Jul 12, 2015

Computer animation films directed by Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki, the retired/unretired animation legend who is indelibly associated with hand-drawn filmmaking, is directing his first computer animated film.

The ten-minute short, which will star a caterpillar named Boro and will be displayed at the Ghibli Museum, is expected to take Miyazaki three years to make, according to a report on Anime News Network. It is not clear what stage the film's production is at, or how much longer it will take to finish it.

“[Hayao] gets bored when his goal is maintaining [the Ghibli Museum], so he needs things to fiddle around with,” his son Goro Miyazaki said at an event last month as explanation for why his 74-year-old father was making a CG film.

Goro is also working with computer animation nowadays as he directs the Ghibli TV series Ronia The Robber's Daughter. Last fall, when the elder Miyazaki was asked for his thoughts about his son switching from hand-drawn to CGI, he responded that the technique was beside the point.

“I think talent decides everything,” Miyazaki said. “More than the method, what's important is the talent using it. There's nothing inherently wrong or right about a method, whether it be pencil drawings or 3-D CG.”

In that same interview, Miyazaki said he felt lucky that he'd managed to avoid using a computer throughout his career. From the looks of it though, it's never too late to teach an old dog some new tricks.

(Photo: Denis Makarenko/Shutterstock.com)