Nausicaä and the Valley of the Wind ~ August's Riso subscription print!

Hello! August's Riso print is officially done and ready to ship. I LOVED making this Nausicaa print and soooo happy to add it to the Ghibli collection. It's the most vibrant of the bunch so far and I am in love with those vivid pinks, the purple gradient on the Ohmu and the highlights using the brightness of the paper on the Ohmu's eyes. I'm super excited to have this print and a few other new prints at SPX this weekend!! If you missed this print it'll be available for sale here! Don't forget your Patreon discount code! use ILOVEBUGS at checkout for 20% off.

Riso Breakdown for Nausicaa

My desk usually looks like this while figuring out what values I want to change. I set the edit up next to the others and write a little to do list of what needs edits where directly on the print.

It's always chaos in the studio as I'm figuring out the values and switching drums out constantly. The top of the Riso is a horrible pile of bad prints, test paper and good paper ready to go into the machine.

I originally made Nausicaa much darker so she would stand out from the Ohmu better, but then I realized I wanted her to blend in, becoming part of the Ohmu & toxic jungle herself.

I couldn't resist adding a God Warrior skull, even though the scale is super off. Adding just one eye didn't do it justice and I didn't want it to compete too strongly with the Ohmu, especially because they're similar shapes. The repetition in the Ohmu, her cap, and the God Warrior skull is repetition enough.

This print is actually using repetition as a major design element, more than I try to usually. The repeating shapes that get bigger and more unwieldy make the jungle and Ohmu feel especially wild and gargantuan, even though Nausicaa's scale is pretty large comparatively.

The curly toxic jungle arms were originally a solid pink, but they felt too heavy up top so I added the gradient instead and instantly fell in love.

I had to add some of the funky bugs!!! This one was one of my favorites in the Toxic Jungle.

I started to draw a hole in the ohmu where Nausicaa takes the eye...but then the Ohmu just didn't feel right...so I just decided it wouldn't make sense and only look cool :)

Here are all the Ghibli prints all together!

and all the steps I took to get this print right! 5 edits in all.

Here's a refresher of the digital layer order! I'm using one group for each color, with a bunch of layers set to multiply inside of them set to specific opacities. I build up my file as if they were a bunch of transparencies on a lightbox! This is the easiest way I've found to make complicated Riso prints, and the best way to edit after printing as well. I hope it helps you print as well!

When I first started this print I was really worried about doing a very blue and green color palette that matches the movie. I'm always weighing whether I should make the colors true to their source material (especially for fan art like this) or if I should make it fresh and really show off the Riso colors by changing the palette.

After coming off Spirited Away and battling whether the cloud should be blue or white or pink, I decided to just jump into the pink right away and play off the dark tones of the blue Ohmu with the playful vibrant pinks of the toxic jungle. It feels way toxic too, right?

The blue of the Riso ink will never match the color of Nausicaa's clothing, so playing with the values is the best I can do to make her feel as vibrant as possible.

This is what the digital file ended up looking like after edits - compared to the final riso print!

Here's the final breakdown- here and attached!

Thanks for reading!
xx nat