Passage: After winning the grand prize, Shinkai began thinking about a follow-up while he continued working for Falcom. In June 2000, Shinkai was inspired to begin Voices of a Distant Star by drawing a picture of a girl in a cockpit grasping a cell phone. Some time later, he was contacted by Manga Zoo (today a smartphone app), which offered to work with him, giving him a grant to turn his idea into an anime they could sell. In May 2001, he quit his job at Falcom and began to work on Voices. In an interview, Shinkai noted that production took around seven months of "real work".Voices of a Distant Star was followed by the 90-minute The Place Promised in Our Early Days, which was released nationwide in Japan on November 20, 2004. It was critically acclaimed, winning many honors. Shinkai's next project was 5 Centimeters per Second and premiered 3 March 2007. It consists of three short films: Cherry Blossom, Cosmonaut, and 5 Centimeters per Second. The total run time is about 63 minutes. In September 2007 Nagano's leading newspaper, Shinano Mainichi Shinbun, released a TV commercial animated by Shinkai.

Question: What inspired Shinkai to start voicing the Distant Star?
drawing a picture of a girl in a cockpit grasping a cell phone