But I wanted to step outside of the that box and go shot by shot. I’m sure that is a result of trying to optimize the process of animating such a massive-scale movie. Normally for animation of this caliber, Suzume would have her own color palette and perhaps two other variants for how she would look in the morning, noon, where there is strong sunlight, and night when there isn’t as much light. “Throughout the film there are over 2,000 shots, and I personally oversaw the coloring and lighting for each one of them. “In regards to the color palette, or more specifically the lighting if you will, I was careful and intentional as to how I wanted to depict that,” Shinkai remarks. We did a lot of liquids simulating and particles, adding and complimenting that with hand-drawn animation, which is ultimately how we ended up with the visual expression of the worm that you see on the screen.”Įxtensive attention was paid to the color palette and lighting schemes. For example, some of the physics simulations. Instead, we animated in 3D from the onset and relied a lot on what the software can do right now. The level of experience that Studio Ghibli had, combined with the budget they were able to access, created a potent combination we knew taking on would not be a good result for us. But what we already knew at the studio was that it was going to be impossible to exceed what Miyazaki had achieved in that visual expression of the worm, even in 1997 when Princess Mononoke came out. “That was an original inspiration for the imagery of the worm that I wanted to create. “This is because in Princess Mononoke, by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, there is this cursed god that appears in the film, which is a bunch of different worms that consume giant monsters and squirm around,” Shinkai states. I wanted it to feel as though his soul was trapped inside of something rigid, so we started experimenting with 3D and ultimately shifted the entire process for that character into a 3D pipeline because I wanted that solid object to appear and feel solid and rigid, but at the same time express fast and swift movements.”Įarly on, the decision was made that the worm would be animated in 3D. Life was almost breathed into these inanimate objects, which in the case of Souta was something I didn’t want to do. “We ran some tests and had animators animate a few different scenes, but I wasn’t happy with the result because it was a movement that I had seen before onscreen reminiscent of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast where the china plates and cups are moving around. “With respect to the chair, we initially explored a 2D hand-drawn visual expression,” Shinkai reveals. Suzume accidentally releases the western keystone that helps to contain the worm, and it subsequently takes on the form of a mischievous daijin (a cat that can speak) that casts the soul of Souta into a three-legged wooden chair, a childhood birthday present made by her mother who was killed by a tsunami. Thinking about where Suzume was going to travel across from where she lives now on the west side, all the way to her hometown of Tōhoku in the east, the disaster-stricken areas almost presented themselves and informed where she was going to travel.” There are these remnants of human life where you can see people lived at one point but now can’t be inhabited. Even to this day, that area around the power plant is completely quarantined and sectioned off. Ultimately, Suzume ends up in the Fukushima area where a massive earthquake and tsunami caused a nuclear power plant to have a meltdown. From there she travels to Tokyo where in 1923, exactly a 100 years ago, there was a massive earthquake that hit the city. “Then Suzume moves on to Kobe where in 1995 there was the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake that hit the western side of the country. That was a very shocking story for us at the time,” Shinkai explains. “In 2018, Ehime had massive rainstorms that happened because of climate change, which resulted in many landslides. The first stop on the countrywide road trip is in Ehime where Suzume meets fellow high school student Chika transporting tangerines that spill onto the road.
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