How Did Animators Paint Backgrounds For The Ponyo Film?

Question

Ponyo's vibrant underwater and coastal backgrounds have such a hand-painted, watercolor feel. What traditional animation techniques did Studio Ghibli's background artists actually use?

kapitan · Answer

Studio Ghibli also painted many of the backgrounds for ‘Ponyo’ in watercolor and gouache on paper. They focused on mixing colors by hand in order to bring the sea and the town to life. If you enjoy the sort of richly painted and highly atmospheric world that ‘Ponyo’ brings to life, you may well find that the web novel ‘Snow White & The 7 Titans’ provides a similar reading experience. The descriptions of the crystalline Frostwood and the massive, slumbering giants are so vivid that they paint their own pictures as you read.

Katie · Answer

Even to this day, watching ‘Ponyo’ makes me feel like a kid at the beach. The movie’s backgrounds were all hand painted using water-based media. The main colors for the backgrounds were painted in with large washes of watercolor and then textures and finer details were added with gouache or opaque paint. Each scene was painted in layers with the largest areas of color first, followed by the texture and then the finest details such as highlights on waves. The painter would use dry brush, splattering and even pencil marks to add in grain and movement to the paint. The individual pieces of art would then be scanned and composited together using a multiplane camera and other digital effects to create the final scene. The hand painted paper textures would be visible in the final image.

The key thing to note is how the team shot it in a relatively loose and ‘imperfect’ style – the result evoking crayon-drawn illustrations, i.e. very childlike and thereby in line with the rest of the film. If you want to get a rough taste of the effects used to paint those pretty painted backgrounds for yourself, try big washes of watercolor and allow them to dry, followed by small masses of white gouache for the foam and then lightly rub a colored pencil over the dried pencil marks and washes. Scan the lot and you should get a taste of the work put into Ponyo’s backgrounds, without the full studio to call upon.

Hudson · Answer

When I watch Ponyo, I somehow always manage to come back to the backgrounds. This warm feeling is probably caused by most of the backgrounds having been painted with traditional media. While watercolor washes were used for the soft sky and far-off sea, gouache or opaque paint was used for the solid colors of the castle, houses, etc. Colored pencils or pastel were also used for many of the textures and edges up close. The backgrounds started life as color keys and rough sketches for the storyboard and layout. The background paintings were then wet-on-wet washed in large areas and the details added bit by bit with dry-brushes for texture and small splatters, scrapes and even pencil marks to add grit. The result is an ocean that looks and feels alive and the foam on the waves looks like you could run your finger over it and feel it.

In order to create the handmade feel of the backgrounds in Ponyo, Miyazaki was keen to ensure that they looked like they were hand-drawn in order to retain the playfully rough feel of the painting. Most of the backgrounds for Ponyo were painted by the animators themselves, and as a result, you can often see lively, irregular lines and the hasty choice of color for background washes. The painted backgrounds for the film were scanned in at high resolution for the compositing. The hand-painted work was then layered up in a multiplane arrangement of foreground, midground and background, with each plane of the image moving at a different speed. In addition to this, there was some limited digital color correction and some subtle visual effects such as the addition of a glow and the creation of translucent water, but these were used sparingly in order to enhance the hand-painted work rather than to dominate it.

You can see remnants of old methods in their new work, flour dusting the hands of artists as they work lovingly. Finding little accidents in their paintings to really make them pop is almost as if they were adding secret flavor to a family recipe. Working with layers is the best way to work in this case, starting with light watercolor washes to paint the space, adding opaques for highlights and other things like that, including white gouache for the foam, and finally adding pencil or pastel marks to get more texture. After scanning all of your work, you can bring up the bright colors of the painting using blending modes on different layers. It’s so soft, so delicate, almost as if you had just caught a memory.

Athili Pfuzhe · Answer

I'm waiting for links to the various behind-the-scenes featurettes, particularly the ones that show the artists at work. It would be great to have more in-depth looks at the specific processes they went through for the underwater scenes.

Essie Villavito · Answer

In terms of artistic styles for watercolor, this would contrast greatly with the highly realistic watercolor backgrounds of ‘The Wind Rises’ and the intricate lines found in ‘Princess Mononoke’. “Ponyo” is an extremely colorful film that strives to portray a joyful, fun, and above all incredibly imaginative world from the perspective of a five year old child. The backgrounds of “Ponyo” are not mere settings and are often integrated as participants in the scenes themselves. The increasing sea levels are depicted in an extremely playful manner with the constantly rising blue swirling about in many situations. To create such an emotion this film would need specific painting methods and indeed uses gouache paintings for the backgrounds (gouache is a type of paint that dries to a flat, matte finish and has the ability to produce the most vibrant and purest colors). From my point of view it’s not so much about depicting reality but about expressing emotions honestly.

