What Studio Ghibli Does That Pixar Doesn’t

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]When John Lasseter first met Hayao Miyazaki back in the early 1980s, he was completely blown away by what Miyazaki was already doing in animation. By the early 2000s, they were both at the top of the animation industry. [music] So, today, we're going to take a look at how they got there and what differs between each of the studio's approach when it comes to making classics like My Neighbor Totoro and Toy Story. So, let's get started. A couple of things I noticed between Miyazaki and Pixar. It's just interesting to see what they focus on. Now, Miyazaki is more fantasy whimsical as compared to Toy Story with Pixar, which is reality with some fantasy added. In the layout and the visual development of the environments that they're in, there's a big difference, I'm saying, between Studio Ghibli and Pixar. So, here's some examples that I copied off these beautiful landscapes. There's a lot of lush foliage and just lovely vistas that are in My Neighbor Totoro. This is kind of a hallmark of Miyazaki, um you know, showing, you know, the beautiful landscapes. The landscapes that he probably he might have grown up with in his early childhood in Japan. Beautiful billowing skies and clouds, lush trees, lush foreground. He just really, really loves to capture, you know, the Japanese landscape. Some of his angles will be either straight on, low angle, or aerial view. It's almost like if he's a fan of David Lean, I can understand how, uh you know, a filmmaker like Lean might have been an inspiration to Miyazaki because, you know, David Lean would always love these big wide establishing shots that he did with movies like, uh Lawrence of Arabia. I get that feeling here. And they fit really perfectly, I think, with some of the characters. They blend really well. That whimsy quality, it dovetails so perfectly with landscape and the character design works really well. On the flip side, if we go to something like Toy Story, take a look. I mean, compare a vista and landscape like My Neighbor Totoro to something like Sid's planet from Toy Story. Great design. Mid-century modern in a way. Has a little bit of almost art deco to it. A fun contemporary. During the mid-50s and 60s when uh the United States was embracing space travel and NASA and going to the moon and everything, I could see how that spoke to, you know, their design sensibility. And it made its way into, you know, the design of the of the props and of the characters and the and all the you know, all the environments. Here is the dark bedroom of the of the neighbor Sid who tortures his toys. A very mysterious secretive world that, you know, this kid lives in where he's got all of his tortured toy experiments, you know, layered all over the place in the in his bedroom.

[00:03:04]Uh here's another scene of um Woody trapped inside Sid's bedroom.

[00:03:10]Great great design. You know, a terrific environment. But once again, this is a a real CG effort to create something that has a 3D effect that you can put your hand into with all the shading, the lighting, and the textures as opposed to lush 2D uh landscape backgrounds that Miyazaki would do in his classic film My Neighbor Totoro. Beautiful art styling, beautiful visual development and layouts, and uh interiors and exteriors in both movies. If you're interested in learning animation, character design, or even becoming a better artist, My Pomeroy Art Academy community is a great place to start. From networking with other artists and getting feedback on your work to over [music] 70 hours of course content on a ton of different topics. This community is for artists of every skill level. Just click the link in the description to start your free trial today. The two movies that came before My Neighbor Totoro, I think set the standard and set the look for Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki. The two films that came out before this was Valley of Wind and the Castle in the Sky. As opposed to Pixar in the early 90s when they were developing Toy Story, it was all brand new. So, in one instance, My Neighbor Totoro was cashing in on a style in color and in character design that worked really well in his two previous films that he just kind of carried and carried that idea on forward into My Neighbor Totoro, where Pixar was inventing a brand new look, totally different, totally insane. So, they were having to build this idea, the color styling and the dimensional qualities of CG animation from the ground up. And it permeated everything. You know, the little soldier toys, they look like the real soldier toys that we played with.

[00:04:58]They were kind of green in color, slightly shiny surface. Great. I mean, and it's like all of the toys had a particular structure to them. As opposed to in Miyazaki, there was a a softness and appeal like I mentioned before.

