Editing My Neighbor Totoro (section)

=== Development ===
After working on ''3000 Miles in Search of a Mother'', [[Hayao Miyazaki|Miyazaki]] wanted to make a "delightful, wonderful film" that would be set in Japan with the idea to "entertain and touch its viewers, but stay with them long after they have left the theaters".<ref name="art" /> Initially, Miyazaki had the main characters Totoro, Mei, Tatsuo, and Kanta.<ref name="art" />{{rp|8}} The director based Mei on his niece,<ref name="Niece">{{cite news |date=October 18, 2011 |title=Toy Story 3 Art Director Married to Hayao Miyazaki's Niece – Interest |work=Anime News Network |url=https://animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2011-10-18/toy-story-3-art-director-married-to-hayao-miyazaki-niece |url-status=live |access-date=August 13, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120122083202/http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2011-10-18/toy-story-3-art-director-married-to-hayao-miyazaki-niece |archive-date=January 22, 2012}}</ref> and Totoros as "serene, carefree creatures" that were "supposedly the forest keeper, but that's only a half-baked idea, a rough approximation".<ref name="art" />{{rp|5, 103}}

Art director [[Kazuo Oga]] was drawn to the film when Hayao Miyazaki showed him an original image of Totoro standing in a ''[[satoyama]]''. Miyazaki challenged Oga to raise his standards, and Oga's experience with ''My Neighbor Totoro'' began Oga's career. Oga and Miyazaki debated the film's color palette; Oga wanted to paint black soil from [[Akita Prefecture]] and Miyazaki preferred the color of red soil from [[Kantō region]].<ref name="art" />{{rp|82}} The finished film was described by [[Studio Ghibli]] producer Toshio Suzuki; "It was nature painted with translucent colors".<ref>{{cite news | first=Yoshiaki | last=Kikuchi | title=Totoro's set decorator | work=Daily Yomiuri | date=August 4, 2007 }}</ref>

Oga's conscientious approach to ''My Neighbor Totoro'' was a style the ''[[International Herald Tribune]]'' recognized as "[updating] the traditional Japanese animist sense of a natural world that is fully, spiritually alive". The newspaper said of the film:
{{blockquote|Set in a period that is both modern and nostalgic, the film creates a fantastic, yet strangely believable universe of supernatural creatures coexisting with modernity. A great part of this sense comes from Oga's evocative backgrounds, which give each tree, hedge and twist in the road an indefinable feeling of warmth that seems ready to spring into sentient life.<ref name=paper />}}

Oga's work on ''My Neighbor Totoro'' led to his continued involvement with Studio Ghibli, which assigned him jobs that would play to his strengths, and Oga's style became a trademark style of Studio Ghibli.<ref name=paper>{{cite news | title=When Studio Ghibli is mentioned, usually the name of its co-founder and chief director Hayao Miyazaki springs to mind. But anyone with an awareness of the labor-intensive animation process knows that such masterpieces as ''Tonari no Totoro''... | work=International Herald Tribune-Asahi Shimbun | date=August 24, 2007 }}</ref>

Only one young girl, rather than two sisters, is depicted in several of Miyazaki's initial conceptual watercolor paintings, as well as on the theatrical release poster and on later home-video releases. According to Miyazaki; "If she was a little girl who plays around in the yard, she wouldn't be meeting her father at a bus stop, so we had to come up with two girls instead. And that was difficult."<ref name="art" />{{rp|11}} Miyazaki said the film's opening sequence was not storyboarded; "The sequence was determined through permutations and combinations determined by the [[Exposure sheet|time sheets]]. Each element was made individually and combined in the time sheets&nbsp;..."<ref name="art">{{cite book |last=Watsuki |first=Nobuhiro |title=The Art of My Neighbor Totoro: A Film by Hayao Miyazaki |publisher=VIZ Media LLC |year=2005 |isbn=978-1-59116-698-6 }}</ref>{{rp|27}} The ending sequence depicts the mother's return home and the signs of her return to good health by playing with Satsuki and Mei outside.<ref name=art />{{rp|149}}

Miyazaki stated that the story was initially intended to be set in 1955, however, the team was not thorough in the research and instead worked on a setting "in the recent past".<ref name=art />{{rp|33}} The film was originally set to be an hour long but during production it grew to respond to the social context, including the reason for the move and the father's occupation.<ref name="art" />{{rp|54}} Eight animators worked on the film, which was completed in eight months.<ref>{{cite magazine|title=Studio Ghibli co-founder teases Hayao Miyazaki's next 'big, fantastical' film|url=https://ew.com/movies/studio-ghibli-hayao-miyazaki-how-do-you-live|access-date=May 13, 2020|magazine=[[Entertainment Weekly]]|date=May 15, 2020|archive-date=May 15, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200515021325/https://ew.com/movies/studio-ghibli-hayao-miyazaki-how-do-you-live/|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Tetsuya Endo (director)|Tetsuya Endo]] noted numerous animation techniques were used in the film. For example, ripples were designed with "two colors of high-lighting and shading" and the rain for ''My Neighbor Totoro'' was "scratched in the cels" and superimposed for it to convey a soft feel.<ref name="art" />{{rp|156}} The animators stated one month was taken to create the tadpoles, which included four colors; the water for it was also blurred.<ref name="art" />{{rp|154}}