body is normally built in comic figure propotions, around seven heads high. Normal proportions are sometimes used for supporting characters that have little significance in the film. This is used to make the viewer focus their attention on the main character.

Animation is qute different in how scenery and how the charactes are rendered. They actual backgrounds are painted on cels, thin sheets of celluloid. The characters and any foreground are then layered on top of the background cells. In anime, movement is accomplished by simply switching cels of the characters or scrolling the backgrounds. Anime is known for accomplishing effects with light on the cells to produce some kind of reflection that may look like sunlight rays, adding depth to the piece. Besides that, the paint used for the characters is the same used in all kinds of cel animation. Recently, computer graphics are also responsable as means to produce other kinds of effects (a la Macross Plus). Miyazaki-san has abstained from using computers in his works, but in a recent interview, he stated that he just hasn't seen a meaningful application of technology necessary. The only exception is in Whisper of the Heart (when Shizuku was flying in the sky with the Baron).

        Here is a piece from Hayao's work Laputa- Castle in the Sky. In this shot, a boy and a girl are standing on the edge of cliff that gives a panorama of a magnificent huge building. Clouds can be seen in between the characters and the view and more of them can be seen beneath the bridge that is shown on the right. A river also runs under a bridge and is the covered by the clouds.
       This picture was taken from a cel colored with professional quality cel paint (usually acrylic, possibly tempura). The moss, along with the grass and the stone walls has plenty of texture and the details that produce the texture disappear as the distance increases from the viewer. There are shadows on both the background and the subject of the work that point toward a light source from the upper right. The original cel's dimensions are not available, but it is likely it is the standard 8 1/2 inch across by 11 inch down size cel (letter size). There is a sense of realism in how the scenery is rendered by the actual scene is very surrealistic.
        The difference in the quality of anime is most significant when comparing it to American "Saturday morning" cartoons. While most anime is drawn at at least 15 to 20 cels per second for television broadcast, many of the U.S. cartoons are down at only five cels per second. The result of adding a higher frame rate is the movement appears more life like. In addition, adding more cels for backgrounds allows for amazing "scrolling" effects. The moutains in the distance may move more slowly compared to foreground that moves much faster as the drawn character exhibits movement.
        Despite the differences, there are excellent examples of animation here in the U.S. Walt Disney's Snow White was hailed as one of the best films of our time. Today, with the assitance of computer graphics, it made possible some of Disney's most recent films such as Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. Just as the best films here are based on fairy-tale folklore, anime is sometimes related to ancient legends in their mythology. The best animated films from both countries run at around 30 frames per second, producing fluid motion that makes the subject all that more real to the viewer.
        Personally, analyzing Hayao's animation gives us insight into how it can stray away from the traditional form of Japanese animation. Hayao's personal style reflects a mix of both American and Japanese styles, as well as themes, in his work. It is difficult to critique animation, however, due to the fact that the many thousands of cels can make critics dismiss this as simple an art form that lacks artistic value. The truth is that, because animation is also used as a storytelling medium, much of the artistic value needs to be contributed to both what is painted and what the story is about.

Taken from The Anime Art Form of Hayao Miyazaki (April 22, 1997) by Elton Sanchez.
Revised June 17, 1997.

The Miyazaki Web, http://www.nausicaa.net/~miyazaki
Wizard Magazine, How to Draw in the 'Manga Style', April 1997, pp. 72-76.
Ming's Javascipt-powered Anime Page, http://looney.physics.sunysb.edu/~daffy/anime.html
Picture Sources:

The Miyazaki Web
Ming's Javascript-powered Anime Page
Some neat image archive in France

Special Note: As all great Miyazaki fans know, all of the films that have been released by Tokuma in Japan are to be released here in the U.S. and the U.K. by Walt Disney Pictures. The among the first films to be released is Kiki's Delivery Service, starting in September. Celebrate July 23rd as the official day when Miyazaki-san no anime makes it here to the Western world!