http://drawger.com/kiuchi/ Thu, 25 Apr 2013 06:28:40 EDT FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://drawger.com/_images/drawger_leo_logo.gif http://drawger.com/kiuchi http://drawger.com/kiuchi/index.php?section=articles&article_id=14172

This is a paperback cover piece for the novel titled Our Family, written by Kazumasa Hayami. I was asked to come up with an image of a living room without any people present in the scene. I was also asked to add some finished dishes being left on the table. The request was so specific and straight forward that I didn't need to read the manuscript (it was kind of a rush too). The story is basically about a family whose members are feeling apart of each other. Doing a rough sketch, I looked for some good reference pictures as it could be very hard to make up a living room with certain credibility. I remembered that I took a couple of photos of a living room when I visited my parent's house last summer. I decided to use one of them, and these are the photos.





For this cover, I submitted only one composition to the editor but presented four different versions in colors. 





]]> Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:28:39 EDT http://drawger.com/kiuchi/index.php?section=articles&article_id=14119

Here is my latest book cover project, which I enjoyed very much. A digital painting for the book titled Golf Forest, written by Sonoko Funakoshi. It's a collection of 29 essays all about golf. I was asked to come up with a profound, somewhat mysterious image of golf course and forest. I love doing golf scenes because of its beauty in trees, greens, bankers, ponds, etc.







]]> Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:29:07 EDT http://drawger.com/kiuchi/index.php?section=articles&article_id=14007



These 3 images on the left were my sketches for Family All Right. One thing you have to keep in mind when doing a cover illustration (in Japan) is to make room for an obi to be looped around the bottom part of a book. It means that you are not supposed to put important elements on the bottom part of your illustration as the area will be covered. Sometimes it makes the image look awkward and empty in terms of composition but at the same time it could be challenging to illustrators. Occasionally, I think you can take advantage of this fact by intentionally placing some interesting components under an obi for a surprise. In case you might not familiar with 'obi', here is the description on Wikipedia.



Here I depicted a junior high school girl in front of a dorayaki shop. The novel is about the dorayaki shop in a small town. The title An means red bean jam. Here is the dorayaki on Wikipedia.  





The editor requested me to do a cover that showed relation between a modern man and a primitive man with their dogs. So among other ideas, I included sketches of a cave painting depicting a modern man holding a cell phone with his dog. I liked the idea but it was not used. I think it might have been difficult to illustrate a cave painting in my style in a convincing way. After all, the publisher chose the reflection idea but then obi got in the way. The problem had been resolved by printing obi in full color so that the bottom half of the cover image could go on to the obi itself. This is kind of luxury as obi are usually printed in 2 colors.





The first batch of my sketches weren't well received by the book designer and author. They thought the comical feel of my ideas were not something the author wanted to stress in this book. This book is an essey, and the author talks about her episode where she went to an island to get her driver's license. What's the big deal about getting a driver's license? You have to get driving lessons at least 34 hours with an instructor sitting next to you in a school's car, in a driving school and on public road. In addition to that, you have to take at lease 26 hours of traffic rules class. So it's sort of a big deal in Japan. So, when you have to commute to a driving school to get a license, it takes quite long to complete the process. For those who want to do it more quickly, some school offers a training camp. The author, departing from everyday life, went to participate in a camp run by a driving school in an island in Kyushu.







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Some sketches below.















]]> Sun, 23 Dec 2012 17:46:42 EDT http://drawger.com/kiuchi/index.php?section=articles&article_id=13853

Hello! Thank you very much for having me here. I feel honored! Many thanks to Yuko-san for extending the invitation to Drawger. I would like to introduce myself briefly as many of you might not know me. If you are not familiar with my work, please check out my website. I am based in Tokyo. So the majority of my works is for Japanese clients so far but I get called for assignments from overseas occasionally. I went to high school with Yuko Shimizu. We hadn't met each other since then, but in 2010, finally reunited at the Society of Illustrators annual show. My career as an illustrator hasn't been always satisfactory, especially for the first half, but it's been already 20 years! Though I have my own blog, I am not used to writing anything about my process. From now on, I will try posting my process here sometime as well as other topics. Thank you!



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