Road test: Studio Ghibli's animated film set designs captivate children
Drawn to the magic of Studio Ghibli
The animated films of Studio Ghibli have legions of fans in Hong Kong, so it's no wonder that the exhibition of layout designs by Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, the studio's founding directors, at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum has been so well received.
My three-year-old son and I traipsed to Sha Tin to check out the exhibition on a recent steamy Sunday and realised that several parents had a similar strategy for beating the heat.
Our error was to queue outside the room on the ground floor which, after a 15-minute wait, we realised was set up for taking photos in front of blow-ups of layouts from the films. Given the general population's love of photography, this was a popular activity.
The drawings themselves are works of art that would attract those interested in the technique of sketching
Parents with young children might consider giving this a miss, or saving it for after viewing the actual exhibition on the first floor. There are plenty of film scene blow-ups to pose with in the corridor upstairs.
The exhibition features 1,300 layout designs, which are a blueprint of the animation film used to illustrate the directors' vision of the scenes, including notes on the sketches by the filmmakers themselves.
The display covers the entire span of the studio's productions, from films such as Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind to The Tale of Princess Kaguya, which will be released in Hong Kong this summer.