After retiring from feature-length films and closing Studio Ghibli this past November, Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki is making a CG animated short film for the Ghibli Museum in Japan. According to the Anime News Network, his son, Goro Miyazaki, made the announcement at a talk show event in June. This will be the first time that Miyazaki will be venturing into CG animation after hand drawing all of his films. The story for the short film has yet to be revealed and while being 10 minutes long, the film has taken three years to make.
Most Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki fans are probably still upset that there are no more films coming from them, especially since they both created many masterpieces together such as Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, just to name a few. But this news just shows that there is still great work to come from Miyazaki. As he said in an interview he did with Variety in November when the news of his retirement surfaced, “I intend to work until the day I die. I retired from feature-length films but not from animation. Self-indulgent animation.” So thankfully, despite his feature-length film retirement, he’s still determined to keep busy. Along with this animated short, he’s working on a samurai manga, the Japanese cover for Robert Westall’s teenaged themed The Call and Other Stories, and other short films for the Ghibli Museum.