Rebuilding the Moving Castle

From Book to Screen to Book Again:  A project to create illustrations to go along with the beloved novel "Howl's Moving Castle" by Diana Wynne Jones by editing images from the breathtakingly beautiful but not very accurate film adaptation by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, supplementing the films images with other Studio Ghibli imagery when necessary to create a more accurate to the book final illustration. A relocation and continuation of a project first started on the blog gooseweasel.tumblr.com

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A bunch of the links in your /alledits page are duplicate, thought you should know bc it confused me a bunch until I realized that the tumblr edit page probably did the same to you as it does to me sometimes and continue hyperlinks when you keep typing.

i’ll see what i can do

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Howl’s Moving Castle concept art

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THIS! IS! AMAZING!

If I was still able to draw the way I wanted to, this is almost exactly what I would do for the characters. 

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I recently just started reading the novel for howl's moving castle and when I read how Sophie described Micheal I was shook and happy. So then I checked w the movie and was like Miyazaki why couldn't you do it right? So thank you for creating this blog :)

Miyazaki has his own vision for things. It’s very rare for him to do “faithful” adaptation of anything, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing overall, it is a bit of a bummer as a fan of the book. 

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The scarecrow retreated a little, hopping slowly and warily backward. When Howl stopped, the scarecrow stopped too, with its one leg planted in the heather and its ragged arms tilting this way and that like a person sparring for an opening. The rags fluttering on its arms seemed a mad imitation of Howl’s sleeves.

“So you won’t go?” Howl said. And the turnip head slowly moved from side to side. No. “I’m afraid you’ll have to,” Howl said. “You scare Sophie, and there’s no knowing what she’ll do when she’s scared. Come to think of it, you scare me too.”

Chapter 8: In Which Sophie Leaves the Castle in Several Directions at Once

Part One of ?

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When an adaptation leaves out a lot of the best parts of the book, changes some plot points and themes, and alters the characters’ looks and personalities enough that it only really shares the most basic similarities with the book but STILL manages to be a beautiful movie anyway with its own important message so you can’t really complain even if you kind of want to:

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Just saying Howl’s hair is curly in the book

Howl’s hair is also “elaborate” in the book and I’m gonna be honest I simply do not have time for that, especially since I’ve said from the beginning this was about bringing the two stories closer together, not making a perfectly accurate book representation. 

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Then, all at once, she discovered the real drawback to being an old woman. Her heart gave a leap and a little stutter, and then seemed to be trying to bang its way out of her chest. It hurt. She shook all over and her knees trembled. She rather thought she might be dying.

3/3 of Chapter Seven

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I'd like to read your work, but on mobile it's all under the cut and there's no 'continue reading' option. Do you have any advice?

I uh... have no idea? I don’t use mobile at all, and I’ve never had anyone else come to me with this issue, so I don’t really know what to to tell you. If anyone else sees this and has advice, feel free to chime it. 

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“No, it’s the castle door,” Calcifer said. “But I’m not sure—”

Then it was Michael back for some reason. Sophie thought as she opened the door.

A turnip face leered at her. She smelled mildew. Against the wide blue sky, a ragged arm ending in the stump of a stick wheeled round and tried to paw at her. It was a scarecrow. It was only made of sticks and rags, but it was alive, and it was trying to come in.

2/3 of Chapter Seven

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wow howl's pink hair looks so good! you really did a fantastic job editing it ☺ thanks for sharing this project with us!

Thank you for your kind words! I’m glad you’re enjoying it :)

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Sophie looked at him sourly. He was all spruce and dashing, scented gently with apple blossom. The sunlight from the window dazzled off his gray-and-scarlet suit and made a faintly pink halo of his hair.

“I think my hair looks rather good this color,” he said.

“Do you indeed?” grumped Sophie.

“It goes with this suit,” said Howl. “You have quite a touch with your needle, don’t you? You’ve given the suit more style somehow.”

