Studio Ghibli – the world renowned anime studio which brought us the classics like My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and more – recently shared early images from its upcoming project, Aya and The Witch; its first foray into computer graphic imagery (CGI) animation. 

Directed by Goro Miyazaki, son of Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, the project adapts Earwig and the Witch, a children’s book by British author Diana Wynne Jones (who also wrote Howl’s Moving Castle, which was a Studio Ghibli production released in 2004). It tells the story of Aya, “a young girl who has grown up an orphan, unaware that she’s the daughter of a witch — and ends up being adopted by a witch, no less.”

For us, it’s certainly a departure from the iconic hand-drawn animation style that we’re used to seeing from Studio Ghibli. We can see traces of how the studio typically draws its characters, but we think the CGI rendering makes everything look quite… typical of most CGI-rendered animation films.

We’ll just have to wait and see how the film fares once it is release.

What do you think of the these first looks?