DIRECTOR EXCLUSIVE
Digital Witch
Ghibli goes CGI with Earwig And The Witch, and an eye to its future
WHISPER IT QUIETLY LEST traditional Japanese animation fans get wind, but Ghibli, the Tokyo-based studio behind such acclaimed hand-drawn classics as Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro and Howl’s Moving Castle, is going digital. Earwig And The Witch is its first completely CGI movie, and while some purists consider this the biggest cultural betrayal since acoustic folkster Bob Dylan strapped on an electric guitar, for others the question is not so much “Why?” as “Why has it taken so long?”
Director Goro Miyazaki, son of the studio’s legendary creator Hayao Miyazaki, is all too aware of Earwig’s status as a significant, if controversial, stepping stone for the studio. “I actually worked on a TV series with a different studio – Ronia, The Robber’s Daughter. That was [Ghibli producer] Toshio Suzuki’s suggestion. He said, ‘You should go and work with a different studio and try to learn about about new technology, because we will need to explore possibly using CGI in future projects.’ So I did that, and learned a lot about CGI. Then I came back and when it was time for me to work on a new project at Studio Ghibli, I thought, ‘Maybe I want to explore CGI further.’”