Interview

Q1. When did your interest in art begin?

I loved to draw since I was a child. But I become greatly interested in art around my first year of high school. However, I didn’t think about being a professional artist at that time. When I was third year college student I realized that I am not suited for the engineering field. So, I decided to shift my career to art.

Q2. How did you learn art by yourself?

The boom of internet in my high school years helped a lot. I joined a little art community web board named Pocketonline. We drew and shared our arts, comments, critiques. I gained many artist friends who share the same interest. Now, some of them have become professional artists, too. like: Vic-mon, a freelance artist who also won the Wacom Anime girl character contest, Plustina, Thai comic artist who worked at Siam intercomic and Nicca, The Monk studio CG supervisor. etc.. I think my skills drastically improved when I was working in the studio. I was lucky enough to have a chance to work with a great Art director at The Monk studio. I learned many things from his critiques and his vision. It changed the way I see things.

Greed This is a painting for the CG competition. Theme is “Couple”.
My concept is "human and greed".
Girl's costume and wings design was inspired by a dragonfly.

Q3. You have learned a lot from Internet forums. Can you tell us about your involvement in online communities?

In the early years, it was hard to find good resources for drawing and CG painting here. The internet was just in starting period. Most of the tutorials I found is in Japanese language and no video tutorial like recent day. These made my learning depend on trail-and-error. When I joined Pocketonline web board and acknowledged that there are people who also love to draw. It set a fire on me. I keep drawing and posting my work there and critique other people works. I was also critiqued by other people which I could learn a lot from the comments. Also, we shared some of tutorial and techniques as well as having a meeting. The community is not so large. So, we were very close and influenced each other. Later, I joined deviantART, one of the largest art communitys on the web. I think dA advantage is it has wide audience around the world. I keep publishingmy work there but not get involved much on webboard (due to my broken english skills. haha. ) I ‘ve found a lot of inspiration work there in dA community. I’m also have an account on Pixiv, Japanese art community, too. A lot of beautiful artwork there. But, It is impossible to communicate because my Japanese communication skill is worst. So, I just keep browsing through the web only.

Perfume Harvester Personally love the color of this piece!
The design was inspired by the butterfly.

Q4. Which of your original art is your personal favorite and that you are most satisfied with and why?

“The mannequin ‘s Portrait” (placed top of this page) is my personal favorite. I did this art work for 9K CG Challenge held by Itemstudio webboard. This artwork really reflects the story I would like to convey to the audiences. It took me long time for developing the early visual and the story until I got first rough. Beside that, this work really resembles me very much.

Q5. What was the most excited project/ work you had been involved and why?

It was when I was working at The Monk studio for a project called, Howl. I worked with the best Art Director that I ever met, Mr. Todd Polson. For me, working in the animation studio was completely new experience. It was exciting to see our work developed from idea to the final film. There is a lot of process inbetween.

Q6. Which anime/manga you were watching at young age?

Shonen-shi anime : Dragon ball, Saint Seiya, Kenshiro, Sailor Moon. However, the most inspiring tiitle for me is “Evangelion”. It is completely different than other titles from that time. The design is really advanced and I think It is still fresh. Also, I like Asuka character so much. That’s where my pen name came from.

Q7. What is your favorite movie/novel/music?

I love Summer wars, Toki wo kakeru shojo, Evangelion.
I don’t really read much novels.
For music, I love songs by Utada Hikaru.

Q 8. What is your equipment?

I use iMac (Late 2006 Model) with Wacom Intuos 3 6”x11” graphic tablet. (Waiting for receiving the Intuos4 large which is the grand prize award of the Wacom Anime Girl Contest) As for software, I use Photoshop CS4.

Q 9. What do you think you’re going to do half decade later? And what is your goal?

When it is the right time. I would like to do a personal animation project which I want to do for a long time. And I would like to travel to various places that I haven’t been before. Seeking new inspiration.

If you are planning any kind of activity, please tell us about it.

Now, I am working on my first personal artbook project and I am going to publish it by myself around the 3rd quarter this year. It is the collection of my past 10 years work. I will announce the details on my website and dA soon.
Please stay tuned!