[00:05:12]Different characters, you look at the character of Totoro himself, you know, and they're trying to figure out, you know, what can they do that you haven't seen before? And this was a great invented character. There's two little side characters also that are kind of similar in style and look, but Totoro is the main character. Now, I just want to speak about the emotional content of each of these films. Like I said, My Neighbor Totoro is mainly from the children's point of view.

[00:05:43]While they're waiting the recovery of the mother character, the father moves the family to uh uh a place near the um hospital where she is staying. And while they're there, the two girls meet Totoro. We can identify with what it feels like to have a family member who is sick and is in recovery or who is not doing well. It's the angst uh in the children's life, that insecurity that they feel, the intensity of that, and that is when they meet Totoro.

[00:06:15]Who becomes a comfort to them. Now, in with Toy Story, we've got a competition, a dramatic competition between these two characters. That informs the storyline, the props, their relationship with the other characters around them. Woody and Buzz, it's like the buddy movie where the two opponents become dear, dear friends. And there's a transition in each of their lives emotionally. They are toys, but they're real people. And they remind us of friends and relatives and family who we know. They have their own foibles, they have their faults. Buzz is very confident that he can fly. Woody is very cynical, you know, in his attitude towards this character. And that focus the story, but they start out as opponents and they end up becoming dear friends. So, that's the wonderful dynamic of that story. Now, another thing that I want to also mention, too, is the attention to the world around them. Much of the story with the two sisters who meet Totoro, Miyazaki does a very, very, almost like a magical slide of hand with his layouts. It he goes from nature and the plushness of, you know, the landscape into almost a magical world, which is really interesting. And he does it very subtly, you know, and that's where the youngest sister meets, you know, Totoro for the first time. And then finally, while they're waiting at a bus stop in the rain, you know, the older sister is lamenting the fact that she's, you know, how come I've never seen this this character, this this spirit before? And suddenly, Totoro shows up next to her.

[00:07:57]And this wonderful cat bus uh prop character comes rolling in. Totoro steps onto inside the bus and then travels away from the two sisters.

[00:08:09]Beautiful stuff. And it works really well with their environments. Lovely attention to detail and just all of the little trappings of that world that Miyazaki has created. And then in Toy Story, the attention of the main characters to their surroundings, one of the things that's fun to watch is the mystique that's built up anytime a human character is around, the toys immediately assume their toy-like character. They go inanimate.

[00:08:36]And then once the humans leave or they're out of sight, they become human again. They have, you know, human characteristics, you know, Ham, uh Slinky. All of them have a little dialogue. They have their own particular voice and the voice casting is fantastic. But they are they are married to the world around them, which is Andy's bedroom. And, you know, Bo Peep and all the characters, they all have this uh community feeling that's really important. Like the family feeling that is in Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro. So, it's really wonderful to see how uh the Toy Story characters marry themselves to the uh environment that they're placed in. And all of the sudden, midway through the story, they're taken out of that environment and Buzz and Woody have been dropped into Pizza Planet, into a totally foreign atmosphere, which is kind of fun. Likewise, the two girls are getting slightly immersed into this world of fantasy with Totoro. So, great comparisons. Both of them work beautifully. But, the interesting thing with their character styling and their design, I've got um both Buzz and Woody here. And when I think of, you know, the style of Pixar, I'm not doing this in CG, I'm doing this in traditional hand-drawn animation. But, there is a dynamic, you know, the most important thing here that I think Lasseter's team was trying to capture is that the This is a world of toys. So, it has to bow to a certain structure in the design that even though this is make-believe, it is a real world. It looks like a product, you know, that was done by a toy manufacturer.

[00:10:20]Roughing out some of the characteristics with Buzz.

[00:10:24]Buzz is the picture of confidence, of course, until he finds out that he can't fly. You know, and the challenge [clears throat] here, I think, you know, trying to conceive of a design that could possibly be a real toy. So, they had to think in terms of how parts are all molded together or attached with screws. And what's the dynamics to make it look like an actual toy. The little creases under his eyes, confident smile, and a painted little dimple on his chin.

