8-Bit Spirited Away

I posted about ‘8-Bit Cinema’ last summer, when I first came across their amazing videos. But until recently there hadn’t been any 8-bit-style Studio Ghibli videos. Strange really as anything Japanese seems greatly suited to the classic 8-bit style to me! (The Japanese being at the forefront of the 8-bit gaming era in the 1980s.)

The Spirited Away 8-bit video was posted online at the end of April, this year, but, as is the way with me and popular things on the Internet, I have only just seen it. And it is brilliant. It did make me realise, however, that I haven’t watched the actual film for quite some time. I must re-watch it soon…

CineFix presents Spirited Away retold via old-school 8-bit (and a little 16 bit) game tech. No quarters or controllers required! (Just some imagination and magic.) 8-bit a.k.a. the third generation of gaming started in 1983 with the Japanese release of the Nintendo Family Computer and Sega. Can you guess what games inspired our 8-bit version of Spirited Away?

The San Fan

To celebrate the release of Isao Takahata’s Academy Award nominated and ravishingly beautiful new film, The Tale of The Princess Kaguya, released in UK cinemas on Friday 20 March, 2015, we’re launching a brand new creative brief and offering a great prize for your efforts. – Little White Lies

I was kindly pointed in the direction of this creative competition by my friend Chrissy (she’d previously asked me a Ghibli related question so it was an appropriate share). I didn’t think I’d have much free time to come up with a suitable design, what with putting the finishing touches to my Japan book design… but I have ended up putting together a fairly simple design today.

The task: to design a Studio Ghibli themed fan (focus of each artwork must be on the amazing female heroines of the Studio Ghibli universe).

My design: The San Fan – inspired by my favourite Ghibli heroine, San, from Princess Mononoke and repeated patterns within Japanese art.

I’m aware that my design is far from groundbreaking and I probably could have produced something far more impressive had I got the time. But it was fun and I’m happy that I have something to enter. I do love Studio Ghibli!

[Hypothetical] Ghibli Land

I saw this in a tweet by Tofugu late on Thursday evening (I’d just finished my book, after reading for around 3 hours prior) so could be forgiven for thinking that I’d dreamed up Ghibli land. Except I hadn’t… someone else had!

This hypothetical Tokyo Ghibli Land illustration is the masterful work of Japanese illustrator Takumi. The thought and effort that has gone into making the perfect Studio Ghibli theme park is beyond impressive. I’ve been to the Studio Ghibli museum in Tokyo, Japan, which is probably about the closest real-life thing to a Ghibli theme park but it’s certainly no where near as impressive as a full-scale Ghibli Land would be – and I don’t even like theme parks!

The structure of the park is based on the circular shape of the original Disney Land: a circular park divided up into many ‘worlds’ along the side and an iconic castle in the middle. However in Takumi’s version Cinderella’s Castle has been replaced by Howl’s Moving Castle. Tomorrowland, Fantasyland and Adventureland have also been seamlessly replaced by attractions modeled after Totoro, Laputa and Naussica. And of course encircling the entire park is a Cat Bus monorail. – Spoon & Tamago

Goodbye Ghibli

Not so long after Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder, director, producer and animator, announced he was retiring from Studio Ghibli, came the unsurprising news that the studio was to cease making movies (at least for the foreseeable future). Obviously it was going to be difficult to continue without Miyazaki anyway, the anime master that he is, but ultimately hand-drawn-animation is an expensive and time-consuming business.

‘Animators the world over have been inspired by Ghibli films; this is Animation Domination High-Def's small tribute to Studio Ghibli. We want to say Thank You. And we hope they don't go away for good.’

A fun, little bit silly but sweet tribute:

Goodbye, Ghibli by Animation Domination High-Def on YouTube

And if you don’t know what Studio Ghibli is or who Hayao Miyazaki is or any of these films:

Tribute to Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli from zeta69 on Vimeo.

The Studio Ghibli museum in Tokyo was one of the highlights of my visit to Japan earlier this year and I, like many others across the world, adore the movies. Lucky for me there are still a few I haven’t seen. Although I love watching my favourites again and again anyway.

Four weeks til Bento-land

In exactly four weeks time I will be panicking that I’ve forgotten to pack something important or not done enough planning or I don’t know any enough Japanese… OR just generally freaking out because the next day – so, four weeks tomorrow – I am going half-way (more than half-way?) around the world to Japan. All. By. Myself. In fact, I’ve just started realising the enormity of this trip and general life event. It’s a big deal for me, alright. I’ve never been on holiday by myself nor on a flight longer than about three hours and I’m a fairly reserved person… Not anymore. Eep!

There are so many things I’m looking forward to seeing and doing. Not to mention foods I want to taste. I am even considering disregarding the last 13 years of not eating meat (I have been eating fish for a couple of years already, so I’ll definitely be a pescetarian in Japan) and fully embracing the cuisine. But only if it looks really good…

These look really good. But perhaps so good I wouldn’t want to eat them.

