Thursday, June 16, 2005
Way Out East, Part 1
Tom Sito, Way Out East, Part 1
----A picture of me in a Japanese Newspaper enjoying Oshii's pavilion. Looks rather macabre to me.
Recently I traveled to China and Japan to lecture on animation. Stay tooned for some in-depth articles I'm writing for Animation World Network (AWN.com). But in the meantime I thought I'd blogg you a bit about it.
Pat and I flew out to Nagoya Japan to be a judge in the JDAF, the Japan Digital Animation Festival. It is a bi-annual competition for student films. Besides Japanese student work animated films were submitted from France, China, Thailand, Spain and Hungary. I gave a lecture on character animation and sat on a judge's panel with famed filmmaker Mamoru Oshii (PATLABOR, GHOST IN THE SHELL). Also part of the panel was IG producer Mitsuhisa Ishikawa (SPIRITED AWAY, GHOST IN THE SHELL), Professor Takami Yasuda of the Univ. of Tokyo and Prof. Yasuki Hamano, who is on the board of Ghibli besides director of the Akira Kurosawa Foundation. Studio Ghibli for those who don't know is the animation studio settled among the quiet beanfields outside Tokyo where Hayao Miyazaki made his films PRINCESS MONONOKE, TOTORRO and NAUSICAA.
We all had several dinners of Nagoya regional cuisine -barbecued eel, ground chicken balls and spaghetti noodles, and talked animation. Oshi is a soft-spoken man with a strong love for filmmaking and his pet Basset hound. He actually made the dog a character in his last film INNOCENCE, which played in North America as GHOST IN THE SHELL II. At one point he asked me to draw his dog "in the Hollywood-style". Oshii urged young filmmakers to not just study other animae films but be influenced by all world cinema. He in particular was inspired by many films of the European New Wave of the 50's and 60's. I showed him my copy of his biography in English, Stray Dog of Anime by Brian Ruh. He decided to do another portrait of himself on the inner cover.
Oshii's self portrait
It was a great competition and the judges were invited to critique student work as well as discuss how we all got in the business. The Grand Prize Winner was the short TOUGH GUY! By Shintaro Kishimoto. Oshii-san is writing a new film. Studio Ghibli has begun to develop the old European story Heidi. Prof Hamano gave me a new collection of famous Disney stories illustrated by old anime master Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka wanted to make a film of Pinnochio in the 1960's but the story goes that Disney legal department stepped in and Tezuka abandoned the project. They invited me to tour the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo, which I shall write about in an upcoming blogg.
During the festival we traveled to the Nagoya Expo 2005, the Worlds Fair. The fair had dozens of major pavilions demonstrating the finest in environmental research and the most advanced robotics. Oshii-san had designed an entire pavilion there he calls the Mountain of Dreams. The upper canopy of the pavilion is shaped to recall Mount Fuji, an important symbol in the Japanese character. The inside is a multimedia extravaganza of light and sound. Studio Ghibli also was represented by an exhibit. It is an exact replica of Setsuki and Mei's house from Miyazaki's classic MY NEIGHBOR TOTORRO. The Nagoya Expo is set to run until Sept 25th. I'll have full details on it in AWN.
The festival ended and prizes given, we bid goodbye to Oshii, Ishikawa, Yasuda and Hamano and headed off for China.
Tom Sito ¶ 5:59 AM
----A picture of me in a Japanese Newspaper enjoying Oshii's pavilion. Looks rather macabre to me.
Recently I traveled to China and Japan to lecture on animation. Stay tooned for some in-depth articles I'm writing for Animation World Network (AWN.com). But in the meantime I thought I'd blogg you a bit about it.
Pat and I flew out to Nagoya Japan to be a judge in the JDAF, the Japan Digital Animation Festival. It is a bi-annual competition for student films. Besides Japanese student work animated films were submitted from France, China, Thailand, Spain and Hungary. I gave a lecture on character animation and sat on a judge's panel with famed filmmaker Mamoru Oshii (PATLABOR, GHOST IN THE SHELL). Also part of the panel was IG producer Mitsuhisa Ishikawa (SPIRITED AWAY, GHOST IN THE SHELL), Professor Takami Yasuda of the Univ. of Tokyo and Prof. Yasuki Hamano, who is on the board of Ghibli besides director of the Akira Kurosawa Foundation. Studio Ghibli for those who don't know is the animation studio settled among the quiet beanfields outside Tokyo where Hayao Miyazaki made his films PRINCESS MONONOKE, TOTORRO and NAUSICAA.
We all had several dinners of Nagoya regional cuisine -barbecued eel, ground chicken balls and spaghetti noodles, and talked animation. Oshi is a soft-spoken man with a strong love for filmmaking and his pet Basset hound. He actually made the dog a character in his last film INNOCENCE, which played in North America as GHOST IN THE SHELL II. At one point he asked me to draw his dog "in the Hollywood-style". Oshii urged young filmmakers to not just study other animae films but be influenced by all world cinema. He in particular was inspired by many films of the European New Wave of the 50's and 60's. I showed him my copy of his biography in English, Stray Dog of Anime by Brian Ruh. He decided to do another portrait of himself on the inner cover.
Oshii's self portrait
It was a great competition and the judges were invited to critique student work as well as discuss how we all got in the business. The Grand Prize Winner was the short TOUGH GUY! By Shintaro Kishimoto. Oshii-san is writing a new film. Studio Ghibli has begun to develop the old European story Heidi. Prof Hamano gave me a new collection of famous Disney stories illustrated by old anime master Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka wanted to make a film of Pinnochio in the 1960's but the story goes that Disney legal department stepped in and Tezuka abandoned the project. They invited me to tour the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo, which I shall write about in an upcoming blogg.
During the festival we traveled to the Nagoya Expo 2005, the Worlds Fair. The fair had dozens of major pavilions demonstrating the finest in environmental research and the most advanced robotics. Oshii-san had designed an entire pavilion there he calls the Mountain of Dreams. The upper canopy of the pavilion is shaped to recall Mount Fuji, an important symbol in the Japanese character. The inside is a multimedia extravaganza of light and sound. Studio Ghibli also was represented by an exhibit. It is an exact replica of Setsuki and Mei's house from Miyazaki's classic MY NEIGHBOR TOTORRO. The Nagoya Expo is set to run until Sept 25th. I'll have full details on it in AWN.
The festival ended and prizes given, we bid goodbye to Oshii, Ishikawa, Yasuda and Hamano and headed off for China.
Tom Sito ¶ 5:59 AM
