by Chris MaGeeDuring my daily internet searches I came across a tantalizing story at Mari Kanazawa's Watashi to Tokyo blog. She mentioned an artist that I was unfamiliar with, Shigeru Komatsuzaki, whose work apparently was a huge inspiration to special effects wizard Eiji Tsuburaya when he was designing the look of one of his most famous creations, "Ultraman". So who is Shigeru Komatsuzaki?
Born in Tokyo in 1915 Komatsuzaki started out his career doing a variety of illustrations and paintings, from advertisments to propaganda, but after WW2 he gained real popularity illustrating pulp magazines and providing detailed and dynamic paintings to grace the boxes of plastic model kits. between the end of the war up to the 1990s Komatsuzaki produced thousands of works. He passed away from heart failure in December of 2001.
If the illustration above has whet your appetite check out this Japanese website dedicated to Komatsuzaki`s artwork. Enjoy!
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3 comments:
Here's more background on Komatsuzaki: He was afairly well-known as a fine/cartoonist/commercial artist before the War, and Tsuburaya hired him to work in the "Special Arts Department" at Toho in the late 1930s. While Komatsuzaki went freelance after the War, Tsuburaya would frequently hire him to do commission work.
Komatsuzaki never worked as a production designer on ULTRAMAN; that job went to another artist much like Komatsuzaki, who also worked at Toho in the 1950s, Tohru "Tohl" Narita (1929-2002). Both men are considered the architects of the Japanese visual science fiction.
Official Komatsuzaki site:
http://www.komatsuzaki.net/
Tohru Narita obit (scroll down):
http://www.henshinonline.com/archive2002.html
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
August Ragone
Author EIJI TSUBURAYA: MASTER OF MONSTERS
Blog THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND GODZILLA
By the way, great blog -- keep up the good work!
Cheers,
August
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