TOM Special Creator Round Table [2/3]

In Part 1, seven Tokyo Otaku Mode Special Creators shared their impressions of each other’s works. This time, we had them ask each other questions. As creators, they all have a lot in common, so their conversation was very interesting.

Creator Profiles
Retsuna
Illustrator. Planning to work as a CG designer for a game company starting in April.

Alice
Cosplayer. Outside of cosplaying, works as a model and media personality and has also appeared in TV, films and fashion shows.

Nonomy
A male cosplayer who primarily portrays female characters. A law school student outside of cosplaying. Studying hard to pass the bar exam.

Kazuharu Kina (just Kina below)
Illustrator. Many pieces feature high school girls. Says, “I want to spread the cuteness of high school girls and the beauty of Japanese school uniforms throughout the world.”

Fuumi
Illustrator. Draws light-filled fantasy-like worlds by hand using Copic markers. Has been taking on digital art recently.

atori
Illustrator. Excels at drawing bishōjo.

Kusakabe
Illustrator. Has an established reputation for depicting things found in real life, such as scenery and cities.

Where Does Your Creative Motivation Come From?

Kusakabe: I have a question for Kina. I’ve mentioned this a lot on Twitter, but I have kind of a negative position on creativity… I almost feel like I want to become a machine of mass production. I try and clear away any pretentiousness and focus on recreating what I see in the real world. I feel like that’s all I need to do. I want to make a path for myself by dealing with what’s in front of me.

But there are times when I get stuck, so I want to know, what do you do to get around your creative blocks? What gives you the motivation to continue creating? I want to hear what you have to say about this, Kina, as someone very involved in creative activities and giving lectures at schools.

Turning Negativity into Energy

Kina: First of all, it’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but my fundamental source of motivation is my time in high school, just those three short years in high school. I really wasted my high school years. I didn’t do anything, I just stayed in my room and played video games. I had no friends. I went to a boys school so no girlfriend either. I had a lot of pent up feelings during that time. After entering an all boys school, I started to take notice of high school girls for the first time. There were no girls in my classes. Just boys to the left, boys to the right––a class full of only boys. Everyone would sit on the ground when they ate, leave things all over the floor, spill milk; it was like a zoo. I really hated it. From that time, I started to really pay attention to high school girls, or girls my age, and look up to them. Being able to see them as I walked to and from school helped me get by. I think that experience influenced the type of drawings that I do. In those three years I gained nothing. I’ve always wanted to go back to my adolescence since that time, and I still do. I picture my ideal self then with a high school girl, think of all the things I wanted to do, the things I couldn’t do––I’m constantly chasing that dream. When I draw, I’m usually thinking of myself as I was, as a high school boy. I think, I really wanted to do this with that girl…how do I express that? That’s what I try and do with my work. I don’t draw because I want to draw. I draw because I want to relive my adolescent years with high school girls. I want to do this and that, all the fun things that I couldn’t––that’s why I draw (stands up and yells)! Yeah, so that’s it for me. My negative complexes are the driving forces of my work.

Kusakabe: I see…your negative complexes… Thanks for sharing.

Leaving the Company and Making Phone Calls

atori: I also have a question for Kina. What advice do you have for people thinking about doing freelance work? Any business tips or specific things they should be prepared for?

Kina: To begin with, I think the most important thing is just to keep at it. Even if you don’t get a job offer from one client, they can sometimes give you good advice which you can use to find other work. Initially, it’s important to be making business calls. That’s a crucial thing to do. When I was working at a company for a while I kept thinking “I want to quit, I want to quit, I want to do my own thing.” One day, I just left the company in the middle of the day. It was about 3 p.m. Basically I just skipped work. I went to the park, took out my iPhone, looked up the numbers for a bunch of publishing companies, and started making calls.

Kusakabe: You really did that? (laughs)

Kina: I told them, “This is who I am, but would you like to see some of my work?” Most of them turned me down, but about two companies gave me the OK. So after I brought my work in, they told me, “Your illustrations are lacking in this and that. You need to focus more on this when you draw.” They gave me a lot of good advice, and pointed out things that I never would have noticed by myself. In the end, I didn’t end up doing work for that company, but I used that advice to improve my illustrations and that helped me get more work later on.

Retsuna on Creating His Own Fantasy

Fuumi: I have a question for Retsuna, as someone who also does fantasy-themed works. I wonder what your conception of fantasy is? For me, I want to create another world, so I start by planning every detail from the bottom up for most of my work. I was wondering what elements you focus on when doing your fantasy works?

Retsuna: When doing fantasy-themed works, I approach it much like you do, Fuumi, by trying to create another world. But I do have one particular step that I take before I get there. For me, what inspired me to begin drawing was actually online games. I was invited to play by a friend in junior high or high school, and from then on all I wanted to do was play. Since it was a web game it had lots of digital illustrations. When I first saw this new form of art, I knew it wasn’t done with pen and paper, and I wanted to know how it was done. Later, I eventually found out about pen tablets.

That’s what led me to discover digital illustration. To get back to online games for a minute, you know how they have message boards sometimes? Well, it was there that I saw some people’s work and was really impressed. Unlike other games, anime, and manga where the character comes to life based on the plot of the story, in online games you have to create a character avatar and express their personality and everything through what they wear, what they carry, etc. I was really drawn to the creativity involved in that process. I frequented illustration message boards as I started out experimenting with digital art software and pen tablets, and that’s how I learned to do illustrations.

I still play online games now. As the capacity of consoles like the PlayStation and Wii continues to expand, the possibilities of what you can express in online games multiply as well. I’ve always wanted to get involved in making games myself. It’s an imaginary world so you can create a new place for yourself to live. Not only that, but you can really see it, touch it, hear its sounds, and make things happen… I felt a certain kind of romance in that and I thought, "Wow, that’s amazing. That’s what I want to do.” I think that’s one thing that's motivated me to focus on the worldview I express in my works.

Also, when I’m drawing, that is, works not related to social games, I still naturally need a character for the illustration. Before I draw a rough outline, I draw the character separately. I draft an initial design. When designing the character, I draw on my previous experience from the online game message boards and decide how to coordinate the clothes, what accessories or patterns would be appropriate for the world the character lives in, and so on. I used to design things based on the kinds of things that I wanted to see in video games. I’ve actually submitted something to an equipment design contest that ended up being used in a game. When thinking about the kind of world I want to express, and the characters I want to create, I usually start with something that I wish was real and go from there.

Fuumi: Thank you so much for sharing.

This is a Tokyo Otaku Mode original article.