Studio Ghibli releases 400 free-to-use images | Hacker News Reader

Studio Ghibli releases 400 free-to-use images

ghibli.jp

You can bulk download these with wget like so;

  wget http://www.ghibli.jp/gallery/{ged,chihiro,karigurashi,ponyo,kokurikozaka,marnie,kaguyahime,kazetachinu}{001..050}.jpg

However they're low quality 1080p jpegs, so you're better off splitting out the frames of a blu-ray rip of the movie using ffmpeg or something.

I did not know I could do {001...999} with wget! wow!

That's a shell feature, not wget's.

Really? I thought the shell could only expand globs if it matches files on the local file system?

Thoae aren't globs, if you put an asterisk there it would not work.

You're right regarding glob functionality, but the curly braces are a separate shell feature. The most useful idiom I use it for is renaming or copying, e.g.:

cp filename{,_backup}

The feature is called brace expansion:

https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Brace-Exp...

You may also be interested in yet another powerful feature that is parameter expansion:

https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Shell-Par...

Filename expansion (nitpick: often mistaken for globbing) is performed last:

https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Filename-...

> nitpick: often mistaken for globbing

What exactly would you call globbing if not the feature that is controlled using the nullglob, failglob, nocaseglob and dotglob options as well as the GLOBIGNORE variable.

Globbing has an ambivalent definition given that it’s mostly used for filename matches (especially given its origin as the glob command), but it’s really a specific form of pattern matching using wildcards such as * and ?, it need not apply only to filenames or paths on the filesystem: this matching is also used to match strings in case/in/esac constructs and test’s == !=

https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html#Condition...

I guess one could say globbing is applying this pattern matching to filter a list.

Curl has it built in:

    curl -O 'https://example.org/[2-4].jpg'

(quotes disable any kind of shell expansion)

You mean, you didn't know that wget can be given more than one URL argument it can fetch, and that Bash can generate arguments with interpolated numbers using {from...to}.

It isn't bound by command. You can use it everywhere!

Of course, this only works well with non-ancient bash, not the ancient version which ships with MacOS, which will do {1.999} but can't do the leading zeros (you can use printf '%.3d' as a separate step).

brew is your friend here, it has the latest version. Works well.

Afaik macos ships with zsh now, which supports that feature.

...Found the guy who crashed the site ;)

It's really the tragedy of the commons and why we can't have nice things. Ghibli went out of their way and gave something nice, only to have it immediately abused by gluttonous data horders.

Yeah, it's definetly the ~100 people using a shell script to download a couple of jpegs crashing the site. Not millions of regular people looking around.

Out of their way? Releasing a few pictures they already stored digitally hardly seems like a lot of effort.

This is a nice use case for IPFS.

People `ipfs pin` the images to satisfy their data lust, and instantly become part of the growing swarm of computers which are now serving the content to new visitors.

Or just put it on a tracker, like we've been doing for 20 years.

https://instant.io/#e371e76f57923f555c0585910420137cd615911a

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:e371e76f57923f555c0585910420137cd615911a

Thanks for sharing – 8 peers and downloaded in 30 seconds!

Or pin them on Skynet. Which is just a better implementation of IPFS.

Are there metrics that indicate this, or is it better in other ways also?

The big difference with Skynet is that you pay for professionals to pin the data on your behalf. It works better for unpopular files because you aren't relying on the uptime of people at home.

It also works better for popular files because the professionals generally have great bandwidth and good peering.

There are a bunch of other benefits as well, such as access to an api that allows skynet pages/apps to upload and download. For something like this you wouldn't use those endpoints but if you wanted to make say a decentralized blogger, you could use those endpoints to upload posts that users write.

> because you aren't relying on the uptime of people at home

IPFS doesn't automatically spread whatever you put into your client, so you should never rely on others to randomly host your content for you. In fact, if you start a default IPFS node, add your content then turn it off again, no one is gonna have the content you added.

Would have been interesting to hear a fair/impartial comparison between Skynet and IPFS but your misunderstanding of IPFS is now evident so maybe someone else can fill in the gaps?

https://siasky.net/JACbilLSW_T_yzeNlYlw_pIqh_hVEeEMvc9Vz_SBE...

This is a nice use case for a regular and boring CDN, caching images and making them available without crashing a web server is a solved problem.

