Every frame of a Hayao Miyazaki film starts as a pencil drawing, not a pixel. Even now, with software everywhere in animation, Studio Ghibli's process runs through layouts, key drawings, and hand-painted backgrounds before anything is assembled into a scene.
That process is the subject of Hayao Miyazaki, published by the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures with Studio Ghibli.
How does a Ghibli film actually get made?
Concept sketches first, then character studies, then storyboards, then layouts, which are drawings that fix where the camera sits and how a scene moves before a single finished frame exists. Painted backgrounds come next, done by hand, department by department, long before compositing. The book reproduces all of it: 300 color images spanning every stage of production, drawn from Ghibli's own archives.
What films does the book cover?
All eleven of Miyazaki's features, including My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle. Spirited Away went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2003, still the only hand-drawn film to do so. Much of the material in the book had never been shown outside the studio before this exhibition: concept art, production cels, working sketches.
Why was this the first Miyazaki retrospective in North America?
Studio Ghibli has always guarded its archive closely, and Miyazaki himself has never courted museum culture the way some contemporaries have. The Academy Museum's 2021 exhibition, its inaugural show, was the first time a full retrospective of his work crossed the Pacific. The book is what remains of it once the galleries came down.
Who wrote it?
Jessica Niebel curated the exhibition and wrote the book, with a foreword from longtime Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki. Pixar's Pete Docter and film historian Daniel Kothenschulte contribute additional texts. It was a finalist for the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award, given for exceptional exhibition catalogues.
The hand-drawn, one-frame-at-a-time labor behind these films has more in common with needlework than with software. See our note on sashiko, the stitch-by-stitch reinforcement technique that runs through Japanese textile work.
Two more museum books, two more Japanese artists: Takashi Murakami's case for Superflat, and Yoshitomo Nara's paintings read through his record collection.
The book
- Hardcover, 288 pages
- 9 × 10.75 in
- 300 color images
- DelMonico Books with Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, 2021
- ISBN 9781942884811
Find Hayao Miyazaki in the KNOWLEDGE collection.
Frequently asked questions
Did Miyazaki use digital animation?
In limited ways in later films, but the studio's process stayed rooted in hand-drawn layouts and painted backgrounds, and that is what this book documents.
How many Miyazaki films does the book cover?
All eleven of his features, from My Neighbor Totoro through Howl's Moving Castle and beyond.
Was this exhibition only shown in the US?
It was the first full Miyazaki retrospective ever mounted in North America, opening at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles in 2021.
Who wrote the foreword?
Producer Toshio Suzuki, Miyazaki's longtime collaborator at Studio Ghibli.
Was the book recognized for anything?
It was a finalist for the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for exhibition catalogues.
sabi is an online boutique based in Portland, Oregon. Our KNOWLEDGE collection is the reference shelf, books on the things we sell and the ideas underneath them.