Howl's Moving Castle: An animator reflects on his work with Miyazaki

Akihiko Yamashita, an animator at Studio Ghibli who worked intensively on the filming of Howl's Moving Castle, has revealed some secrets of this immense classic by Hayao Miyazaki. Go behind the scenes of this 2004 masterpiece.

Howl's Moving Castle: one of miyazaki's great classics

Hayao Miyazaki is undoubtedly the undisputed master of contemporary animation. Now 83 years old, this Japanese director has more than 50 years of career behind him. He is the founder of the Ghibli studioand is responsible for some of the greatest animated classics of a generation. He is notably responsible for masterpieces such as Castle in the Sky (1986), Princess Mononoke (1997), Spirited Away (2001) and The Wind on the Lip (2013). His latest film, arguably the final work of his career, The Boy and the Heron was released last year.

In 2004, he directed another of his great films with Howl's Moving Castle. The story tells the fate of young Sophie, just 18 years old. Unfortunately, a jealous witch casts a spell on her and locks her in the body of an old lady. Overwhelmed by her new appearance, Sophie flees into the mountains and comes across Hauru's home: his Howl's Moving Castle. As usual, Howl's Moving Castle proved to be a huge success. The feature film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature and grossed over $240 million in box office revenue.  

Behind the scenes of the film

Recently, the film has been making headlines again. Indeed, the artist Akihiko Yamashita, an animator at Studio Ghibli, who worked tirelessly on the making of Howl's Moving Castle was interviewed by Variety. The animator then let slip some tasty secrets about Miyazaki's masterpiece:

I really have no idea how many pages of drawings there were for Howl's Moving Castle, or even how many drawings we produced. I just know that we worked a lot and we drew a lot.

Akihiko Yamashita is a close collaborator of Hayao Miyazaki. The two men have been following each other for many years now. Akihiko Yamashita has notably given his support to Miyazaki on many of his works such as Spirited Away (2001), Ponyo on the Cliff (2008), The Wind Rises (2013) and the recent The Boy and the Heron strong>(2023).

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During the last 6 months of production on Howl's Moving Castle, Akihiko Yamashita admitted to having spent his life on the set. He gave the maximum of his energy and remained 14 hours a day working on the project:

Today, we talk about work-life balance, but back then, this concept did not exist. There were no Sundays and no free time during the week.

Fortunately, after these six grueling months, Studio Ghibli offered Akihiko Yamashita 3 months of paid leave. In the same interview with Variety, the 58-year-old host also dwelt on the maestro's working methods:

First of all, he’s someone who draws himself. From the layout to the storyboards, everything, he draws everything himself. And then let’s say if a lead animator produces an animation that he doesn’t like, he changes it and makes a rough drawing of it. Then the lead animators and the other animators have to take that to the final stage. Also, he has a special vision in the way he designs animation. Other animators use animation to tell a story, but he tells the story through animation. It’s all part of his storytelling. There were many, many people who worked on Howl's Moving Castle. To draw something as big as this castle, there would usually be a basic outline for it, and then multiple animators would draw from that basic outline. But in this case, there was no initial basic outline. So there might be a scene where the drawing is one way, and then another scene where the little house is in a different place. But even with these changes in angles that can show different things, it still looks like a single castle.

Variety then discussed the film's soundtrack. Music has always been a very important part of Hayao Miyazaki's filmography. But Akihiko Yamashita has admitted that he has no say in the matter. And that decisions about the soundtrack are made at a higher level:

Everything happens at a higher level, at the highest level, between Mr. Miyazaki and the composer, Mr. Hisaishi. We heard some demo-type pieces of the desired image during our production work, but I didn't hear the full score until the end of the film.

Finally, to end this interview, Varietyasked Akihiko Yamashita what his favorite sequence in Howl's Moving Castle was. The host acknowledged that Hauru's design was the most successful part of the film:

Hauru is a sexy character. It’s the scene where, after Sophie enters the castle, the next morning, Hauru comes back and approaches Sophie, very close to her, and says, “Who are you?” At that point, I had made a sketch with movements, and I showed it to Mr. Miyazaki. There should have been more development and growth in that scene, but he said, “No, it’s good. It’s very good.” So this is a scene where Hauru is in profile, and I thought it worked really well, and I was really happy that it worked so well. It showed a different side of Hauru, that he was also a very attractive and sexy person.

20 years later, Howl's Moving Castle is still one of Hayao Miyazaki's biggest successes. What's your favorite Studio Ghibli film?