You've described a solution that puts the cost/work on the provider. IPFS and BitTorrent shifts that to the consumers.

€50 per month for 50TB of traffic = 50 mio x 1MB file downloads. The costs are so low, that CDNs are practically free. Oh wait, CloudFlare IS free for such primitive use cases.

You ignored the costs of labor.

Not that it matters, my point stands. The cost exists and different solutions put it in different places.

Or the studio could have provided a single zip/tar for the data archivist. ; )

A torrent would be easiest on their servers.

You can add delays with -w 10 (10 seconds) or --random-wait says https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35771287/delays-between-...

--random-wait with the default tries (20) is working for me

Don't forget --timestamping in case the command fails and you want to try again, but only download files you don't already have.

Could you upload an archive for the others since the site went down? With the note about usage preferrably.

> However they're low quality 1080p jpegs

Good enough for me :) They look nice.

Thanks for the wget tip!

I know shell can expand, but this is my first time seeing somethings like this. I didn't know shell can do things like Cartesian product before.

That's a bashism, fwiw

This was in the BSD C Shell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_shell) way back in the early 1980s!

Dumb question but I'm getting 404 errors with the wget command (but the urls work fine in the browser). Any advice?

I got the same error on zsh, but not on bash

I was using fish, wasn't working there either. thanks :)

Check out https://letsenhance.io/ I've been using it for >year to get print quality images. Works great

To piggyback off this - As a graphic designer, I've tried basically all publicly available upscaling tools, and Gigapixel AI is by far the best one.

If anyone upscales this collection, can they send me a message (all modes of contact on https://maya.land/)? I'm happy to send you some $ to be able to download the higher res copies; seems like a waste to do it twice.

I've given this a shot using Pixelmator (https://www.pixelmator.com/blog/2019/12/17/all-about-the-new...)

Expect an email with the upscaled images sent via WeTransfer.

Thanks!! Appreciate it. :) Let me know if you've got a ko-fi or whatnot?

> low quality 1080p jpegs

imagemagick reports their quality as 75, based on a few I picked at random:

  identify -format '%Q' marnie007.jpg
  75

--- which is not terrible but not great either. The thumbnails are PNG. It's too bad they didn't use that for the full-size ones.

good enough as photo reference!

Download them over WebTorrent directly in your browser:

https://instant.io/#e371e76f57923f555c0585910420137cd615911a

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:e371e76f57923f555c0585910420137cd615911a

once downloaded to the browser is there an easy to dump the images to disk?

Without addons, I suppose "Save Page" is your only option. Or tediously save each image manually.

In firefox the "Save Page" doesn't save the downloaded images. I'll have to investigate the addon options..

So far on Firefox neither "Down them all!" nor "Download All Images" recognized the torrented images.

bulk image downloader has worked really well for me in the past

Print to PDF and convert to web page? I’d be interested to know if the JPGs move through that one untouched.

Look for the "Download all files as zip" link.

Thank you! I had missed that.

Wow thanks that's impossible to see. It just blended in with the file list and I completely missed it.

Cheers, this is such a neat website.

no source on this, but the story I heard is that Japan recently passed a law which makes sharing screenshots to be equatable to piracy. This prompts Studio Ghibli to publicly release many screenshots under a "do whatever you want" license so people can continue discussing the films.

edit: possibly related: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/11/27/national/japan-...

Wouldn't it be up to the studio to initiate such lawsuits anyway?

This was/is exactly another shitstorm in Japan years ago (I didn't remember if it made into copyright law already or not) as part of the effort for joining TPP:

".. to allow for the prosecution of copyright infringement without the need for a formal complaint from the original creator or rightsholder". [1]

[1] https://www.icmp-ciem.org/news/japan-government-tackle-copyr...

Japanese Wikipedia article has more info: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E3%81%AE%E8... )

My information may be slightly outdated since I don't live there anymore, but when I did the research before moving to Japan a few years back I found that Japan had recently passed some of the strictest digital piracy laws in the world but had never actually prosecuted anyone for it.

Not so -- Japan has criminal penalties for piracy and has arrested numerous people for it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharing_in_Japan

Oddly, Wikipedia is less clear on if anybody has been convicted, but being arrested is already sufficiently career-destroying (weeks in jail for interrogation etc).