Chapter Seven - In Which A Scarecrow Prevents Sophie From Leaving the Castle

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“That was plain stupid!” Calcifer sputtered. “Were you trying to get rid of the best part of your magic, or something?”

Howl took no notice. He just sat, looking tragic and shivering.

“I can’t get him to speak!” Michael whispered miserably.

“It’s just a tantrum,” Sophie said. Martha and Lettie were good at having tantrums too. She knew how to deal with those. On the other hand, it is quite a risk to spank a wizard for getting hysterical about his hair. Anyway, Sophie’s experience told her that tantrums are seldom about the thing they appear to be about. She made Calcifer move over so that she could balance a pan of milk on the logs. When it was warm, she thrust a mugful into Howl’s hands. “Drink it,” she said. “Now, what was all this fuss about? Is it this young lady you keep going to see?”

Howl sipped the milk dolefully. “Yes,” he said. “I left her alone to see if that would make her remember me fondly, and it hasn’t. She wasn’t sure, even when I last saw her. Now she tells me there’s another fellow.”

He sounded so miserable that Sophie felt quite sorry for him. Now his hair was dry, she noticed guiltily, it really was almost pink.

4/4 of Chapter Six

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are you looking forward to drawing the giant buttons?

Nope.

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if you want to be ENTIRELY accurate, howl's hair is only slightly red when his hair is wet. Just the roots. What a drama wizard.

True. But one of the challenges of working with an animation style like Studio Ghibli’s is that the characters are animated very simply, using cel shading, which doesn’t allow for subtle gradients that would make having just the roots show being red look good. I played around with it in Photoshop for a while, and decided that rather than trying to do that and having it look a mess, I would just have it a touch more red over all. Something that, to Sophie and Michael and the characters in universe is hardly noticeable, but to the audience is very clear. In animation, choices do have to be a bit bolder, so it is a bit more red than perhaps a direct interpretation of the book would have, but the fun of this project is finding and walking that narrow line between accuracy and what would actually work on film. 

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There were horrendous, dramatic, violent quantities of green slime—oodles of it. It covered Howl completely. It draped his head and shoulders in sticky dollops, heaping on his knees and hands, trickling in glops down his legs, and dripping off the stool in sticky strands. It was in oozing ponds and crawling pools over most of the floor. Long fingers of it had crept into the hearth. It smelled vile.

“Save me!” Calcifer cried in a hoarse whisper. He was down to two desperately flickering small flames. “This stuff is going to put me out!”

3 / 4 of Chapter Six

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What scene from the book do you want drawn the most?

Well, there isn’t one specific scene that I would say I want to draw ‘most’. The thing I want to do most isn’t really a scene- I really just want to capture the essence of how different different the characters are, especially Sophie. Sophie of the books is so different from Sophie of the movies, and the book character means a lot to me because, well... we’re very similar, and I relate to her and her struggles a lot, and she helps me find courage to get through my own problems. Movie Sophie is lovely and sweet, but she’s not the same, and her insecurities and flaws are very different from the character in the book, and that’s fine, but it doesn’t mean as much to me. 

Now, as far as scenes from the book that I’m most interested in doing... well, it’s less interested, and more nervous, but when I have to do stuff in Wales in Howl’s hometown, I’m really nervous about how the heck I’m going to do that.

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The howls began as moaning horror, and went up to despairing brays, and then up again to screams of pain and terror. Sophie pressed her hands to her ears, but the screams pressed through her hands, louder and louder still, more horrible every second. Calcifer shrank hurriedly down in the grate and flickered his way under his lowest log. Michael grabbed Sophie by her elbow and dragged her to the door. He spun the knob to blue-down, kicked the door open, and got them both out into the street in Porthaven as fast as he could.

The noise was almost as horrible out there. Doors were opening all down the road and people were running out with their hands over their ears.

“Ought we to leave him alone in that state?” Sophie quavered.

“Yes,” said Michael. “If he thinks it’s your fault, then definitely.”

2/4 of Chapter Six

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