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| Ghibli! pastel and pencil, 50 x 70cm |
As part of the month-long Celebrate Studio Ghibli, I've been invited to create a special poster for the event by both Madman Entertainment (the Australian distributor with whom I worked on The Lost Thing) and Studio Ghibli in Japan. The brief: create anything you like in the spirit of the studio's films, but in your own style. Too much inspiration to choose from! Well, if I have to choose, I've always been fascinated by character Kamaji, who stokes the bath house boiler in Spirited Away: I imagined he would be the ideal multi-tasking projector operator in a Ghibli universe, assisted of course by a young girl – a favoured protagonist of so many Ghibli films – and a few hundred archivist soots.
I also love the working drawings of Ghibli studio artists, from concept art to loose storyboards, and how the liveliness of hand-rendering lies at the heart of so much Ghibli animation, and so wished to pay tribute to this craft in my own way, keeping the image fresh and sketchy.
CELEBRATE STUDIO GHIBLI is a month-long event that will show screenings across cinemas in Australia and New Zealand, from August 24th to September 20th, 2017, and I will be briefly introducing one of my all-time favourites Totoro at the opening night in Melbourne. A rare opportunity to see all the studio's work on the big screen.
For more info, and also how to acquire a poster, visit Madman's site, https://www.madman.com.au/news/madman-presents-celebrate-studio-ghibli/