Anecdotally, I have a friend who's coworker was arrested all of the sudden one day, allegedly for using streaming services. Like you said, I'm not sure about the outcome of such arrests, whether result in convictions or not, but I also get the general impression that repercussions are severe regardless.

The public messaging also seems to be more serious than what I typically see in the US. For example, I feel like anti-piracy announcements play more consistently in Japanese movie theaters, and the ads specifically highlight fine amounts, maximum sentences, and ask viewers to report suspicious behavior of others (all delivered with cute mascots). In comparison, I don't notice anti-piracy campaigns that much in U.S. theaters these days, and the ones I remember seemed to reinforce the message that piracy is a crime more generally rather than focusing on specifics of potential punishments, e.g. "You wouldn't steal a car" ads.

ISPs also have a reputation of being very cooperative with Japanese authorities, and since violations are serious criminal offenses, I get the feeling from friends that they consider it is a very serious risk. This is from my quite limited experience though, so I would be very curious to see stats on arrests, convictions, and sentencing. The wiki page you linked is definitely missing a lot of information.

I live in Japan and I never heard who arrested by just only watching (not uploading) streaming services. Could you expand?

(IANAL) In Japan, Streaming(watching) paid content is explicitly specified as legal meanwhile downloading is illegal. (Technically not different but this is law).

Yes public messaging on theater/TV is really annoying.

> ISPs also have a reputation of being very cooperative with Japanese authorities

I don't know. They mush provide personal info for IP address if they orderd from police with writ, but I don't know other case to coop to arresting (like censoring).

AFAIK, currently no one is arrested by just downloading a content (even illegal), but who use P2P that also uploading is arrested well.

P2P (with uploading) and streaming is very different things.

Recently one of the biggest and most popular sites you could watch anime on (Kissanime) shut down, apparently because of changes in said law and requests from copyright owners.

You may also be interested in the background images Studio Ghibli released for use as virtual backgrounds in online meetings: http://www.ghibli.jp/info/013251/

is there a way to bulk download these?

They all have individual names so wget won’t work, but you can use a browser-based mass-downloader of images linked from a page.

As someone who has watched and enjoyed some of the films from Studio Ghibli, but fails to appreciate the reason for releasing these images, can someone explain what this is all about?

Japan has a very limited fair use law (see also Article 30[1]) to the point that a single frame capture from an anime is considered gray area unless it was used as a reference (引用) with a proper copyright attribution in the format of "(c) <Year> <Author>" usually obtained by visiting that work's home page^1. Though there's no clear line what is counted as a reference.

I think this is just Ghibli open up the possibility of using these images in those gray area (e.g. posting these shots on social media, referencing from a blog, etc.)

[1]: https://www.cric.or.jp/english/clj/cl2.html

Would it be legal/illegal to vectorize these images and print T-shirts and sell? Not that I'm going to do it, I like my bathtub too much to do silkscreen stuff at home but curious about the legalese.

IANAL, some will say it is OK under the private use cause in Article 30 as long as you print it yourself, but some will say it's not since you're wearing it in public thus it no longer become private use. I'm not aware if the private use cause in situation like this ever been tested on court. Ghibli saying "within common sense" doesn't help clear this case either.

Appears briefly discussed in their magazine article but I don’t have access to full quotes, gist of it is trying to protect rights could accelerate obsolescence contrary to intent:

https://twitter.com/ockeysan/status/1307119386235461637

https://twitter.com/nmisaki/status/1306950045091139585

https://twitter.com/doridori/status/1307554413406384129

Can somebody say/translate what kind of license is that? Can i use them commercialy? Like for example when demoing a product? Can they be remixed/edited?

The signed note from Miyazaki says "Please use these freely, within the bounds of common sense"

> Can i use them commercialy? Like for example when demoing a product? Can they be remixed/edited?

Probably not

I wish there was a bit more details about that one.

I am not into legalese but Studio Ghibli is a Japanese company. What is "common sense" for the Japanese may not be common sense in the west.

For example, there is a thriving amateur "doujinshi" community that commonly take copyrighted characters without authorization and make porn manga out of it. There are usually sold at conventions like Comiket and can be found second hand in many of these big stores that all over Akihabara.

But at the same time, they take intellectual property very seriously. There is not much piracy there, or it is well hidden. Counterfeit products are rare too.

