DVDizzy Forum

Q: Your background has always been in hand-drawn animation, as far as I am aware, do you have any interest in animating with computer graphics any more than Ghibli does at the moment, or experimenting with 3D? Or are you happy to stay with the hand-drawn style?

Kitaro Kosaka: Well, I'd like to preserve the analogue and hand-drawn techniques as much as possible. But, if there are no animators left, we can’t carry on like that. If that happens, we might find ourselves moving into CG. To tell the truth, Studio Ghibli hasn’t invested much in the retraining of staff, so... I am not really sure about our future development. We might go towards 3D, towards CG... with Miyazaki’s involvement, we were able to maintain hand-drawn animation, which is very costly. But I think this will be a big problem for us to solve.

Q: You have left Studio Ghibli to make “Ronia,” and in doing so, you are using computer graphics to create a likeness of the touch of hand-drawn anime. What do you have to say about that?

Goro Miyazaki: When Takahata and Miyazaki were creating TV anime series 40 years ago, the art was still evolving, and it involved a variety of trial and error. But the methodology of hand-drawn animated films has been established and is now fully mature. If I were to create hand-drawn TV anime series now, I would only be following a path carved out by Hayao Miyazaki and others as a latecomer. Well, I wouldn’t like that. Expression by computer graphics remains incomplete, so both the workers and myself believe that there still remains something that we could do. It is generally believed that hand-drawn anime is superior to computer graphics when it comes to expressing emotions, but anime artists who use computer graphics maintain a sound ambition to believe that they could achieve something if they tried. They are, I believe, young of heart.

Sotiris wrote:Even Studio Ghibli may abandon 2D animation in favor of CG.

Warm Regards wrote:Someone on tumblr found this Lion King fan-made animation.

unprincess wrote:Holy carp!
thats fan made?!?

Eduardo Quintana wrote:I used a fragment of the song "The Madness of King Scar" from The Lion King musical and did an animated version as a tribute.

Q: I heard you say recently that you feel hand-drawn animation is currently still in the Byzantine era, so what do you think we have to do to move on to the Renaissance, and who do you think is leading that charge?

Glen Keane: Well, first of all I think you have to think of yourself differently. We tend to believe the business world’s view of our art form. But that’s really putting the cart before the horse – letting the tail wag the dog. This is an art form where we are the artists, we are the ones that are making it – don’t let somebody else define who you are, what you do and what is possible with this art form. It has to come from the mind of the artist. What would I be talking to you about if this was 500 years ago? I mean, we would talk about building Cathedrals or sculpture or painting frescos, but is this art form of making something move any less of a classical art form than those?

It’s just that so commercialised that we tend to forget that, so I really think it’s about us first. We have to think differently. On Tangled I remember we had done 40% of the animation in about nine months, we had two months left to do 60%. When talking to the crew I said “500 years ago we’d be talking about sculpture and architecture, but today this is our art form. We are born as artists today, and this is your important choice; Are you going to take a shortcut and just do something really formulaic, or are you going to take something really personal inside and put it out there on the screen?” When you have no time, and you are being really challenged, don’t take the shortcut. Do the thing that is really personal, be vulnerable, put yourself out there. That’s our art form. And at the end, you’ll be amazed. None of you will be the artists you are today; you’ll be better, you’ll be stronger, you’ll have grown.

And we got the animation done, and truly the very best stuff was done in those two months.

I have ideas of movies that I wanna see and do, and there’s a voice in my head that says “No way, there’s a reason that nobody’s doing that, it’s because nobody cares about it”. And I’m thinking “Yeah, but I do.” I think that people are going to connect to your art when you really put yourself out there and are personal, but it has to come from something that you’ve discovered in life, reflected back to the audience; They’re seeing it through your eyes.

Warm Regards wrote:Part 1 of a new Glen Keane interview.