If you keep up with the ani­ma­tion we post here at Open Cul­ture, you’ll know we have a strong fas­ci­na­tion with tech­niques that require seem­ing­ly inhu­man lev­els of devo­tion to the craft. Ster­ling ear­li­er exam­ples of that include the pin­screen ani­ma­tion of Alexan­der Alex­eieff and Claire Park­er as used to envi­sion Niko­lai Gogol’s “The Nose” and Mod­est Mus­sorgsky’s “Night on Bald Moun­tain.” More recent prac­ti­tion­ers of such severe­ly labor-inten­sive ani­ma­tion include Nina Paley, the self-taught ani­mat­ed film­mak­er who sin­gle­hand­ed­ly cre­at­ed Sita Sings the Blues, the fea­ture-length jazz-scored adap­ta­tion of clas­sic Indi­an myth we fea­tured in 2009.

Since then, Paley has tak­en her con­sid­er­able skills to a form she calls “embroi­der­ma­tion.” It looks how it sounds: like frame by embroi­dered frame sequenced into life. You can get an idea of the process at Paley’s blog. She’s done this project under the ban­ner of PaleGray Labs, “the tex­tile col­lab­o­ra­tion of Nina Paley and Theodore Gray” (whose slo­gan announces their mis­sion to “put the NERD in quilt­iNg and EmbRoi­Dery”). They used it to make Chad Gadya, a three-minute ren­der­ing of a tra­di­tion­al passover folk song. (Below it, you can also see anoth­er embroi­der­ma­tion made by anoth­er artist for Throne’s song “Thar­sis Sleeps.”) PaleGray Labs bills Chad Gadya as “our most ridicu­lous­ly labor-inten­sive ani­ma­tion ever,” which must also make it the most ridicu­lous­ly labor-inten­sive ani­ma­tion we’ve yet fea­tured on Open Cul­ture. Its cre­ation required not only for­mi­da­ble embroi­dery abil­i­ties, but a deft hand with indus­tri­al-strength num­ber-crunch­ing soft­ware Math­e­mat­i­ca in order to cre­ate the process­es that allowed them to ani­mate the stitched fig­ures smooth­ly. If the results cap­ture your imag­i­na­tion, know that you can pur­chase the orig­i­nal phys­i­cal mate­ri­als: “Each unique, approx­i­mate­ly 16” square, unbleached cot­ton mat­zoh cov­er con­tains 6 frames of ani­ma­tion and is signed by the artists,” PaleGray’s site assures us. Per­haps you’d like to con­sid­er stock­ing up ear­ly on gifts for next Passover?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Niko­lai Gogol’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, “The Nose,” Ani­mat­ed With the Aston­ish­ing Pin­screen Tech­nique (1963)

Night on Bald Moun­tain: An Eery, Avant-Garde Pin­screen Ani­ma­tion Based on Mussorgsky’s Mas­ter­piece (1933)

Sita Sings the Blues

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The expo­nen­tial democ­ra­ti­za­tion of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy every year has led to a wealth of video essays and fan films from bed­room auteurs, the likes of which would have been unimag­in­able even five years ago  To wit: this beau­ti­ful trib­ute to the works of Hayao Miyaza­ki, Japan’s ani­me god, and his Stu­dio Ghi­b­li. A typ­i­cal fan video would have edit­ed togeth­er a “best of” clip show, using a song to link the scenes. But a Paris-based ani­ma­tor named “Dono” has gone one step fur­ther and cre­at­ed a trib­ute where scenes and char­ac­ters from Miyaza­ki all frol­ic about a 3‑D mod­eled world, where the bath­house from Spir­it­ed Away is ren­dered in all of its glo­ry, and Totoro’s cat­bus is only a few blocks away from Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice, and next door to Por­co Rosso’s favorite hang­out. Even Lupin III, not Miyaza­k­i’s orig­i­nal cre­ation, but who starred in the direc­tor’s first fea­ture, gets a look in.

It’s very charm­ing, and judg­ing from Dono’s oth­er work on his Vimeo chan­nel, a huge step up and no doubt a labor of love. And here’s the oth­er thing about this seam­less work of fan art. In the past, the soft­ware and the com­put­ing pow­er need­ed to make such a film would have been both pro­hib­i­tive­ly expen­sive and the domain of a design com­pa­ny. For this trib­ute, three of the four soft­ware pro­grams named in its creation–Gimp, Blender, and Natron–are free and open-source, and run on a lap­top. (The fourth, Octane, costs a lit­tle bit of mon­ey.)

via Vice

Relat­ed Con­tent:

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

The Delight­ful TV Ads Direct­ed by Hayao Miyaza­ki & Oth­er Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Ani­ma­tors (1992–2015)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Last week, we fea­tured a trio of ridicu­lous­ly cute com­mer­cials about a cat called Kon­yara. The com­pa­ny that made them was none oth­er that Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s ani­ma­tion shop. Those com­mer­cials, drawn in an ele­gant­ly sim­ple style that recalls tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese sumi‑e illus­tra­tions, had the same metic­u­lous atten­tion to detail and flu­id move­ments that are Miyaza­k­i’s trade­mark.

As it turns out, Ghi­b­li did­n’t restrict its com­mer­cial endeav­ors to car­toon cats. Above are a bunch of com­mer­cials the com­pa­ny did over the years stretch­ing all the way back to 1992. The ads range from ones about bread to banks to green tea. There are also quite a num­ber of tie-ins from the stu­dio’s movies, like an ad for Law­son’s con­ve­nience stores that fea­tures col­lectible dolls from Spir­it­ed Away. What is fas­ci­nat­ing about these ads is the range of styles they exhib­it. Many are done in a way that clear­ly recalls Miyaza­k­i’s movies, oth­ers look much more min­i­mal and much more ges­tur­al.

In oth­er Miyaza­ki relat­ed news, it turns out that the mas­ter isn’t retir­ing after all. Fol­low­ing the release of his fea­ture The Wind Ris­es in 2013, Hayao Miyaza­ki announced he was get­ting out of the ani­ma­tion biz. But as with his numer­ous dec­la­ra­tions of retire­ment in the past, it did­n’t take.

Miyaza­ki is report­ed­ly mak­ing a 10-minute long ani­mat­ed short called Kemushi no Boro (Boro the Cater­pil­lar). The direc­tor describes the short as “a sto­ry of a tiny, hairy cater­pil­lar, so tiny that it may be eas­i­ly squished between your fin­gers.” He has been devel­op­ing on the idea for a cou­ple decades now and, in spite of the short’s length, the film is pro­ject­ed to take three years to make.

What might be sur­pris­ing is that the film will be entire­ly com­put­er gen­er­at­ed. Miyaza­ki is per­haps the world’s most famous pro­po­nent of hand-drawn cel ani­ma­tion. As a younger man, he railed against CGI call­ing the method “shal­low, fake.” Over the years, how­ev­er, his feel­ings evolved.

“If [hand-drawn cel ani­ma­tion] is a dying craft we can’t do any­thing about it,” he told The Guardian back in 2005. “Civ­i­liza­tion moves on. Where are all the fres­co painters now? Where are the land­scape artists? What are they doing now? […] Actu­al­ly I think CGI has the poten­tial to equal or even sur­pass what the human hand can do. But it is far too late for me to try it.”

Appar­ent­ly it is not.

Boro will screen exclu­sive­ly in his Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um in Mita­ka, Tokyo, so if you want to see the master’s next work, be pre­pared to fly to Japan.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.