Hanhan Hanabi · Answer

In addition to the medium, the composition is strongly inspired by children’s book illustrations of the European mid-20th century. The perspective is most often seen from a low angle, that of a child. The colors are applied in flat, large and clear forms, with much detail within the figures and these forms. The village is painted in large, flat colors but each window contains a perfect reflection, and each roof tile is individually suggested with a brushstroke. The result is a simple, childlike story that is also very intricate and complex for adults to appreciate. Rather than distracting from the figures in the foreground, the backgrounds envelop the characters within a world that is both incredibly innocent and awe-inspiring. The painting follows the simple narrative of the story while conveying immense artistic depth and feeling.

Romella Arceo · Answer

I get frustrated when people claim that animation is only for children. Animation such as Ponyo’s background art is truly fine art-quality painting. With intricate composition, Color Theory and brushstrokes, it opens up children’s eyes to seeing the world with new found wonder and increased attention to detail. They start to notice the color of light in their own room, the movement of water etc. It’s so powerful as hand-painted animation, teaching the viewer’s eye in a completely different way to more mainstream animation that just aims to entertain and treats each frame as just another step in the long animation development pipeline. More mainstream animations should really take a leaf out of this film’s amazing visual approach rather than following the bland and hugely homogenized look of much 3D animation around today.

SillyLilly · Answer

It looks like the illustrations from my favorite childhood storybooks were brought to life. It has a softness and warmth that I have not experienced in films made by computers before. It feels kind. The way the rain is painted and the moss on the rocks are examples of the very careful and loving attention that was put into the film. It gives the whole film the feeling of a big hug.

Irum · Answer

It was very clear watching the documentary ‘The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness’ for more of Miyazaki’s older work that Studio Ghibli always does backgrounds by hand. ‘Ponyo’ is a return to hand-painted backgrounds after previous films ‘Spirited Away’ and ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ were done partially with a computer. Hundreds of paintings are made for each shot. Many of the painted backgrounds for ‘Ponyo’ were based off of real locations in Tomonoura and the staff would take many location pictures and re create them in their paintings. The way light falls in ‘Ponyo’ is incredible. The way the sun can look on the water, or shine through the rain is all done by hand and every little detail such as a puddle, cloud or blade of grass has been put into the painting to convey the emotions of the characters. That’s Ghibli magic, all done by hand.

Krofax Matthew · Answer

I read an interesting interview with the Art Director of Ponyo, Noboru Yoshida. Most of the backgrounds for Ponyo were created with traditional gouache paint on watercolor paper. The team wanted to give the film a very tactile ‘handmade’ feel and to match the Story Book-like world of the film, they mostly avoided using digital paint for the scenery. Thick, opaque layers of gouache were built up to create the colors and you can even see the brushstrokes in the paint in things like grass and the ocean. The paint dries very quickly and cannot be blended like oils, so it is a very time consuming process. However, Yoshida said that there were dozens of background artists working in this style of painting, and they were able to keep up with the production schedule. The commitment to using this analog method of painting is part of what makes Ponyo feel so unique and magical compared to other Ghibli films that use a lot of digital composite painting for their backgrounds.

Eddie Ang · Answer

This is also really wonderful: the backgrounds of the food scenes are painted with such love that they become characters in their own right. The ham, the noodles, the tea. The steam rises up from the bowl of ramen like little smoky strands, and the slices of ham are glossy and so silky-looking. It’s all been painted with gouache. Making food look good in animation is hard. But making food look good with flat, opaque paint is just about a miracle. The tiny highlights and accurate shadows that suggest texture and warmth are so detailed. And the point of it all is small, but crucial to understanding the simple joys of human connection that this film celebrates. The care that went into rendering this bowl of noodles is the same care that Lisa put into making it for her family. This art style supports the values of the story at the minutest level.

How Did Animators Paint Backgrounds For The Ponyo Film?

11 Answers

Related Books

Painting the Canvas with Love

My Artist Boyfriend Painted Me Without Clothes

Tsunami Man: Legend of the Kaiju

The Art of Jessica Jane

One-night Stand: Paint And Pen

The Unprecedented Yokai Hunter

Related Questions

What are the main themes in the ponyo film?