The Art of Miyazaki's Spirited Away (Studio Ghibli Library) (The Art of Spirited Away)

Really thorough, though accessible, examination of the art style and parts of the production process as well, coupled with character sheets, location designs and layouts. Really exciting were a few of those famous watercolour storyboards that have been so (rightly!) mythologised as part of Miyazaki’s process.There’s some entertaining interviews and descriptions from the art and animation team which animation/Ghibli (esp Miyazaki) fans will find amusing, and aspiring creators will find instructive and illuminating. When there are stills from the film, they’re well-chosen, high quality and relevant to the chapter- not haphazard. There’s a good balance of writing to pictures, feeling neither like the publishers got stingy about putting full colour printing throughtout, nor that they threw together a bunch of pictures and added text to justify releasing a book at all (I’m looking at you, Star Wars and Disney tie-ins!).Studio Ghibli seem to have put real effort in making this book.The only aspect I felt could’ve been done better were explicitly showing the artistic and folklore influences that the creators drew from for creature design and story. For the 20ish years I’ve loved this film, I’ve slowly pieced together some of the yōkai (Shinto spirits or cryptids), ukiyo-e (traditional woodblock art) and traditional folklore that might be more obvious to a Japanese audience but is wonderfully mysterious to myself as a British fan, but one day I would love to see some of those influences spelled out more explicitly.Honestly one of the best books I’ve gotten all year, would work as a gift for an arty kid or to go on a film connoisseur’s coffee-table.

I used this to help for a Uni research project on the spaces in Miyazakis work and it was one of the most helpful sources. It contains so many stills and original sketches and watercolours. I would recommend it to any Spirited Away fans who want in insight into the world of Ghibli or any artists interested in the work as a precident. The English script for the movie is on the last few pages of the book too which was an unexpected bonus! The book itself is printed on really nice paper and the binding is gorgeous. It's the perfect coffee table book!TL;DR A beautiful book, great for anyone who loves art or ghibli!

What can I say? If you love the film, you will love the book. A good mix of concept art, background art, cell art and film stills (although the balance is definitely towards the film stills). Beautifully printed. Interesting to see is the distorted perspective of the indoor background scenes to allow for the camera to pan from a downward view to an upward view (a bit like a camera's fish-eye lens, but then only in one dimension). The same can be seen in the clubhouse background art in "The art of From Up On Poppy Hill"). The amount of detail in the film is amazing, this book will allow you to properly appreciate that without having to hit the pause button every ten seconds.

A brilliant book with tons of production artwork.

Would be a great gift for someone, the art in it is phenomenal, big book and has the whole script of the movie in the book, awesome stuff.

Beautiful hardback book. The pages are glossy and thick. I also didn't know it had the script for the film at the back! That was a nice surprise. It doesn't give too much detail of the making of, as the book it made up of clips from the film with a descriptuon underneath, but there are some storyboard drawings in there too. I wouldn't recommend if you're wanting more info for the making of. But I'd definitely recommend as a gift for any Ghibli fan and as beautiful well presented book

Bought as a gift for my daughter who is a big fan of Spirited Away and all the Ghibli films.The display of artwork, and the way in which it’s created is beautiful and informative.There are in depth character and place/scene descriptions along with the the script.My daughter was very happy with a it.

Item arrived slightly damaged on the top left corner of the book, but aside from that it’s lovely! The pages are so smooth too