Tokyo Animation Trip: Studio Ghibli Museum

Visiting the Studio Ghibli Museum was an incredible experience. I have loved every film Studio Ghibli have created since I first watched Spirited Away and it's safe to say they are probably my favourite animation studio in the world. Walking around the studio was an incredibly rewarding experience. A particularly amazing part of the museum was Miyazaki's workspace.

Not only was this just an incredibly fascinating room to be in as a fan because I was able to witness how some of my favourite animated movies had been created literally from the drawing board. But this was also an incredibly useful experience as an animator because it inspired me with my own work. While we were in the room, Annabeth pointed me to the bookshelf next to his desk. I hadn't noticed what was on the shelves since I was so transfixed by everything else going on. But what was on the shelves was tons and tons of books that Miyazaki and other Ghibli animators would use for reference. For example, there were books on planes, and books on engineering. Furthermore, these weren't small books either, they were big encyclopedia size books dedicated to a subject as specific as horses. This showed me that the true intricacies of Miyazaki's work do not just occur when he puts pen to paper, but long before that in the initial research stages of an animation project.

This got me to evaluate how I think when it comes to reference. Usually if I'm animating and need reference of a horse for example, I would type 'horse' into Google images. Well, essentially Miyazaki does a similar thing but it was evident that they would be a lot more open with their research. this inspired me to not keep my referencing limited to the internet, if I truly want good referencing i should look in books or elsewhere.

I made so many discoveries in this one room that it is hard for me to move on and talk about the rest of the museum. Another discovery I made is on the rough animation cells themselves.

The animators do not just draw the outline of a character on the layout paper, but they also draw the shading lines as well. Up till this point I would colour a character first in block colour, then add shading on after thinking that was the correct way to do it. Now I've discovered this technique it's completely changed the way I think about shading a character.