Hayao Miyazaki - Master Animator

Hayao Miyazaki was born in Tôkyô on January 5, 1941. His father was a director at the family-owned airplane parts factory - beginning a fascination with flight that never left him.

He started his career in 1963 as an animator at the Toei Douga studio, and began working on early anime. In 1965, Miyazaki married animator Akemi Ota and they had two sons, Goro, who grew up to be an animator (most recently directed the new Studio Ghibli film Tales from Earthsea), and Keisuke, a wood artist.

In the 70s, Miyazaki left Toei and joined future partner, Isao Takahata at A-Pro where he worked on the TV series Lupin III and then moved to Zuiyo Pictures, again with Takahata. Here he directed and designed all 26 episodes of the 1978 series Conan, the Boy in the Future.

This led to his first feature length movie The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), which became an unexpected artistic and commercial success.

After an abortive collaboration on Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, Miyazaki decided to produce his own project entitled Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds - again enlisting the help of Takahata. The movie was a huge hit - allowing Miyazaki and partners to create the now internationally famous Studio Ghibli.

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Miyazaki founded the creative powerhouse, Studio Ghibli in 1985 together with Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki after the commercial success of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. It was, and still is unusual in that the studio gave the directors full control over their material - providing a place in which to create without boundaries. The name is taken from the Italian word for a 'hot wind blowing through the desert'.

Luckily the gamble paid off and Laputa: Castle in the Sky, the first movie to be officially released by under the studio name did well at the box office. To date, Studio Ghibli has produced almost 20 feature-length movies including Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle and the 2002 Academy Award winning, Spirited Away.

Miyazaki's animations often have one or more recurring themes running through them.

Perhaps the most evident of these is the focus on the environment and the need to protect nature from human destruction. This is a central message in Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke where all the protoganists battle against the evils of technology and human greed.

Flight is also a familiar device in Miyasaki's work. Flying contraptions appear in the majority of his landscapes and many of his characters travel by air. Kiki has a broomstick in Kiki's Delivery Service, Nausicaa uses a plane/glider called a Möwe and Porco Rosso has a magnificent red sea plane.

Miyazaki also has a tendency to include strong female leads. The women in his movies are strong-willed and often defiant, yet sensitive. This complexity of character lends yet another dimension to his films.

Miyazaki has cited a number of influences on his animation over the years. These include manga artist Tezuka Osamu, the French animator Paul Grimault and The Snow Queen - a Soviet film. He is friends with French comic artist, Moebius and America animator, John Lasseter.

Miyazaki's work is written with the consideration of the child in mind and much of his inspiration comes from Western children's authors. He joined a children's-literature study group at university and some of his favourite writers include Antoine de Saint-Exupery (The Little Prince), Arthur Ransome (Swallows and Amazons) and Ursula K.Le Guin (Earthsea Cycle).