And Japan in general is well known to be a country with many unwritten rules. And foreigners are often considered differently too.

Clearly a different culture, and clarifying what "common sense" means could be useful.

>For example, there is a thriving amateur "doujinshi" community that commonly take copyrighted characters without authorization and make porn manga out of it. There are usually sold at conventions like Comiket and can be found second hand in many of these big stores that all over Akihabara.

It should be kept in mind that doujinshi usually make a loss. It's a hobby and not a business. (Also doujinshi isn't just porn)

> Also doujinshi isn't just porn

It's called Hentai, and it's art

Not really my cup of tea but the craftsmanship is surprisingly impressive from what I've stumbled into in the depths of various forums

No, it's the remark that fanfics aren't inherently about sex scenes.

Doujinshi is a hobby, but that doesn't make it legal, and some companies will go after hobbyists. I may be wrong but I don't expect Disney to allow porn of their characters being sold on the open market.

And BTW, while most doujinshi circles are running at a loss. Second hand shops are for-profit businesses, so there is definitely a commercial element.

As for doujinshi and porn. Last time I went to Comiket, which was quite a while ago, I'd say it was 50/50. And when I say "porn" what I mean is that it contains explicit drawings. Doujinshi is uncommon in the way that there is porn inside but it is not always the main point. In fact many mainstream anime originate from 18+ doujin visual novels with the porn stripped off. Type-moon is particularly well known for that.

The way doujinshi community works is it’s a viral media and talent pool for publishers, and social welfare for manga artists for those make profits.

Disney probably don’t need hand drawn manga artists at this moment, and whether a company do want that pool or how they expect to monetize IP changes corporate stances towards/against doujin.

What is "common sense" for the Japanese may not be common sense in the west.

Understatement of the year :)

If it says "use these freely" then I think that displaying them when demoing a product is well within the bounds of reasonable use.

It's not signed by Miyazaki but Suzuki Toshio / すずきとしお (written in hiragana in the note), the producer of many Ghibli films.

Also, the phrase "within the bounds of common sense / 常識の範囲" makes me suspicious. Does that phrase have any legal significance?

They're still under copyright to Studio Ghibli. It probably means "Please don't do anything with them which would force us to take notice and go after you with our lawyers."

Did anybody manage to mirror these before the site went down?

Site did not go down.

Took ~6 refreshes before I got it to load, but then all the images loaded instantly, so there's certainly some poor server somewhere struggling quite a bit.

In some cases, wouldn't it make sense to submit this URL for example behind a transparent cdn - if there are any sensible such services remaining.

There are some movies I've never seen. Now that Ghibli can be found in streaming, which movies are in "you can't miss" category?

I personally like Castle in the Sky the best, not because it has the best animation (it doesn't), but because it was the first Ghibli movie I saw. It captured my imagination in the same way Chrono Trigger did. Plus Mark Hamill does his trademark over-the-top villain which is always fun.

Fun fact - Level-5 appears to have casually plagiarized this movie in their game "Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy". I mean, check out the evidence in this blog article:

https://thewolfthatfellforlittlered.tumblr.com/post/93741989...

If you like castle in the sky and live in or visit Seattle, then you may want to check out https://castleintheskyrobot.tumblr.com/post/183937582881/spr... which a friend of mine made and has in his front yard.

People make offerings

That's pretty awesome! I'll have to check that out on my next walk.

BTW, 5 blocks due east of there (by street numbering), I ran across a house decorated with a Totoro theme -- a bus stop sign by the driveway labelled for the Cat Bus, soot sprites on the garage door, small Totoros looking out the window, etc.

My wife and I have been going through the films from the beginning. We're only up to '95 and they've all been great so far.

I think that (in the US at least) Isao Takahata's works are underappreciated. I only knew him for Grave of the Fireflies (which is the best movie that I will never watch again). For example, Pom Poko is a wonderfully bizarre film that I'd suggest anyone watch.

It's utterly bizarre to consider that Ghibli premiered Grave of the Fireflies and My Neighbor Totoro in theaters as a back-to-back double feature. Talk about thematic whiplash...

Oddly, I could see that maybe working if Totoro goes second: "The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet."

