I highly recommend the NHK documentary "10 years with Hayao Miyazaki" that shows how he works (and also his sometimes difficult character).
It also shows why the movie ends as abruptly as it does and why Ghibli was eventually disbanded. With Takahata gone everything was bottlenecked by Miyazaki's himself, and he was simultaneously crumbling under the pressure and refusing to let anyone else have creative input in the studio.