The strength of traditional animation, the strength of a team

The new film by Hayao Miyazaki, Ponyo on the Cliff, is his first full-length film since the Moving Castle made four years before. Everything that moves in Ponyo on the Cliff was animated by hand, renewing the greatest pleasure of the spectators with the strength and the familiar aspect and an energy which we find only in this type of production. For example, the brilliant three dimensional objects were created without computer graphics or computers. Thanks to these experiments, Hayao Miyazaki conceived Ponyo on the Cliff without using computer created images.

For this film Miyazaki got together again with his most faithful collaborators. The animation supervisor position was entrusted to Katsuya Kondo, who was already working with Hayao Miyazaki in the same position on Kiki the Small Witch. The art director, Noboru Yoshida, one of the talented people of the set and background department of the Ghibli Studio after Princess Mononoke. He is an artist whose unique personal style is close to that of the books illustrated for children and which breathes this light and refreshing aspect into the film. Finally Atsushi Okui, director of digital imaging and colorist Michiyo Yasuda also played important roles in the creation process of a spectacular graphic style which serves the dramatic intensity of Ponyo on the Cliff.



Fish waves

The sea is one of the major elements of this film, because it is the element which inspired this film. Therefore, Hayao Miyazaki paid quite particular attention to the depiction of the sea and the waves, and created a world which is well beyond what the public could imagine.

In Ponyo on the cliff by the sea, Hayao Miyazaki wanted to represent waves as if they were "live fish". The metaphor took life with this school of turbulent giant fish which appear on the surface as the powerful waves of the sea. The innocence of young children like Sosuke allows them to see these fish. At the same time Lisa and all the adults can see only waves. The spirit of My Neighbor Totoro glides over this vision of the innocence of children, who thanks to their look on the world, are capable of seeing the deep meaning of things, a subject which Hayao Miyazaki always evoked in his various artistic activities. The strength and the essence of a wave is not then without recalling Hokusai and its mark on wood of The Large Wave of Kanagwa (1831)