I’ve written extensively about my love of master of animation Hayao Miyazaki and his films. Though he only made 11 features, they’re some of the most gorgeous, sumptuous, and wondrous movies ever made. (You can read all of my essays about his films at Miyazaki Masterclass.) It’s very sad to me that he won’t be making any more features, but I love that I’m not the only one who feels this way about him; many, many people, both in the filmmaking community and not, have a deep and abiding affection for Miyazaki and all of his colorful worlds.
Enter this delightful little tribute. Vimeo user dono created a three-dimensional, moving-camera tribute to Miyazaki by loading footage of the 2-D, hand-drawn films and put them into 3-D renderings of all the backgrounds from the film. There is something truly adorable about seeing all of these characters in this way, especially if they’re from older films when their two-dimensionality was especially flat. Savvy viewers will even notice a few cameos throughout the video from some of Miyazaki’s shorts and TV series. For instance, see if you can spot Sherlock Hound in there in one of the Kiki’s Delivery Service shots.
Tribute to Hayao Miyazaki from dono on Vimeo.
Tribute to Hayao Miyazaki
Music by Joe Hisaishi
Made with Blender, Gimp, Octane and Natron.
Thanks to Boby, Christophe, Clouclou, Cremuss, David, Félicia, Frenchman, Sozap, Stéphane, Virgil !
And Thanks to Ton Roosendaal, the Blender community, the developers of Blender, Gimp and Natron !
dono 2015
Wasn’t that lovely? You can find more videos on dono’s official Vimeo page. Tell us your favorite use of the Miyazaki characters in the comments below!