Star Children

Star Children (星の子, Hoshi no Ko) are magical beings that appear in the film Howl's Moving Castle. They are shootings stars that could be summoned around Madame Suliman's magical circles and traps. They also appear before Howl in his youth. He manages to catch one of the fading star children, Calcifer, and makes a pact with it.

Appearance
Star children appear as translucent beings with a bright, star-like head. When summoned by Suliman, they appear to have small beady eyes. In his youth, Howl saw several star children outside his cottage, and managed to make a pact with one.

History
As Suliman strikes the ground with her staff, she casts a spell around Howl and Sophie revealing a strange land filled with shooting stars through the sunset sky. Star children appear and dart out, circling Howl and Sophie in the sky. Howl starts turning into a monster bird, but Sophie's voice brings him back. As Suliman throws her staff, he breaks through the green-house window and leaps outside.

Motif
According to French fansite Buta Connection, "throughout the film, Miyazaki also leaves a common thread: the star. It appears early on, when Sophie arrives in the castle. She gives Howl a small piece of paper which turns out to be a curse. We realize that it is a shooting star. Later, Suliman will attempt to trap Howl by casting a spell on him, which takes the form of a round of shooting stars encircling the wizard and Sophie. Then, our heroine will discover the key to this riddle: Calcifer was a demon in the form of a shooting star, with whom Howl will make a pact. This discovery will forever mark Sophie, whose hair will remain gray, like the color of the star, as if the discovery of the enigma were to mark her forever.

We understand then that the Witch of the Waste has always known Howl's curse too, hence her message and her interest in Calcifer. This symbolism of the star is one of the recurring themes of the story's universe: the three wise men and the polar star, the myth of Castor and Pollux turning into a star, The Little Prince. But in Howl's Moving Castle, Miyazaki once again reverses the symbolism. Where usually the star evoked hope, the fulfillment of a wish, the miracle, the star here becomes a curse, a powerful spell which pursues Howl throughout the work, and which will mark Sophie forever."

Behind The Scenes
During the planning stages, director of digital imaging Atsushi Okui explained, "At first, we were planning on a more simple image for the star children circling around them, but key animator Shinya Ohira's drawings had a lot of movement. This really took Miyazaki and everyone else by surprise. The initial digital imaging design had to be canceled, but in the end it turned out to be very evocative. I think it really opened up in the film. Suliman is using her magic to project Howl and Sophie's floating state against the greenhouse dome. I had already made plans to process it with serene images, so it was hard to change them, but it was well worth it.

Color designer Michiyo Yasuda explains her process, "The star children weren't particularly difficult, but in that scene I had to work on choosing the proper colors and light to convey emotions for the inanimate stars. The image for the star is based on blue, but I thought the blue for the climactic scene where he turns into star should be pure. I thought the stars that Suliman uses to surround Howl should look scary and loaded with significance. I kept on trying out various combinations of colors. I paid attention to the details, but the work demanded patience rather than skill."