Japanese publication Daily Yomiuri has an excellent piece today on the ongoing Studio Ghibli Layout Designs: Understanding the Secrets of Takahata/Miyazaki Animation exhibition in Tokyo.  It’s the first time I’ve seen a detailed description of the exhibit in a mainstream publication.

Arrows are also used to indicate movement, as in a scene from Kaze no Tani no Naushika (Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, 1984) in which two parallel lines–each labeled “slide” in katakana–slice across a cloud bank. One shows the path of the titular heroine’s gliderlike flying machine, while the other shows the path of the machine’s shadow.

More complex movements are shown by a sequence of sketched figures, as when Nausicaa does a broken-field run toward the viewer across a jungle clearing, with her pose and position changing as she gets nearer and larger.

Some layouts contain several types of movement at once. An early scene from Laputa shows heroine Sheeta doing a slow-motion plunge from the sky into a mining pit (a straight downward arrow) while hero Pazu runs around the edge of the pit, and away from the viewer, to catch her (a curving series of diminishing figures).

The exhibition features an incredible 1,300 penciled layout sketches from movies as old as Laputa in the Sky to the newest Ghibli/Miyazaki production, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. If you’re in Tokyo or plan on going before September 28th when the exhibit ends, you should put it on your list of things to do.

You can read the entire Daily Yomiuri piece here

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