Behind the scenes of the "#I have never quit drawing 'till now!" COMPxpixiv Artist Sponsorship Campaign - For those for whom illustrations have become more than just "fun"

There are actually a lot of illustrators who use COMP's products. I also used to live in a really inconvenient area up until a few years ago, and it was a huge pain in the butt to go buy groceries, decide what to eat, and actually cook multiple times a day, so COMP really saved me back then! I like mixing it with kinako (roasted soybean powder). (laughs) It may be an unusual combination for a food company to sponsor illustrators, but I think most of us are happy to be able to represent a product that we actually use and enjoy in our daily lives.

For an artist, drawing is as normal as breathing, so it was nice to be reminded why I do it. It made me realize just how much drawing I've done to get to this point... I thought it was really meaningful to be able to show aspiring artists "If you keep at it, your work will change a lot. You'll improve and your art will get better." 

I was still in high school when I drew the illustration from 2007 and it was the first picture I drew that was 'liked' on social media by a professional artist. It's probably not very impressive compared to the skill of high school aged artists these days, but at the time it was a sign of finally getting some recognition for my talent. To be honest, looking back at it now, what sticks out to me more than the areas in which I've improved are the areas that haven't changed at all.

For example, the layout design where a cool-looking character is positioned almost randomly by itself in the middle of the image. Maybe this is just my personal art style, or perhaps I should say that this is the work that started what would become my signature technique as an artist. I get the feeling I've been continually polishing this weapon all along. 

My father is an artist, so for better or for worse, my parents had absolutely no opposition to the idea of me "drawing for a living." I strongly believed in my ability to provide for myself financially as an illustrator, so at the tender age of 20, I threw myself into the industry. However, I ended up working for a famous creator, and all the other artists working for them were extremely talented as well, so the fact that I was nothing special came as a pretty hard blow. I thought about it and realized that I'd never done anything in my life up to that point but draw. I decided to take a few years to find myself, try doing all the normal things university students do like hanging out with friends, and enjoying music and movies. In the end, I realized that illustration really is what I'm best at, so in time I came back to it.

During the period where I stopped drawing, the thing I focused on the most was FPS (a type of shooting game). I was really serious about FPS and gave it my all, but it was really, really difficult. (laughs) I became pretty good on the domestic level, but there are hundreds of truly genius-level players and I just couldn't compete. Compared to video games, I'm better able to compete when it comes to drawing. This was how I came to realize that drawing is really what I'm the best at.

I'm a gamer at heart, so I'll use video games to explain. (laughs) In a game where only 10 different types of weapons exist, even if you aren't good at all of them, you have to fight with just those 10 weapons. There's no option to create your own original weapon. But when it comes to drawing, you can win by creating your own "11th type of weapon." Even if the other artists are holding weapons like "high-level drawing skill," if I create my own weapon, it puts me in a class all of my own. There's no need to play by the rules of sportsmanship. I like that in the world of illustration, you can fight according to your own rules. 

The weapons that I can use have increased, and the scope of my battle strategy has widened. Where before I could only progress in a straight line, now I can move to the sides, backwards, even vertically. This has opened up a lot of possibilities to me, making me a lot freer than I used to be. I think that the reason I worked so hard was to be able to achieve this freedom.