Creator Interview：kamakilimai

kamakirimai

〜Let’s hold hands, me and you. And make it warm into honey yellow〜

I have been drawing since I was little but I had no confidence to show them to anyone. Even I was small, I was fully aware of my drawings not to be shown.

I loved my grandma and I liked a statue of Buddha. As I watched, I started to feel that I wanted to make one.

From the middle of my junior high school, I started to think that I wanted to do something related to making things.

I was in the art course in comprehensive high school, and worked mainly in sculpture. We did drawings in our common class and our drawings will be hung on the wall.

And our teacher will pick the good pictures on the top, the bad ones on the bottom.

My drawing went to the very bottom. I was upset to feel that my drawings weren’t good.

But I liked drawing itself so I drew fan art and original fantasy illustrations.

I liked anime as well and seen it often. And then I was introduced to stop motion animation when I was a college student.

When I saw the art animation of Yuriy Norshteyn’s “Hedgehog in the Fog” and Jan Švankmajer’s “Alice”,

I got a cultural shock. I wanted to create something like this.

I was majored in art but I attended to the screen image classes and studied how to edit, and joined as a volunteer staff to help the animation festival where they played an art animation.

And learned the way there.

After graduating, I was able to involve in clay animation (※one of many forms of stop motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is “deformable”—made of a malleable substance, usually Plasticine clay.)

Professor in college introduced me to the clay animation company who hired me for a short term. The work here has been a really exciting experience.

But I was basically asked to join if there was a project. So, sometimes I had no job for 2 months.

Of course, I hadn’t have enough money. At that time, I was working at the hostel where I could stay. I hadn’t had enough space for myself there that wasn’t able to work on my own project.

This was the time I didn’t draw that much.

And I had a strong awareness that “the house is important”. Which is really an ordinary thing.

Then I changed my company which I am now working for and got the house and the base of my living. I was able to spend my time working on projects.

I was able to draw an illustration again.

Since then, I started to do illustrating by concentrating to finish up one drawing within a limited time.

Now, I write down a rough story before I start drawing.

I think it is my experience of an art animation that I started to come up with the story.

I draw up a scenario to make my drawing into a narrative style.

Or it will turn into something inertia in my case.

If I am going to draw in my original way, I would like to give first priority to my favorite view of the world. And then, I would like to draw a picture that will make people heart’s warm and make them feel relaxed.

From now on, I would like to extend my activity in a more commercial way using my drawings.