I am a little disappointed. I had expected a lot more concept art and early drafts of characters so you had a sense of the whole brainstorming process.

I had also hoped for more text about the workings, yet when I got it I was confused, beacuse I know nothing of animation, so I do not know what the difference is between a key animator and a regular one for example.

My biggest disappointment is that I had not expected most of this book would just be still frames from the movie. I had wanted to draw some of the sketches myself, but didn't get this big variety of options as I had hoped.

The only thing that pleasantly surprised me was that this also included the screen play, which was a bit fun to read. For that I gave it another star.

If you want this as a coffee table book go ahead. If you want it for its content you will be a bit disappointed.

"Before we began working on this film, Miyazaki didn't specifically discuss the direction for this film, but his storyboards are so accomplished you can grasp his approach as long as you examine them closely." (Kitaro Kosada, Supervising Animator) (p. 143)

"Miyazaki would say, "Maybe like this, or something like this," and then he would end up drawing everything. In the end, he declared, "I'll assume full responsibility (laughter)." (Takeshi Inamura, Supervising Animator) (p. 45)

"We had the opportunity to take a research trip to Europe. We visited the French Alsatian city, Colmar. The light and atmosphere of the city, the reddish cobblestone streets, the drifting clouds and sunlight left such a strong impression on is they we're incorporated throughout the film.
Most of the films I had worked on were set in Japan so this was the first time I drew European cityscapes. It was difficult to restrain my ingrained Japanese approach to color, so Miyazaki would often instruct me to make my colors "brighter and more colourful." " (Yoji Takeshige, Art Director) (p. 49)

"I still didn't have a good grasp of the overall look for the film during the first few months, so I continued drawing rough concept sketches based on the photos from our research trip and other photograph collections. There wasn't a storyboard yet, but there was a concept sketch by Miyazaki depicting Sophie walking on the wasteland ridge under the sky filled with distant clouds. That drawing allowed me to grasp the overall look of the film." (Noboru Yoshida, Art Director) (p. 63)

"I'd never worked on a film where a character physically changed with her emotional changes, so I was never absolutely confident, constantly doubting my work and asking myself, "Are these colors really right?" It was fun though to feel such anticipation." (Michiyo Yasuda, Color Design Director) (p. 69)

"Miyazaki at first wanted to try out a castle with 10 legs. In the end, the task would have been too demanding. It turned out four legs was quite effective already, so we decided on four legs for the castle." (Mitsunori Kataama, Director of Digital Animation) (p. 77)

"In my concept art I experimented with turning Howl's room into a cave. Sophie is holding a candle so I tried incorporating its light, but Miyazaki said, 'No, I want to treat it as a mental image.' He informed me how the cave wasn't filled with real objects illuminated by Sophie's candlelight, so much as it was a passage to Howl's memory. So it's not a concrete illustration, it's a scene where one's memory of the past resurfaces. Because Howl's toys such as the dolls symbolize Howl's memory, I made the colors bright and immune to the candlelight," (Noboru Yoshida, Art Director) (p. 140)


► Piranesi: The Etchings by Luigi Ficacci – architecture, imagination, ruins
► Berenice Abbott: Changing New York by Bonnie Yochelson & Berenice Abbott – photography, documentary, new york
► Sketch and Finish: The Journey from Here to There by Milton Glaser – sketching, ideas, process
► Cabinet of Curiosities: My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obsessions by Guillermo del Toro & Marc Zicree – fantasy, nightmares, notebooks

This was such a beautiful look at the art in the world of Howl's Moving Castle. I loved all the art featured and the explanations of different things about the movie throughout the book. The screenplay at the end is a cherry on top. Overall, this book is great if you are a fan of this movie!

Bellissimo da sfogliare per tutti gli appassionati. Bozzetti, concept art, (molto) brevi interviste e scene analizzate più da vicino. Forse mi aspettavo del testo in più con altre curiosità e spiegazioni, però non me la sento di togliere una stella per questo dato che effettivamente mi è piaciuto molto ed è stato interessante.

