Miyazaki and Design

Over the summer, upon egging from one of my best friends, I made it my mission to watch Hayao Miyazaki's animated movies and reserved as many as I could find at my hometown library.  They've been trickling in throughout the last couple months.  A lot of people grew up with these but I had never seen one.  On our day off on Monday I watched Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (in its original Japanese, Kazi no Tani no Naushika), which was the last of Miyazaki's films I put on hold before coming to KU.

To anyone in the Illustration major, or anyone looking to do concept art or animation, you NEED to watch this and the rest of Miyazaki's work.  They might be "kid's movies" but honestly I think they would have scared me as a kid...there are a lot of serious themes which are reinforced through brilliant designs.  I don't find the humans' basic designs to be too compelling in this movie, with the exception of one of the antagonists, Lady Kushana.  But the creatures and vehicles, as I noted with most of Miyazaki's films, are a feast for the eyes.

In the picture above is the main character on what is referred to as her glider, though it has an engine, which would not make it a true glider in modern terms.  But that's not really the point...I just want you to look at this thing.  It's sleekly aesthetic, simple without unnecessary bells or whistles, and a joy to watch as it zooms across the screen.

Now if you look at this illustration from Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle, you seem something completely different.

As a design, this thing is just insane.  In real life it simply would never function.  It must have been a pain to animate with all of the gears, mechanical limbs, whirring wheels and billowing steam.  But as an illustration, this image is really effective.  It's structured chaos, something right out of a kid's daydream, and the dreamy nighttime background only reinforces this.

Looking at the screenshot from Nausicaa, I can see why the glider isn't cluttered like the moving castle.  It has to be.  There's a lot more going on in that image, the character and her animal companion, the mountains, the windmills, the trees...whereas the second screenshot focuses completely on the castle.

Anyways, I'd really like to explore Miyazaki's designs more sometime...my other favorites of his so far are Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away.  The imagination in them is just amazing and inspiring to me.