[00:10:57]So, there's roughly Buzz Lightyear.

[00:11:00]Look at his shoulders, nice big barreled chest. You know, he was a He's the picture of aspiration. He He's He becomes kind of the dominant person when the package is opened by Andy, and everyone is enamored with how dynamic he looks.

[00:11:17]And he takes full advantage of that, and he puts, you know, all of a sudden Woody now, who was the dominant toy in Andy's room, is now secondary. Cool design.

[00:11:27]Let's compare that with Miyazaki. Now, I've done some sketches here based on some of the art samples I've seen.

[00:11:34]Miyazaki, like I said before, Toy Story deals more with reality and creating, you know, a realistic world with shading and texture, cast shadows, and trying to emulate, you know, what the lighting does in, you know, interiors, exteriors, and, you know, just trying to create a reality, something that is three-dimensional, something that has a tangible quality where you can almost put your hand into it. As opposed to Miyazaki, who is traditionally 2D animation with painted backgrounds and painted characters, whether he's using cells and with painted cells or with just digital coloring apps. He is the traditional 2D animation approach. The characters, um I'm going to do the father here. There's a just a fun quality and a softness in his character design.

[00:12:28]And it permeates much of his production.

[00:12:32]I first fell in love with some of his style in watching Kiki's Delivery Service. And it's funny because he will put minimal texture in some areas and then really give you interesting textures where you don't expect it. Like in the creases of the clothing. He wants you to feel a certain softness. When he does a collar, it's got thickness to it. You know, it's not cut with a razor blade. It's it's like handmade wrinkles of the clothes, softness of the sleeve, where the belt fits at the waist. Everything has a thickness to it, a softness to it. Where the pants are gathered, rolled cuffs. Every once in a while Disney tries to put that kind of quality in some of their designs. I remember in Treasure Planet, there was a styling that was not exactly like Miyazaki's, but you wanted to feel the texture and the thickness of the garments, the leather, the belts, the buckles, and it had a substantial texture and thickness to all the garments and the apparel that was worn. The older character, the way she is designed, very sweet, eyes pinched closed, wears a little hood, raised cheeks, very slight little textured nose, textured eyebrows, slight wrinkles.

[00:13:52]Really interesting where he puts facial textures, and then great big beautiful cheeks with a big grin, wrinkles going into the the mouth, very sweet, soft character, non-threatening. There is a little neighbor character, and the thing with Totoro is that the the mother is um kind of convalescing in a hospital, so they move closer to be with her. This boy character, so I won't get in the face, but I thought I loved the attire he was wearing. Little athletic shirt, you can feel the wrinkles as it's pinched right at the belt. You can see the top of the pant or the shorts he's wearing that bulge way out, and skinny little legs that come out from underneath. Fun stuff, and typical Miyazaki design. Some things are just oversized. And you know what? As he grew up, when he was like 4 years old, he was noticing, you know, aspects of the or the consequences of the the closing of World War II. You know, so much of Japan was demolished in bombing raids, and it put a hardship on Japanese families who were growing up and trying to make their living and try to get by during that period. And so, you know, a pair of shorts would be worn for maybe 2 3 years until they're patched or ragged or whatever. And that's the feeling I get with this their attire. They had to make do with what they had. So, oversized shoes, oversized shorts, It adds a character to it that's really unique and and typically Miyazaki. With Miyazaki, it's soft appeal. With John Lasseter and his team at Pixar on Toy Story, it's dramatic appeal. So, one has a little more drama tied into the character design. Another one has a softness soft appeal tied into that. Miyazaki's animation was more minimal movement and trying to focus on the dynamics of lighting and color and maybe facial expressions. Where I think Pixar and Toy Story is more dynamic, a a broader movement, more dynamic. Each are good.

[00:16:01]Each are great and each are dictated by what the story is about. One being from a children's point of view and the other one being from a from the toys POV. All right, thanks for watching and I hope you were able to learn something new. If you enjoyed this video, give it a like and please consider subscribing to our channel.

[00:16:20]>> [music] >> Bye-bye.