This book was given to me by my older brother as a graduation gift. I love Studio Ghibli, but not to the point that I plan or have massive interest in buying their art books that I would often see in Fully Booked. I am curious to read them, but they don't make me feel the need to rush in buying them. I'm glad and thankful to my older brother that I finally get to experience reading my first art book from Studio Ghibli.

Howl's Moving Castle isn't a book that first comes to mind if ever I want to buy my first book in this series mainly because I find the movie to be overrated, but I still like it. This book made me appreciate this movie even more because I was invested in the inspiration, hard work, and passion behind the mentioned members who worked in the animation department. It's also really cool to see the concept art and sketches of certain characters and setting before the finalized version in the film. It was therapeutic to see images from the movie because of its beautiful animation. I consider Howl's Moving Castle to be one of the most beautiful-looking movies in Studio Ghibli.

I was also surprised and happy to know that there's a third part where it features the screenplay of the film considering that I have experiences working on scripts and screenplays. What fascinates me is how simple the sequence treatment, overall structure, and dialogue of the screenplay because I'm used to reading and writing screenplays that have a bit long sequence treatments, but each screenplay has its own style and format that still manages to stand out. With a complex film like Howl's Moving Castle, I wouldn't really think that it would have just a simple screenplay, but Hayao Miyazaki made it work and made me realized that no matter what the style and format a screenplay is, it should properly be able to translate it well into a movie and be understood by the actors/actresses and the filmmakers. As someone who has the skills in writing and (proof)reading scripts, this was my favorite part of the book, which is ironic because the main highlight should be the collection of art images. To be fair, I did find myself reading the screenplay a bit dragging. This could possibly be because I am not used to reading a feature-length screenplay, which I should if I want to pursue this as a career, or maybe the movie itself is not really my favorite. I was invested more with the dialogue than the sequence treatments and the action cues.

When it comes to the part that contains the art of the film, I enjoyed looking at them and I appreciated the perspectives and stories shared by the animators and evolution of each drawings, but when it comes to the text, I find it a bit difficult and distracting to read because the images are labeled with only numbers, while there's a portion in each sub-chapter that contains the information, including the information pertaining to a specific number, so it made me keep scanning. To format this properly, they should've inserted the information below, on top, or next to the images it pertains to so that I don't have to keep moving my head and eyes around to see which image the information pertains to. This format is similar to A Sky Longing for Memories: The Art of Makoto Shinkai.

Overall, this was a nice experience. I am interested in reading the other books in the series, but I'm most likely going to have the same experience in each book, so I'm not super excited to read another one of these. If ever Studio Ghibli makes The Art of Whisper of the Heart then that's the book I want to read next since it is my favorite film from Studio Ghibli.

اول کتاب چاپ شده شو تو فروشگاه دیدم و بعدش اومدم ای‌بوکش رو گرفتم. کتاب چاپ شدهه گلاسه بود ولی سایزش خیلی کوچک بود، تو پی‌دی‌اف راحت تر میشد زوم کرد و خوند توضیحات رو.
اسکچ های رنگ نشده‌ش رو ، بخصوص مثلاً طرح سولیمان. و خیلی دوست داشتم تا رنگ شده نهاییش.

One of my favs. Too bad I bought it in Japanese and I can’t understand a word

4.5/5
Beautiful artwork throughout! This is one of my favorite films and I thoroughly enjoyed all of various art throughout that depicted the process beginning to end. I enjoyed learning about the specific stylistic choices that were made in order to bring the world of Howl to life and it made me appreciate the animation process more.

I do wish it had included a little information on the writing process and how Miyazaki decided to make the changes he did from the original text. Overall though, it was very informative and very beautiful to look through. I love this movie so much!

A beautiful insight into one of my favorite movies!

I didn't get much new out of this, but it was cool to see some of the storyboards and the explanation of the CG animation. Other than that you'd be better off just watching the movie in slow-mo to see all the animation frames.

I use this as a sketching reference regularly. Love the contour shaping and loose organic style.

Actual rating: 4.25 stars