Creation process and animation style

Creation process and animation style

Princess Mononoke was Miyazaki's first film to use computer graphics. In this sequence, the demon snakes are computer-generated and composited onto Ashitaka, who is hand-drawn.

Miyazaki takes a leading role when creating his films, frequently serving as both writer and director. He personally reviewed every frame used in his early films, though due to health concerns over the high workload he now delegates some of the workload to other Ghibli members.^[16] In a 1999 interview, Miyazaki said, "at this age, I cannot do the work I used to. If my staff can relieve me and I can concentrate on directing, there are still a number of movies I'd like to make."^[17]
Miyazaki uses very human-like movements in his animation. In addition, much of the art is done using water colors.
In contrast to American animation, the script and storyboards are created together, and animation begins before the story is finished and while storyboards are developing.^[18][19]
Miyazaki has used traditional animation throughout the animation process, though computer-generated imagery was employed starting with Princess Mononoke to give "a little boost of elegance".^[16] In an interview with the Financial Times, Miyazaki said "it's very important for me to retain the right ratio between working by hand and computer. I have learnt that balance now, how to use both and still be able to call my films 2D."^[20] Digital paint was also used for the first time in parts of Princess Mononoke in order to meet release deadlines.^[21] It was used as standard for subsequent films. However, in his 2008 film Ponyo, Miyazaki went back to traditional hand-drawn animation for everything, saying "hand drawing on paper is the fundamental of animation."^[22] Studio Ghibli's computer animation department was dissolved before production on Ponyo was started, and Miyazaki has decided to keep to hand drawn animation.^[23]