Rationale

The Theme and Concept

In this fusion work, I am trying to convey how a child's mentality may differ from that of a grown adult. Children are very naive and innocent. They tend to be curious in almost anything they see and have very fertile imagination. Upon looking at some interesting things, their imagination starts to run wild and they would fall into their own fantasy world. However, as one starts to grow older and more mature, he loses the fun side of him and tends to get very serious and narrow-minded. This happens due to the monotonous lifestyle an adult leads as he works for survival, and carries the heavy responsibilities in life.

There is a gradual transition from dull to bright as the adult leads the child on. A drawing on the wall can be dull and uninteresting to an adult but in the eyes of a child, it all comes alive and is full of wonders. The child is seen interacting with the creatures as he waves back to them and even the characters are curious about the boy. The alphabet 'I' can be seen peeking from the corner of the wall.

Fusing Kishimoto's and my style

The fusion work consists of my frequently drawn fantasy-based characters and theme which can be clearly seen both in this drawing and previous works I have done before. I tried to put in as much details so as to portray Kishimoto's style with his insane-detail drawing style. For example, the cracks found on the walls and floors shows his style and it make the drawing more life-like. The colour used would be grayscale for the man and his surrounding to show the dullness of the adult world. To contrast that, the child's side (the right side of the fusion work) would be very colourful and bright.

My Style

Here are some of my previous works that I have done during my leisure time.

The 4 characters are mascots which my other 3 friends and I came out individually, these are 2 of the many pieces that I drew and painted. That can be considered to be the 1st character design that I have done. There are also some works that I have done listed as below.

Next, would be the monkey mascot that I have came up for one of my projects. It was drawn based on ninja and using the water element as the theme. The last 2 are one of the few assignments that I had in school. Based on the given basic shapes fixed on certain areas, I came up of this fantasy world which consist of many different kinds of mediums like monsters and mechanical machines. The last one was for typograpghy, using 'eyes' as my concept, I came up with this typefont which I thought was very interesting and fun.




Viewing the previous works that I have done so far, I think my style is more on fantasy based and that is why most of my works are character designs, as can be seen from the typefont that I have came up.

The Artist

Masashi Kishimoto was born in the rural Okayama Prefecture in 1974 (Showa Year 49). He was the older of twin brothers and he loved TV shows in those days. His favorite was Doraemon. Everyone talked about it in school. However people often draw Doraemon incorrectly and Kishimoto yelled at them to do it right. He showed them how, and got into many fights about this. Kishimoto notebooks were often filled with doodles.

Even when he was playing hide and seek, he would draw figures in the dirt while waiting. Facinated by Mobile Gundam Suit, he began to fill his notebooks with Zakus, Gundams, and Gms. Dr. Slump came in later. And because of Dr. Slump, Kishimoto learned about and started loving Dragonball Z (author is Akira Toriyama).
Like always, he would draw the characters in notebooks. Akira Toriyama was like a god to him. Because of Dragonball Z, he learned about other manga in Shonen Jump. This is where the dream of becoming a manga-ka started. He even started drawing manga, and made his first comic about a shadow ninja boy.

As Kishimoto entered middle school, the passion for drawing left him. He would always ask himself if he is too old to draw?" And the answer came when he saw an anime called Akira. Kishimoto passed the poster, and fell in love with it. He loved the style of Kaneda and the bike. The composition. The perspective. The feel. The detail. The realism. Everything. On that day, Kishimoto became manga-ka once more.


Kishimoto realized that the reason he loved the styles were because they were original. They were stylized, nothing done before. So Kishimoto tried coming up with his own style. Then he noticed that most styles incorporate different styles into one. So Kishimoto grabbed dozens of artbooks of the various artists whom he adored.

These are some of his works :

From his drawings I can see the following points :

- use thin lines for his drawings
- play alot on shadows to indicate mood
- play alot on the different angles
- OBSESSED with insane details

Why I choose him?

The reason why I chose him is because I share the same view with him regarding finding our own styles. It is very difficult to come up with a unique style of my own and the only way to achieve that is to incorporate many different styles into my own. At the same time, my design style will evolve accumulating these styles.

Citation:

The Everything Development Company, 2004, Mashashi Kishimoto, Retrieved from http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1538568

Pictures taken from
http://www.narutofan.com/index.php/content-masashi%20kishimoto,index
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_(film)
http://www.narutohq.com/masashi-kishimoto.php
http://www.narutoproject.com/mangas/cover35.jpg
http://www.project01.xpg.com.br/mangas/cover30.jpg
http://www.project01.xpg.com.br/mangas/cover26.jpg