Spirited Away

For this commission, I was asked to create an illustrative poster featuring Haku from Spirited Away, specifically his dragon form. Haku’s character is known for his fluid and ever-moving body as a dragon, and I wanted to capture this essence in the poster. I chose to fill each corner of the layout with Haku’s features, emphasising his dynamic presence.

I selected pink as the background colour, as it represents the uniform worn by the main protagonist, Chihiro, whom Haku vows to protect throughout the story. Since Haku is revealed to be a river spirit, I incorporated a river of water emanating from his mouth instead of the typical fire or smoke often depicted in dragon drawings. Scattered throughout the background are also paper people, which are torn and broken. These paper beings are seen chasing Haku in a scene of the film, attempting to harm him. In reality, they are controlled by the entity Yubaba, and symbolise how Haku himself is seen as a puppet to Yubaba by everyone except Chihiro.