Nizo Yamamoto, art director of many of Studio Ghibli’s films and more recently Weathering With You, passed away on August 19 at 70 years old. The cause of death was attributed to stomach cancer.
Yamamoto’s last days were apparently spent working on an animation based on his hometown of Goto, and he had drawn about 120 pages with one page left incomplete. His immediate family will be holding a funeral service on August 27 at the Hanno Funeral Hall in the Saitama Prefecture.
▍About Nizo Yamamoto
An anime art director was born in Goto City in the Nagasaki Prefecture on June 27, 1953. Nizo Yamamoto studied architecture at an art school, and later became the art director for the Future Boy Conan anime series alongside Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, the pair later becoming the founders of Studio Ghibli.
Nizo was responsible for working on other incredibly famous films such as Grave of Fireflies, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, and Princess Mononoke, and his work on the film Weathering with You was notable for the clouds that were drawn in the film, earning them the nickname of Nizo Clouds for its realism and attention to detail.
