‘The Boy And The Heron’ Supervising Animator Takeshi Honda On Creating Characters “Set In Reality” For A “Somber And Serious” Fantasy

‘Despicable Me 4’ Helps Franchise Make History And Is No.

TAKESHI HONDA: I had been working withStudio Ghiblifrom quite a while back.

The first one I did wasPortable Airport.

The Boy and the Heron still

The Boy and the HeronCourtesy of TIFF

He said, Come with me and lets make my next film together.

I want you on my next film.

DEADLINE: What was it like working with Miyazaki on a film that he had a personal connection to?

‘The Boy and the Heron’Studio Ghibli

HONDA: It was a very good working relationship.

But he actually is a very considerate person.

He was very close to me, which is not very usual protocol in ananimationstudio.

I mean, you dont usually get to have so many conversations with your director.

DEADLINE: Can you speak about animating a darker style?

The acting of the characters is a little more set in reality.

Its a little more real.

We really wanted to ground that in reality.

We have a lot of crowds with birds.

Those are all challenging scenes to create.

Also, the scene with all these Shinto ritual papers that are on the ring and flying about.

So, we wanted to make their expressions grounded in reality for that particular scene.