Influences

Influences
A number of Western authors have influenced Miyazaki's work, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Lewis Carroll, and Diana Wynne Jones. Miyazaki confided to Le Guin that Earthsea had been a great influence on all his works, and that he kept her books at his bedside.^[35] Miyazaki and French writer and illustrator Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Moebius) have influenced each other and have become friends as a result of their mutual admiration. Monnaie de Paris held an exhibition of their work titled Miyazaki et Moebius: Deux Artistes Dont Les Dessins Prennent Vie (Two Artists’s Drawings Taking on a Life of Their Own) from December 2004 to April 2005. Both artists attended the opening of the exhibition.^[26][36] Moebius named his daughter Nausicaa after Miyazaki's heroine.^[37] Miyazaki has been deeply influenced by another French writer, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. He illustrated the Japanese covers of Saint-Exupéry's Night Flight (Vol de nuit) and Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des Hommes), and wrote an afterword for Wind, Sand and Stars.
In an interview broadcast on BBC Choice on 2002-06-10, Miyazaki cited the British authors Eleanor Farjeon, Rosemary Sutcliff, and Philippa Pearce as influences. The filmmaker has also publicly expressed fondness for Roald Dahl's stories about pilots and airplanes; the image in Porco Rosso of a cloud of dead pilots was inspired by Dahl's They Shall Not Grow Old. As in Miyazaki's films, these authors create self-contained worlds in which allegory is often used, and characters have complex, and often ambiguous, motivations. Other Miyazaki works, such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away, incorporate elements of Japanese history and mythology.
Miyazaki has said he was inspired to become an animator by The Tale of the White Serpent, considered the first modern anime, in 1958. He has also said that The Snow Queen, a Soviet animated film, was one of his earliest inspirations, and that it motivated him to stay in animation production.^[38] Yuriy Norshteyn, a Russian animator, is Miyazaki's friend and praised by him as "a great artist."^[39] Norshteyn's Hedgehog in the Fog is cited as one of Miyazaki's favourite animated films.^[38] Miyazaki has long been a fan of the Aardman Studios animation. In May 2006, David Sproxton and Peter Lord, founders of Aardman Studios, visited the Ghibli Museum exhibit dedicated to their works, where they also met Miyazaki.^[40]
Pete Docter, director of the popular films Up and Monsters, Inc. as well as a co-creator of other Pixar works, has praised Miyazaki and described him as an influence.^[41] Glen Keane, the animator for successful Disney films such as The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Tangled, has also credited Miyazaki as a "huge influence" on his work and on Disney in general during the past two decades.^[42]
Miyazaki has also been cited as an influence on various role-playing video games. The creator of Square's Final Fantasy series, Hironobu Sakaguchi, cited Miyazaki as inspiration for elements such as the airships and chocobos featured in the series.^[43] The post-apocalyptic setting of SNK's Crystalis was inspired by Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and Crystalis in turn influenced Square's Secret of Mana.^[44]