The Art of Studio Ghibli - Part 9

The Layout Artist is one of the most highly skilled draftsman amongst the entire animation production team. They are often the unsung heroes of this industry, so here's the last post in my 'Art of Studio Ghibli' series honouring this often unseen part of the animation process. This week is a continuation of the layout design collection from several of Ghibli's films.

I always found one of Studio Ghibli's main strengths lied in how Miyazaki made excellent use of foreground, mid-ground and background. Rather than showing all of each character all the time, very often characters are blocked by objects in the foreground and middle ground, helping to place the characters within the situation, making them part of their environment and the story.

 

Click on any of these pics to get the high resolution version.
Below are the links to the other 8 posts, they include concept art, model sheets 
and hundreds of background paintings from most of the Studio Ghibli films.

See Part 8. 

  See Part 7. 

See Part 6.
See Part 5. 

See Part 4.  

See Part 3. 

See Part 2. 

See Part 1.

How to Train Your Dragon - Gift of the Night Fury

Coloring Comics the Steve Hamaker Way

Steve Hamaker, colorist for Jeff Smith’s Bone comics, shows his process for adding color to pencilled pages. There is a series of 4 videos – the first two are setup and explanation, the last two are sped up to show the effects.

I've often considered Steve Hamaker and Dave Stewart two of the best comic book colorists in the business, so seeing Steve's techniques work process is a treat, check it out:

Peanuts Documentary (1985)

Excerpts from the documentary "It's Your 20th TV Anniversary, Charlie Brown"





See Part 3. Part 4. Part 5.

Another great tutorial from Tracy Butler

An nice little piece of acting from Jean-Denis Haas

The Meth Project - by Studio AKA

Four Studio AKA Directors all took on the creation of Six films for the Organic Inc. project by concentrating on personal stories by users. Uncompromising & uncomfortable to watch, each of the films has its own style, reflecting the personal recollections of addicts. In addition to these thought-provoking films, there are a series of stand alone Illustrations to accompany other stories of addiction & Radio audios that will be viewable on the Meth Project website: methproject.com