I'm sure you could get a dozen answers, or look up any of the many many articles on that topic, so I'll instead recommend that anyone who's a fan of Ghibli should read the manga for Nausicaa and Valley of the Wind. It's written and illustrated by Miyazaki, and both more complete than the film version (which heavily truncated the story) and more beautiful--in fact it's one of the most visually stunning manga I've ever read. Find it in print, not digital, as I don't think reading it on a screen does the illustrations justice.

I can second the manga version of Nausicaa being superior to the film, the film is a convoluted mess compared to the manga.

The film is mostly remarkable because it was presented at European festivals, effectively showcasing Ghibli to Western audiences for the first time - to raving reviews - and featuring an environmental message that was very strong for the times. Animation quality is spectacular, as you would expect from Ghibli, but indeed the story can be hard to follow, particularly on the early dubious subs.

Princess Mononoke is still in my top 5 movies of all time, and has been for many years.

Without spoiling too much, the basic premise is that a young man is cursed while defending his village from a demon, and must make a journey to understand his curse (and hopefully cure it) before it kills him. On his journey he ends up being forced to try and mediate a war between the ancient gods of the forest (representing nature) and a nearby town with an iron forge that wants to raze the forest to use the ore in the soil below (representing civilization and industry).

Despite being very environmentally themed, it's not hamfisted at all. Several of the characters on both sides (the humans and the forest gods) are very complex and multifaceted in their motivations.

Also the soundtrack is one of the most beautiful to ever accompany a film.

I must agree. Princess Mononoke is the the best I watched till now.

Honestly, if you liked any of them, it's probably worth your time to watch all of them, starting from the ones you've never heard of (which might be most likely to disappear from streaming services first). You might not like them all, but it can be hard to tell which ones won't suit your taste in advance. Each person seems to appreciate something different in them, or find them meaningful in a different way.

Watch them all, there is something to appreciate in all of them. I would just put a trigger warning before Grave of the Fireflies, one of the saddest movies ever; everything else is pretty cool. The only one I’d pass on is The Cat Returns, but some people love it...

Generally speaking, Isao Takahata’s movies are more experimental and unique; his very last work, Kaguya-hime Monogatari, is incredibly beautiful but the animation is completely different from the “traditional” Ghibli style.

pom poko porco rosso

Does anyone think it might be a problem if I implement a lorem image based on these images? I mean, could I have license issues due to that?

I'm always shocked by how creative the Japanese illustrators are. It's mind blowing

Could you share some examples that would be mind blowing?

I'm not well versed in Japanese animation, and I'd like to understand what the "next level talent" aspects are.

For me, watching "Spirited Away"[1] was my mind blowing introduction to beautiful Japanese animation and Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli in particular.

As a child I used to watch a lot of the Japanese Robot related animations. A precursor to Transformers I guess. I also remember 'Kimba, the White Lion' which later got reincarnated as Disney's Lion King. But nothing held a candle to the beautiful animation of Spirited Away.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245429/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

I’m watching Spirited Away now. Impressive.

Visually at least, I think Akira is one of the most visually impressive animated films ever, especially for something made in the 80's when quality standards were much lower

There is a scene half way through "The Tale of the Princess Kaguya" that blew my mind. A little context is necessary though.

Like many Ghibli women, the princess was free spirited. However, she let herself be reformed into a bland and meek woman. She did this only to please her well-meaning but dim father.

Eventually her mind breaks and she runs away. Her expensive clothes fly out from behind her. The formerly restrained artwork becomes wild, thick charcoal lines that jump around. Even the normally static moon shakes in the sky. It was beautiful, and I loved how the style changed to match the princess' emotions.

>https://www.google.com/search?q=kazuo+oga&safe=off&sxsrf=ALe...

>https://www.sakugabooru.com/post?tags=hiroyuki_okiura >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMwNilk-YyE

also very worth watching is yasuo otsuka's joy in motion, his story in of itself is pretty inspiring but also offers a lot of insight into ghibli as well

Thanks for sharing this. I am a big fan of Hayao Miyazaki and Pete Docter.

Love Ghibli's art style so much. It's timeless;

Got some nice wallpapers here. Thanks Ghibli!

So how this is HN material?

Anime fandom has had a significant overlap with computer nerds and hackers probably for longer than the majority of people reading this post have been alive.

Anyway, as the guidelines point out "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it."

The reuse terms of these images are pretty curious, "within the bounds of common sense".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com