How "Spirited Away" Was Made

This movie was made by the well famous Studio Ghibli and reached worldwide success after Disney took it. The process of making this classic is the same as any other 2D style anime, it’s an extensive process to say the least. The reason for this is because every single frame is animated by hand. The whole making of a movie like this has a certain order.

It all starts with writing the script, this script was written by the maker of the manga, on which the movie (or series) was based.

Then the storyboard is made and as you have might have picked up in this magazine, this is a vital step in any animation. After this, the characters are designed. Because the whole animation is going to be based off of them and they have to be drawn in hundreds to thousands of poses.

After of while this is happening, the backgrounds are made. This used to be drawn with acrylic paint, but nowadays it’s all digital, because it’s faster, cheaper and easier.

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At this point, the animators are ready to get drawing. These animators are split up into 2 groups. You have the key animators, who make every begin (middle) and end pose of the character.

These keys are really important and are always made by the more experienced drawers. And then you have the in between animators, who make sure the movements are fluid. These animators are usually the amateur ones, from Korea for example. After this a lot of time passes and everything is perfected by the head master animator.

All the drawings get scanned into the computer and here comes a very critical part, the colour gets added.

This is important because one character always has the same colours, and they only change in different environments. After all this special effects like glow and special lighting get added and also the motion of the animation in places where different drawings aren’t needed. Now for the last step you need the editors, to cut the right length and of course the voice actors.

In the case of Spirited Away, the script was written by Hayao Miyazaki, the legendary creator.