Studio Ghibli by Colin Odell

Author:Colin Odell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oldcastle Books
Published: 2023-12-11T15:03:44+00:00

Other Projects

Ghiblies (Giburiizu) (2000)

‘Yes! We are Ghiblies! Our neighbours are jealous.’

Aired as part of a TV special, Ghiblies, a short, 12-minute piece, was made to showcase some of the up-and-coming animators working at the studio. Essentially a meta-work, the film comprises a series of vignettes looking at a number of characters working at an animation studio. This is very much an experimental piece – the animators are clearly having fun – but it also gives the viewer an insight into the animation process. The first character we are introduced to is Oku, a bipedal pig with a mop of brown hair, who talks about the process of character design. He is drawn first with and then without a mouth, and explains how these sorts of design decisions make the character more interesting to the viewer. The story of Nonaka’s first love uses even more stylised characterisation as Nonaka’s head is reduced to an ellipse with ears, hair and huge square glasses. The fluid animation, delicate, watercolour backgrounds and single striking use of hand-drawn art rendered in 3-D are styles Ghibli would use in many of the adverts they produced. What is interesting about Ghiblies is the way that the animators are mixing traditional media with computer imagery. In the Nonaka example this is done to create something that looks hand-made but would be difficult to animate using traditional means. Other parts of the short are more deliberately jarring in their mixing of media – in one sequence a rendered 3-D CGI model of a money-grabbing accountant is revealed to be a wind-up toy in the cel-animated office. Further experimentation comes with the insertion of live-action footage and photographs into the proceedings to link, for example, the mounds of work on Yukari’s desk to various mountains in Japan. Things take an even more surreal turn when it turns out that the head of PR might be an industrial spy, imagining himself as a James Bond-style character but apparently possessing the tail of a fish and floating his way around the offices at Ghibli.

Ghiblies is a quirky little short full of humour and ideas that served as a diverting project for the animators prior to full-scale animation on Spirited Away. Indeed the film shows the characters all together in a big meeting for their ‘next big project’ before revealing the real workers of the studio at a launch party.

Ghiblies Episode 2 (Giburiizu Episode 2) (2002)

A sequel to the original TV short Ghiblies, Ghiblies Episode 2 continues the bizarre lives of the characters at Ghibli, an animation studio uncannily similar to Studio Ghibli. This is obvious from the opening when the profile of Totoro turns into that of hard-working, lovesick Nonaka-san and the legend ‘Studio Ghibli Production’ is replaced by ‘Studio Giburi Production’. The first film introduced us to the various characters at the studio so Episode 2 just launches straight into the fray with a similarly impressive arsenal of animation techniques, although this time around they are used in a less deliberately jarring fashion.

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