Some were damaged and yellowed from second-hand cigarette smoke, others wrinkled and worn by storage in less-than-ideal conditions. Stefan Riekeles, the curator of the Anime Architecture exhibition, says many images were only saved because the artists had taken them home for safekeeping. “But in the most part, it’s not like that at all.” “ Ghibli were the big exception – they have everything, they preserve it, there are pieces of art that the artists themselves can’t get to look at anymore because they’ve packed it all away so beautifully,” says Ogura.

Japanese animation studios have historically tended not to consider the actual background images themselves as worthy of display or even of preservation, with boxes and boxes of original drawings and cels filling studio storerooms or occasionally discarded outright.

It all became digital, pretty much overnight.” “The greatest change was the arrival of digital,” says Ogura. The scene in which this piece was used is entirely wordless, the warm tones of the old town contrasting with the harsh blue tones of the new city above (main image). When he was introduced to Ghost in the Shell director Mamoru Oshii, he was surprised by how much the man simply wanted to explore ideas.Ī final background painting for Ghost in the Shell, cut 341, watercolour on paper. “Usually the projects that get brought to me are on the basis of stuff I’ve already done,” he says. Ogura already had a storied career before he came to Ghost in the Shell, having worked on classics like Ninja Scroll and Wings of Honnêamise. They basically said, look: what we do are the backgrounds.

“One day I saw an ad where they were hoping to get people to do drawing, and I saw ‘anime’, so I gave them a call. “When I was young, it wasn’t like there were a lot of art careers to be had. “It’s more like I was looking for any work at all, and the work that I got was to do with backgrounds,” he says, smiling. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian.ĭrawn to artistic endeavours from a young age, Ogura didn’t initially intend to go into working in landscapes. Hiromasa Ogura, art director and background artist.

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