Of Miyazakis and Backgrounds
Well, George, after comparing Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli films’ backgrounds with Janggeum’s Dream‘s backgrounds, I suppose I should really put together a little comparison, a bit of side-by-side. You know, “substantiate my claims” and all.
Filesize warning: This page has 4.5MB of images (nine images), and none of those images have height and width attributes on their HTML tags, either. Oh, and I’m hosted by DreamHost.
I want to begin by saying I absolutely love the background artwork in Hayao Miyazaki’s works with Studio Ghibli. This is not me trying to say they are not gorgeous. Also note, all images used in this post are in PNG format. The full-sized images are included to show backgrounds at their fullest detail I can provide. However, the images are the dimensions they come at on the DVDs. They have only been reproportioned for the collages.
The movies are listed in no other except “this is the order they’re in my DVD binder”.
Princess Mononoke
My Neighbor Totoro
Original images: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Something to note here is this film’s use of watercolor style backgrounds.
On Your Mark
This piece jumps back and forth between detailed backgrounds and almost detailless backgrounds.
Original images: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Castle in the Sky
Original images: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
Hopefully I don’t keep going overboard with the images, but I took a lot of screenshots for this one and couldn’t give up any of those remaining.
Kiki’s Delivery Service
Original images: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
I tried to show as much restraint as possible this time around. This movie has such wonderful background images!
Unfortunately, the black borders on the originals are wider than my self-written collage generator supports cropping off, and I’m on a time limit before my bed time to tweak the script.
Spirited Away
Original images: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Much of this movie is eye candy, plain and simple.
I don’t know what it is with Studio Ghibli films and those big borders. Both English and Japanese releases appear to have them.
Porco Rosso
What can I say? A lot takes place in the air, there aren’t as many detailed backgrounds as in Kiki’s Delivery Service, and watercolor looks to be the style of choice.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Original images: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
A quick skim through the movie turned up nothing, and I’m running short on time, so I went to a handful of early scenes.
Howl’s Moving Castle
Original images: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
My last one. This movie has a decent amount of gorgeous as well.
Since I’ve exceeded my time limit, I’ll do a follow-up post with screenshots showing backgrounds from Janggeum’s Dream. In the meantime, checking the screenshots in my Janggeum’s Dream commentary kind of barely shows those fancy backgrounds, although at tiny sizes.
