Spirited Away - July's Print - Shipping now! + Riso Breakdown (Patreon)

Hey everyone! I'm about to ship out all the Riso prints for July's prints/everyone who paid on July 1st. Make sure your address is updated in the app so these get to you as fast as possible! Stickers are on their way soon too, just waiting for the order to arrive! This month they're Spirited Away themed so I wanted to get the print right before I sent off the order. Thank you for your patience!

To be honest, I hadn't watched Spirited Away in a long, long time. This was an awesome opportunity to jump back into this film that I probably hadn't revisited since around the time it came out! Rewatching it made me realize how undeniably formative this movie was for me, especially when I saw it when I was like 12 or 13? 2003? I had avoided it for years after totally overdosing on it and seeing it oversaturated in media and marketing.

Coming back to it after so many years made it all the more sweet to settle into. I had intense nostalgic connections to certain scenes and I came back to the movie with a better appreciation for character design, animation, and modern filmmaking techniques. Miyazaki really made something special with this movie, and I'm so happy to finally pay my little tribute to it in the form of a Riso print <3

I'm going to compile a little list of all the things that blew me away rewatching Spirited Away after literally 20 years (woah). The MUSIC for one, is incredible, the moment where all the spirits come off the boat to the bathhouse gave me chills, just like it did the first time I saw it. That moment where she realizes she's no longer in the human world- the magic has just TOTALLY come to life- these are the moments I live for in fantasy!!

In those first scenes we get some of the best character desgin moments of the film and we're introduced to the kind of frog like-structure of all the humanoid characters that live and work in the bathhouse. I love it when Miyazaki chooses a theme for a warship, type of people, or city- he really makes sure all the elements feel connected and reuses shapes and styles to build the world into something that really feels real.

The thing that really brought me back to this movie is how Chihiro grows to trust herself and be true to her passions in a new environment. She knows she cares deeply for others but doesn't know how to show it and be helpful. She stays true to her purpose, and focuses on being a good and helpful soul, growing into a strong and confident character. Her moment of realization with Haku still makes me sob uncontrollably and so I wanted to show a moment with her and Haku first and foremost. When I first started sketching she was nose to nose with Haku, but I felt it was missing her independence and I wanted her to be in a more magical moment surrounded by her new friends.

I drew her slightly lifted, as if she was still coming down from flying with Haku. And to match that visceral moment I wanted there to be a lot of movement in this piece overall, so I used all the flying/moving elements like Haku's scales, the bubbles from the river, and the paper cut people to capture that.

I also wanted to include the bathhouse, since it's just so iconic, but I didn't want it to be the center of the piece, so I felt giving it a kind of dreamy-heavenly like space (while still being firmly rooted in industry/consumerism with the steam vent/smoke stack). I also wanted to add the seal and the curse that Chihiro squashed as a symbol of her love for her friends and both her and Haku breaking free from Yubaba and the bathhouse to become their full selves.

The color was very light originally, and I thought it was a good soft piece, but then when I printed it I REALLY hated it.

I built this piece by first having a flats layer that separated each shape from the next- this is what that looks like:

It doesn't have to look good/the colors are meant to be wild because the color shape is all that matters here. I'm trying to make sure my colors are clean so I can reference them over and over again for each color layer I print with. Here's a close up of what that looks like without the line art:

Then I make a template for my Riso colors- blue, yellow and pink- all group layers with 4 different opacities to start- 25%,50%, 75% and 100% opacity layers, named that and each set to multiply. I'm essentially creating 3 transparency layers and having them interact with each other as the Riso colors do when printed! Here's what one of my finals look like when I've added gradient layers, lower opacity layers like 10%, 15% and 45%, and random one off layers for specific elements that I just can;t get right.

I then go through and choose which shape (Haku's mane) get's what colors (a little blue and a little yellow to make that soft green). I'll fill yellow color into Haku's mane on the 25% yellow layer. Then I'll go to the blue group layer and fill blue into the 25% layer and see if that's dark enough or warm toned enough. If it's not then I'll adjust one or the other color until I get the color right!

I'm working in photoshop but you can do the same layering set up in procreate just the same way!

^^This is what my layers look like with the pink turned off. And now below with only blue!

and just for fun here's pink and blue

When I'm ready to print, I go through each layer and change it to black and white by going to hue/saturation and sliding lightness to -100 (negative 100) so I preserve the values I've just created. I do this to each layer! Riso only reads colors in black and white/positive and negative space so if I want the Riso colors to come out the same(ish) as my color mock up then each one has to have the correct/preserved values in black and white. basically, don't grayscale your image!!

Above is what just yellow looks like in black and white. I save each group/color layer as a jpeg and send them to the machine one at a time! I like to print yellow first becase the roller marks will pick up the least amount of ink this way.

Above is what the final blue looked like when I sent it to my Riso machine.

This print went through a whopping 6 different design edits- with a new layer for each color pass. Basically, that means I changed a significant part of the design each time I saw a new version come out of the machine, with three new color layers to change each time- pink, yellow and blue.

I usually hate doing this many passes, but this one needed to take a JOURNEY to get to a place I was happy with. Every pass above is in two photos!

This print had a lot of blues in the color mock up that I was happy with, but I always forget how much DARKER blues come out when printing with Riso. The combination of the paper and the ink just makes for a darker value- where I'm mocking up on backlit glass (computer), even though it's the matching color. It's pretty impossible to get it right!

I also realized I heavily under saturated this piece when I was mocking it up. In fact, after I finished the coloring I just doubled the entire color layer to see how a double saturated print would look and I ended up loving it...so I doubled all my yellows and pinks before printing but then actually lowered my blue group layer to 80% opacity (effecting all my blue layers) because I knew the blue would be HEAVY. I always double my line art though because I use a pencil brush that the Riso has a hard time reading since it's mostly grey when turned to black and white.

I started with a blue cloud...then HATED IT because the colors were just too similar and it didn't make for a fun print, even though I thought the blue cloud was beautiful in the mock up. So I went immediately to sunset pink, which looked too intense in the color mock up so I was nervous but GORGEOUS in the printed test...but not right yet...so I kept editing it. The yellow wasn't doing it for me, it wasn't sunset enough, and I already have the bathhouse in the clouds so I wanted it to kind of disappear into the clouds, or be part of them.

 I added the pink, but felt like it wasn't quite loud enough, doubled the pink layer, fixed Haku's chest because it's blending in too hard with the cloud and then finally made it to my final edition!!

Here's the final again for comparison--

This print is now available in my shop and will be available in large size/ 11x15" soon!! Probably next week!

Thank you so much for reading!!

<33 nat