Spirited Away

The animation viewed this week was different from the usual animations that we view.  We watched more about the making of the animation, through the storyboard process and such.  The actual animation, is a full length animation created by Hayao Miyazaki, and is called Spirited Away.  Although we didn't view the actual animation, just from watching how the storyboards are made you get a lot of information regarding the process or animation and various techniques that are used.  Since a lot of the time we do animation using flash, we miss a lot of the in-between steps that are used with hand-drawn animations.  Here we see how all the main scenes are drawn and then how the animators have to go back and do the in-between scenes.  It is twice as much work as it would be on the computer, but it creates an amazing piece at the end.  The other interesting aspect about the process of story boarding and animation, is the use of the real world to create this imaginary world.  For one instance, in order to see how they would draw a dragon opening its mouth and using its teeth, they actually went to study a dog and how his jaws open and how his teeth clamp down.  I hear alot of animators doing this, such as with the Disney movies studying the savannah for the Lion King, and studying the Great Barrier Reef in Australia for the Finding Nemo movie.  Now, even with this animation that is done half way across the world, the same techniques are used which really shows how beneficial it is to study the things around you in order to get a real understanding of how to create this imaginary world.