Afro Hammer 🩻

Wow, this is from over 30 years ago… Where did you find it? You can see the clock from Japanese TV in the top-left corner, so this must have been recorded when it appeared on some television program. By the way, this wasn’t a normal drawing. Back then I’d gotten bored with conventional art materials, and I became obsessed with making artwork using what we call “cutting sheets” in Japan—basically the kind of single-color adhesive vinyl you might think of as Cricut vinyl overseas. I would cut each piece by hand with a design knife, layer the pieces on top of one another, and separate the colors that way, almost like making an animation cel. I used that technique for all kinds of character art and concept art. And it wasn’t just the characters. Every letter and logo on this piece was also cut out freehand with a design knife and assembled by hand. I used to say, “Not using a ruler gives it more character.” In retrospect, I probably should have used a ruler. One thing I liked about the technique was that the material was very resistant to UV and didn’t really deteriorate even after several years. The downside was that finishing a single piece took an incredible amount of time. Areas with lots of tonal variation—especially things like gradients in the hair—were absolute hell to make. And the board itself was huge. It was B0 size: 1030 × 1456 mm, or about 40.5 × 57.3 inches. So you needed a pretty large workspace just to make one. After it was finished, it was displayed at an arcade during a location test—basically one of those pre-release, guerrilla-style tests where we would put the game into an arcade and see how much revenue it generated. I later heard that, in the end, a Japanese fan who desperately wanted the piece was allowed to take it home.