Creator Interview: pomodorosa

Illustrator pomodorosa. In August, his book Pomodorosa Work Collection - Music, Fashion and Girl is selling through TOM.What sorts of feelings are captured in this first commercial collection of his works? He responds from the bottom of his heart that “there’s not much to say about them.”

[Profile]
Japanese illustrator and music writer. Majored in graphic design at Tama Art University, and while enrolled, participated in a band where he worked on experimental music. After graduating he got a job at a software development company. Once he was able to support himself, while making a career as a music writer for commercials, he started drawing illustrations as a hobby. The talent was well-received, so he began working on images for binding covers for short stories and light novels, as well as character designs. Since then he has been putting a lot of energy into a variety of things.

Music × Girls

——Congratulations on the release of your collection. I’d like to ask you about the book, but first, it’s more compact than you’d think, isn’t it!

Pomodorosa: A4-B4 is popular for these books. When they’re big, they have an expensive image. I think the demographic of people who look at these casually has been growing recently, though.

——The readers’ senses have changed.

P: This is entirely about my own fans, but I feel like rather than people who say, “Alright! I’m gonna look at pictures,” it’s the demographic that enjoys flipping through the pages while they lie down in bed that’s increased. We were also happy to hear from a lot of people that [the small size of] the earlier publication was “just right,” so we settled on this size again. Plus, the small size is reasonable.

——It makes it easy to buy!

P: The people who look at my illustrations tend to be young, from elementary school to high school. By keeping the price reasonable, we were able to make it easy to get this to them.

——Your first commercial work. The theme is “Music × Girls,” but what brought you to that?

P: I’ve always mostly drawn instruments and girls. If you get a good look at the works in this book, apart from the cover and business illustrations, nearly half were related to music and instruments. I figured, “It pretty much has to be music-themed.” I also enjoy drawing girls, so I brought those two things together and came to the “Music × Girls” theme.

——Music. There are a lot of works with instruments in particular!

P: To be honest, my occupation is in music. I’ve had a career in music for longer than illustrations, 10 years as of this year. I’ll always continue making music for TV commercials, and maybe one day I’ll be in charge as an arranger/composer or even as a director at a studio. Instruments, equipments, scores…anything related to music is a part of my everyday life, so before I even realize it, a lot of the illustrations I draw end up being topped off with music.

——TV commercials have extremely short music, don’t they?

P: 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 60 seconds, and there are also instances where something longer is made for the web. Originals are common, but I make parodies, too. Just before this I was working on an ice cream commercial arranging that one Drifters song. If it’s requested, I’ll work on anything from classical melodies to pop and rock.

——What rules are there when working on musical composition?

P: Make it easy to understand. In the end, the protagonist in commercials is the product or business. When you’re singing a song about an item, for example, it can’t be hard to comprehend. It must be clear, but it mustn’t be right in the front. There are commercials where exciting music or actors take the lead, but usually they’re in supporting roles. This is the biggest difference between it and works of people who make music where it’s in the leading role.