And it’s only the second piece of artwork ever unveiled for How Do You Live?

In an honestly amazing display of security, Studio Ghibli has managed to make it all the way to the release date, today, for its newest movie How Do You Live? without a single screenshot or story detail being leaked. In today’s media landscape, that’d be an accomplishment for any production, and it’s all the more impressive when it’s the latest work from Hayao Miyazaki, the most respected director of animated films in the history of the medium.

The only visual preview we’ve had for How Do You Live? is a single poster (pictured below) showing what appears to be either a bird with eyes under its beak or someone wearing a bird costume.

It’s not much to go on, but it hasn’t stopped fan artists from taking their best (or weirdest) guesses at what’s going to happen in the movie, as shown by tweets like these.

https://twitter.com/hoxtsy/status/1679289128268238849

And now Ghibli, in yet another show of the studio’s artistic generosity, is helping fan the flames of How Do You Live? fan art by releasing only the second-ever-revealed piece of official art, for anyone to use as they like!

https://twitter.com/JP_GHIBLI/status/1679505979262619649

Okay, so that’s probably not how the bird-man/man-bird is going to look in the movie itself (though we can’t be sure, given its no-preview marketing strategy). It is adorable, though, and now I can’t help wondering if the extreme close-up of the official poster is hiding the fact that the character/creature’s body is a perfect roly-poly sphere. I also can’t help noticing some similarities between those chest markings and Totoro’s.

As it usually does when releasing art like this for public use, Ghibli asks that you “Use it within the bounds of common sense,” but with no other specific stipulations. And considering that How Do You Live? is taking the extreme stop of not selling movie programs at the theater, unlike just about every other anime movie, this super-deformed version of the bird might be the only glimpse we get of him outside the theater for a long while.

Source: Twitter/@JP_GHIBLI
Top image: Twitter/@JP_GHIBLI (edited by SoraNews24)
Insert images: Studio Ghibli, Twitter/@JP_GHIBLI (edited by SoraNews24)
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