As the wind rises, a master animator retires

Academy-award winning animator Hayao Miyakazi announces his retirement from the entertainment industry.

Japanese film-maker-animator Hayao Miyakazi, whose animated film The Wind Rises was in the running for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, has announced his retirement from the entertainment industry. The film opened with an English-language version in the US last month.

The predictable win of Frozen against Miyakazi’s film, especially since it was his last, is disappointing to say the least. In an interview with BuzzFeed, Miyakazi discusses his commendable body of work, which is thematically relatable.

His film Spirited Away, which won an Academy Award in 2002 for the same category as The Wind Rises, focused on the rapidly pacing technological progress. The Wind Rises follows a similar theme. It is a historical epic based on the life of Jiro Horikoshi, the aeronautical engineering genius behind Japan’s deadly Zero fighter plane in World War II.

“I really felt that this was the maximum that I could give to produce an animated film,” he said. “The work of animation is building up bricks and mortar. I felt I wouldn’t be able to put [up] another brick,” he says of his retirement.

Miyakazi had earlier announced his retirement, but he returned to his animation company Studio Ghibli to make three more features. This time, he is certain of his departure.

Amid the use of cutting-edge computer perfection, one wonders if anyone will be able to come at par with Miyakazi’s flair for pencilling animated films with immense ingenuity. He draws his film’s initial storyboards entirely himself.

Although none of his films have grossed more than $15 million in the US, Miyakazi has earned a devoted American following. “In the early days of Pixar,” said Toy Story 3 director Lee Unkrich, “John [Lasseter] would often show Miyazaki’s films, and [he was] always very excited about them.”

“His films are absolutely gorgeous, especially the backgrounds. I could just pause his films and just spend time drinking in the beauty of the paintings he uses for his backgrounds on any given scene,” he added.

“He’s probably the only auteur working in animation,” said Unkrich. “Every frame of those films is the way it is because he wanted them that way.”

His determination to his work is laudable. After passing along his storyboards to his animation team, so that they can make them into fully animated sequences, Miyazaki reviews their work, and if he can’t communicate his changes verbally, he “re-draws their drawing,” as he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 4^th, 2014.

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