Ngā Uiuinga me Keitaro Sugihara

When I was living in Toronto, I designed a magazine for local Japanese people.

I like to switch between materials like paper collage and working on the computer. Frequent change of art mediums and tasks is what keeps it interesting for me.

To be honest, it is probably after I had some beer.

When working on a design, I focus on making sure all graphic elements are working well together in telling the story of the product.

Technique is important, but I think it is impossible to design something exceptional without genuine passion and interest for the work you're doing.

I think a quickly and intuitively understandable message is what makes a design good.

Last time my works were exhibited in 2020 in Tokyo. Next exhibition is planned to be in Nagano in 2022.

My 5 year old son is currently the biggest source of inspiration and emotions for me. Watching him learn and have fun by trying new things in a way that as an adult I would never consider trying is amazing and brings me joy and energy to create my works.

I like leaving some room for random chance to add a touch to my design and illustration works rather than pursuing line and form perfection. I combine hand-drawn illustrations, calligraphy, collage and digital medium, and I like to allow each project to grow naturally over time, adjusting it with each variation and client's response. I'd say my approach is a bit lazy, as I like to use recycled materials that I find occasionally or someone gives me.

In Japan, we have a saying "God is in the details", and we generally approach life with great attention to the smallest things. I believe this mentality is part of me too, which is helpful in design work.

Generally I follow this framework: research, sketch, conceptualize, explore possibilities, and decision. I make sure to discuss each step with my clients and publishers.

Iphone, soda maker, Sori Yanagi kitchen knife, a chair that I got as a gift from my friend, and all the plants we have at home.

For me, creative work is extremely fun and rewarding. The biggest downside is the constant sitting, which is bad for the back.

Considering lots of possibilities and creating as much variations as possible would be my golden rule. It's important for me to take the time to explore the idea, rather than quickly deciding on one path.

Communication and understanding of people is something you need both when you are working on a design alone telling a product's story, when you are brainstorming in a team to find the best solution, and when interacting with a client.

I use Adobe software on my iMac, and for creating collage illustrations I use acrylic paint and precision knife. My collection of graphic design and illustration books also helps a lot with finding inspiration.

It can take anywhere from one week to half a year or more, depending on the project. Recently I've been involved with a project which will take about 3 years to complete.

Most commonly I get asked about the methods and tools I use to create my works.

After trying a lot of jobs and failing a bunch of times, I learned to enjoy life in any situation.

I want to establish my own publishing company someday to publish books that I like. Also, living in Europe would be nice.

I believe working in a team and having access to different opinions is the best way to go.

Currently I am working on the second book of the "Who's that Eating?" series.

Since the mechanics are simple and final product is durable, readers - especially children - can turn the pages rapidly and repeatedly to the rhythm of the onomatopoeia, peek inside the mouth, put their hands in the mouth and imitate eating, etc. which makes the book more appealing.

The collages are influenced by people like Eric Carle and Shinro Otake, and I place great importance on working with original art. Rather than to convey a message, I choose materials for my collage from a visual standpoint- to have some visual hook and produce some kind of fun for the reader apart from the main story.This could have been done digitally, but the use of actual paper and tearing the paper by hand produces the shadows of the paper and the jagged edges of the cuts. I tried to create the texture of the creature's original skin, for example, the hard and rough skin of a hippopotamus. One of my goals is to make readers think “I want to touch it”. If you make it too real, the colors of each creature would be all brown or gray, so I chose pop colors. For example, the color of the goat is yellow in my book, which is different from an actual goat. The colors and pop-up movements were balanced overall and in the front and back pages in order to create variation.

When considering the pop-up mechanism, instead of thinking of a structure to express the movement of a certain creature, I would just randomly cut or fold a piece of paper and then ask myself, “What kind of animal does this movement resemble?”. For example, if it resembled the movement of a pig's mouth, I would then make it look more like a pig by making the snout a little bigger, and so on. When I discovered the jaw-grinding eating motion of an herbivore, I was so excited! "It doesn’t have to be symmetrical! This is great!”. I made a substantial number of prototypes and went through trial and error.

