For this assignment, we were tasked with looking into either the development of a particular countries animation, a particular studio or a director’s work.
My group formed quickly, consisting of myself, Joyce Guo, Ingrid Lima and Jessica Cunningham. We were able to start on working over Easter via Discord. I had went and thought of some topics that we could look at for our poster , and we decided to look into Studio Ghibli since their films were something we had all watched and enjoyed before.
We then had a discussion on splitting up topics that we could all cover, since we each wanted to be responsible for our own research. I decided to focus on Miyazaki and his environmental message, since this is a particular area that I was interested in learning about and my favourite Ghibli movie is Princess Mononoke in which this topic is prominent.
Over our Easter break we were able to design how we wanted our poster to look, since we were all pretty creative we knew we had wanted to take a more artistic approach to this. We started off by just using boxes to try and position our elements about since that was easiest, looking about how we could place our title and look to involve the Ghibli logo. This was something we were able to do online together, so we could all interact with the canvas and say what we thought worked and what didn’t.
For our final design we ended up bringing in individual elements we liked and voting for whether we wanted them, Joyce was really good at putting all these together for us. I really like this design that we decided on, I thought it tied in with the style of Ghibli. The top film reel was my idea, and then Joyce improved on this by adding in stills from the studio.
With our design done, we all split off and started researching. I started by taking notes in my notebook, this is just the most comfortable and efficient way for me to do this. I made notes by looking at some credible sources online as well as watching some movies that I thought fit my particular topic. I went and took notes from these as well as taking screen shots that I could place on our poster to make it balanced with text and images. It was pretty interesting watching through these movies again, being able to see how nature was incorporated into the plot and designs.
I then went and typed these up to clarify and combine my research with my personal notes. Raw Typed Notes (2), To put this text on the poster, I think I did something like 4 passes to try and condense out my notes. I definitely found my biggest weakness when it comes to research and analysis tasks, and that is trying to contain all my thoughts into condensed notes. I did have a lot of fun researching my chosen topic, and found that my readings on the Animation Studies Blogs helped me be able to approach films with a new critical viewpoint.
One element we all thought would be nice, was to draw little ‘chibi’ versions of ourselves as our favourite character’s from Ghibli. I went and decided to draw myself as San, since it tied in well with my topic that I was covering.
We all decided to come in to the University to start putting together all of our elements in Photoshop. Ingrid and Jessica were finishing off some notes and Joyce was working on putting together the film reel, so I went and worked on setting up our background elements. Once I had these set off we were able to rotate round and sort our own sections, adding our images and text. I then went and worked on adding shadows to the elements so that they stood out a bit better. We did a bit of searching online to find a nice font and decided on this one, appropriately named for our topic:https://www.fontshmonts.com/text-fonts/ghibli/#:~:text=%27Ghibli%27%20is%20simply%20a%20free,Designed%20by%20Eyad%20Al-Samman. Our nice background can be found here: https://www.pxfuel.com/en/desktop-wallpaper-jrzrn#google_vignette.
When it came to adding on our title, Joyce created a few ideas and then I went and picked what suited best as well as creating a quick introduction to the poster that summed up the contents. I decided to apply a Warp effect onto these elements, to make them fit on the film reel better and then got help from the group to decide the colour and shadow intensity of these elements to make them stand out more.
To finish this off I went and added our names in alphabetical order, and did a last pass on it for tweaking the shadows and blending of the the images.
Final Research Poster
Then this is our final design! After a couple checks for any rogue spelling mistakes we were able to send this over to a nearby place to get printed in time to present it to the class. I think the final ended up looking very vibrant and fun, having a decent balance between images and text and it is definitely eye-catching.
Overall, this was a really fun assignment and my group was really great to work with. I think that my section of the poster ended up a bit too crowded, I could have condensed my notes into more of a bullet point form that covered a broader topic rather than specifics, this is something I will have to work on for future projects. I think being able to explore a topic that I was passionate about really helped me stay motivated, and I was able to learn things that I was surprised by. I think that our poster turned our very well and captured the topics we wanted as well as showed off how creative we can be, and from feedback from our peers they thought the poster looked pretty engaging and fun.
Bibliography
Cambosa. T. (2022) Initiative to Preserve Ghibli’s My Neighbour Totoro Forest Launched. Anime Corner. 16 June. Available from : https://animecorner.me/initiative-to-preserve-ghiblis-my-neighbor-totoro-forest-launched/ [Accessed 6 April 2023 ]
My Neighbour Totoro /となりのトトロ (1988) [Film]. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, Toho
Park. W. and Airth. J. (2019) The Hunt for Japan’s ‘Ghost’ Wolves. BBC. October 17. Available from: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191011-the-hunt-for-japans-ghost-wolves [Accessed 7 April 2023]
Princess Mononoke/もののけ姫 (1997) [Film]. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, Toho
Spirited Away/ 千と千尋の神隠し (2001) [Film].Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, Toho
StoryDIve (2019) Princess Mononoke Revealed: The Real Mythology & History Explained. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f53ZCld72FI&list=PLi5lq76GbZnJJBvLVAjYP4fLj5pegH-Dl&index=40 [Accessed7 April 2023 ]
Wolter. H.K ( 2022 ) Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli, and the ‘Environmental Message’. The Cambridge Language Collective. January 18 Available from: https://www.thecambridgelanguagecollective.com/arts-and-culture/hayao-miyazaki-studio-ghibli-and-the-environmental-message [Accessed 6 April 2023 ]
Yuen. I (2021) The Ecologcial Imagination of Hayao Miyazaki. Orion Magazine. 5 March. Available from: https://orionmagazine.org/article/the-worlds-of-hayao-miyazaki/ [Accessed 6 April 2023 ]