Michiyo Yasuda

Ghibli's colour designer from Castle in the Sky to The Wind Rises, who treated colour as storytelling.

Michiyo Yasuda was a Japanese animator and colour designer who worked for Toei Animation, A Production, Nippon Animation, Topcraft and Studio Ghibli over a career spanning five decades. She provided the colour designs for Spirited Away, officially retired after Ponyo in 2008, and returned for The Wind Rises in 2013.

Quick Facts

Born: 28 April 1939
Birthplace: Nakano, Tokyo, Japan
Died: 5 October 2016
Occupation: Animator; Colour designer

Facts from the source article.

Background

Born in Tokyo's Nakano ward, Yasuda joined Toei Doga in April 1958 straight from high school, starting as a tracer in the ink and paint section, where through her work and union activities she met Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki. She traced on Takahata's Hols: Prince of the Sun, with Yasuo Ōtsuka as animation director, beginning working relationships that lasted over 40 years, and on Future Boy Conan in 1978 she was in charge of colour selection for an entire project for the first time. In 1983 she handled colour design at Top Craft for the film of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and the collaborations culminated in the creation of Studio Ghibli in June 1985.

She took charge of Ghibli's colour department from its inception with Castle in the Sky and worked on nearly every Ghibli film until her retirement, deciding colours in consultation with Miyazaki and letting the depicted objects, the period's materials and dyes, the mood of each scene and each character's personality guide her choices. She told the Los Angeles Times that "Color has a meaning, and it makes the film more easily understood." Brian Camp and Julie Davis called her a "mainstay of Studio Ghibli's extraordinary design and production team". She received an Animation Lifetime Achievement Award from the Japanese Movie Critics Awards in 2011 and died on October 5, 2016, aged 77.