I mentioned before that I tried to create variations in the color and movement of the creatures overall, but in addition to that, I am also conscious of the many variations in the onomatopoeia of the eating sounds: “munch munch”, “crunch crunch”, “gobble gobble”, and so on. This also led me to consider what animals should be included. Furthermore, by using repetitive onomatopoeia, I try to encourage the reader to play with the page as many times as possible using the eating sounds so that they stay on one page longer. This was an important point for me.

The moment I came up with the idea of this book occurred when I was playing with my son by shooting rubber bands with a toy gun made from disposable chopsticks. In order to keep him occupied, I had to improvise and quickly make various targets to shoot, so I made faces by folding and cutting paper. The great discovery I made then was how easy it was to make a face just by folding a sheet of paper, and just how many variations could be made. Therefore, when I first started work on this picture book, it was originally a “peek-a-boo” book with various faces. When I showed the prototypes to people, they told me, “It would be better you make it about eating something since its mouth is moving." I felt that that there are already so many “peek-a-boo” picture books on the market, so it was another important moment for me when I changed the idea to “Who's That Eating Pop Up Picture Book”.

The best thing is to be able to check whether or not a child is actually staying on the page and playing. I could see when my son was enjoying it, and I could also see what needs to be fixed and what is working well. Children’s reactions are honest, and if they are not interested, they just won’t even look at it. When I showed him a draft version in black and white, he would give me advice like, “You should add color!”

When I was about 20 years old, I saw a pop-up picture book of Alice in Wonderland by Robert Sabuda for the first time. I was shocked by how amazing it was; when I opened the book, it really jumped out, and when I closed it, it all fit back neatly into the book. I was so impressed that I have been buying pop-up books ever since. But it was impossible to imitate them; even when I took them apart to understand them, I couldn't put them back together because they were so complicated. But I always had a longing for pop-up picture books and a desire to make them. Moreover, I wanted to make something that no one else had made.Few Japanese authors make pop-up picture books, and in most cases, the story is conceived by the picture book author and the mechanism is then created by a paper engineer (pop-up artist). In order to differentiate myself from them, I aimed to become an author who could create both the story and the pop-up mechanism by myself. What I was able to create was a “picture book with a simple structure”.As a result, I'm proud to say that this picture book is well-balanced in every respect: it is in the form of a quiz about food and animals, it uses onomatopoeia, and the pages can be moved to the rhythm of it, making it not only fun but also an educational tool.Nowadays, I sometimes conduct workshops for customers, and some are surprised at the simplicity- that the pop-up is made from a single piece of paper. It wouldn’t be possible to have customers create a book in a workshop if it were a complicated structure, so I think it’s a nice bonus, although not my main aim.

If the book were made in the conventional page-turning format with complex pop-up mechanisms, the pages would have more weight to turn and need to be opened slowly. This would make it difficult to play with and move rhythmically and repeatedly with the onomatopoeia. So, considering the balance between the rhythm of the movements and the complexity of the structure, I thought this format was the best answer.

This book was the first book of mine that sold well, and its follow-up books have also since been published. However, the three or four books I had published before this book all went out of print. If this book did not sell, I thought I would quit my career as a children book author. I am proud to say that my previous books were also interesting, but from the time of creation, I felt that "Who's That Eating Pop Up Picture Book" was innovative and full of things I had never seen before. I thought that if this book did not receive recognition, the world simply does not like what I like, and if this book was not appreciated, it meant that I just did not have talent. Therefore, I was really focusing on this pop-up book as my last chance, because even though this was my first time making a pop-up book, I was ready to specialize and be called a pop-up picture book artist. Now that this book has been highly acclaimed, I have gained confidence that people can see and understand what I find interesting, and I am now ready to create new picture books without pop-ups.

In particular, the last page is a scene of a large creature opening its huge mouth, so I wanted to create a large, dynamic, three-dimensional pop-up expression, but at the same time, I had to plan for it to fit neatly into the book when it is closed. A pop-up made with multiple parts allows for a great deal of freedom in this area, but there were many restrictions and difficulties in expressing this in a simple single-page structure.