Photos below from this Tofugu article – by Mari Miyazawa. I can’t view the videos. :(

“Bento (弁当 bentō) is a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. A traditional bento holds rice, fish or meat, with pickled or cooked vegetables, usually in a box-shaped container. Bento can be elaborately arranged in a style ‘kyaraben’ (character bento). Kyaraben are typically decorated to look like popular characters from Japanese cartoons (anime), comic books (manga), or video games. Another popular bento style is ‘oekakiben’ or ‘picture bento’. This is decorated to look like people, animals, buildings and monuments, or items such as flowers and plants.” – wikipedia

A more recent Tofugu post with a different kind of Bento art  – by Hige-Man Ume-Chan.

And some iconic characters [I like] created in bento-style…

Shamefully, I just grabbed those from Google. Apologies to the original creators.

Hayao Miyazaki & Studio Ghibli

I like films as much as the average person. I’ve even started going to the cinema fairly regularly (Orange Wednesdays, wahoo!). But I’m not the kind of person who knows anything about directors or producers of films, I only just about know the names of the actors. And only sometimes, because chances are I’ve probably not seen all the famous films they’ve been in. I won’t go into all the classic films that I’ve never seen…

I appreciate the title or credits sequences and the film posters, because I’m a graphic designer and that’s what I know how to appreciate. But something I really admire, and have no concept of just how complicated and time-consuming creating it is, is animation. But while I think Pixar is great at what it does, I don’t feel the same love for it as I do towards Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli.

Earlier in the week it was announced that Hayao Miyazaki – one of the founders, directors, animators and general face of Studio Ghibli – is going to retire from the film business.

“Miyazaki, 72, is one of the most celebrated figures in animated film-making, with iconic movies such as 1997's Princess Mononoke, 2001's Oscar-winning Spirited Away and 2004's Howl's Moving Castle in his canon. With Isao Takahata, he co-founded Studio Ghibli in 1985. The company has produced 18 feature films, with several taking the top spot at the Japanese box office for their respective years of release.

Miyazaki, who won a lifetime achievement award from the Venice film festival in 2005, previously retired following the international success of Princess Mononoke, but returned to direct Spirited Away four years later and then stepped in to take charge of Howl's Moving Castle when original director Mamoru Hosoda unexpectedly quit the production. The Wind Rises, his 11th feature-length film, is a fictionalised biography of Jiro Horikoshi, who designed Japanese fighter planes during the second world war.” – the guardian

He will be missed but, of course, he is not the only person who creates the amazing Ghibli films. The studio will continue without him and I’m sure the future films will be just as excellent as all those that have come before.

Howl’s Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away

Tofugu

Tofugu, a wonky Japanese language and culture blog, is my new favourite website. Not only is the blog dedicated to Japan, which of course means I’m going to love it anyway, but each post is really well written and researched. I think my favourite post that I’ve read so far – and I haven’t looked back too far into past posts – is the My Neighbour Totoro Conspiracy Theory. It’s a really good read and very interesting, although perhaps not if you’re not familiar with Totoro.

However, this isn’t Tumblr and I’m not just going to regurgitate all the great stuff Tofugu have posted. You can check out the blog for yourself. What I really want to share here is some of a wonderful illustrations that are created specifically for some Tofugu posts. After all, I am a visually-minded person.

Maybe I didn’t look hard enough but I couldn’t seem to find any reference to who the Tofugu illustrator is on the website. Although it’s fairly clear that it is just the one illustrator, as they have a fairly distinct style. Luckily a little thing called Twitter exists, so I asked. And I can at least link to the her Twitter account – @ayapizza.

Okay, so I looked harder and found the about page.

Lunchtime scarecrow craft

This year (tomorrow) Stevington has it’s first scarecrow festival and we at emc design thought it only right that we take part – I mean, we are creatives after all. Pretty much as soon as I heard about it, I knew I wanted to make Mr Turnip Head from Howl’s Moving Castle. Luckily, Jordan knew what that was (I’m not sure anyone else at work did) and we made him together today.

I think if we’d have had more time – we only really had our lunch break – and had actually planned a bit, we could have made a really good one. But hey, we did a good job in the time I think. I’m pleased with my head (real turnip/swede) and hat at least.

Jim Kazanjian's surreal scenes

Sadly these are not real places or photographs, but that makes the images even more incredible. I love anything vaguely Miyazaki-like. These images are definitely Miyazaki-esque.

"He never touches a camera and would more readily call his work “composites.” You see Jim’s a bit of magpie, plucking different pieces from his massive photographic archive to digitally produce new hi-res images (around 50 photos go into each individual work)." It's Nice That

Jim Kazanjian

Papercraft Howl's castle

One of my friends posted this on Facebook. One word: AMAZING. I loved Howl's castle (in the film, Howl's Moving Castle – believe it or not) as it was but this is just incredible.

strictlypaper.com/blog/2011/10/howls-moving-castle-papercraft

Stacey Rozich

These illustrations are incredible. Reminiscent of fairytales and folklore, and like author of this post said strangely like Hayao Miyazaki. Created by Stacey Rozich.