Studio Ghibli Color Designer Michiyo Yasuda, has passed away. :’(
Michiyo Yasuda, long time animator & color designer of Studio Ghibli passed away
Japan’s Mainichi has reported on the death of long time color designer and the chief of the ink and paint division of Studio Ghibli Michiyo Yasuda, who passed away of an undisclosed illness on October 5 at the age of 77. Yasuda started working at Toei Dogo before she was 20 and joined Studio Ghibli co-founders Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki on the 1968 anime feature Horus, Prince of the Sun aka the Little Norse Prince.
Yasuda later worked on Miyazaki’s ‘78 TV anime Future Boy Conan, pre-Ghibli feature Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and Studio Ghibli’s features such as Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and Ponyo, as well as Isao Takahata works like Grave of the Fireflies.
While Yasuda officially retried after Studio Ghibli released Ponyo in 2008, she came back in 2013 for Miyazaki's “final feature” The Wind Rises. Yasuda won an Animation Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 from the Japan Movie Critics Awards.
Her career spanned over five decades, beginning as a tracer for animation before shifting into color work. She was present at the inception of Studio Ghibli, and continued to run the Color Department until her retirement following PONYO in 2008. Then returned to work for The Wind Rises.
We are forever grateful for your incredible, filled with out of this world beauty artistry. RIP Michiyo Yasuda.
Thank you for making this post, I’m glad to see this sad news getting attention. I had drafted a profile post on Yasuda a few months ago and never got around to finishing it and now its so sad that its taken her death for many people to discover one of the geniuses of Studio Ghibli who decided the colours for practically everything you see in every Ghibli film ever made.
