Toshinori Mori · CLIENT: Toshinori Mori
This series of illustrations was drawn by a Japanese illustrator, Toshinori Mori, for a calendar. Cats traveling are drawn with gentle colors and simple touches against the background of the four seasons of Japan. Illustrations are drawn in Adobe Illustrator. Although it is a digital illustration, it is designed to give a natural feel by adding fine irregularities to the contours and adding a texture like paper scraps on the surface.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Tabineko illustration calendar allows cats to travel in an ordinary and ubiquitous landscape. Viewers are more likely to empathize as if their cat is traveling freely in the neighborhood. In addition, flowers, mountain scenery, roadside plants, weather, etc. are drawn according to the season, so viewers can feel the wind of each season in the house
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Wall Calendar :18cm x 25cm (B5) Art Poster:A4.A3.A2
- Tags
- Tabineko, Toshinori Mori, Illustration, Japan, Japanese, Cat, Landscape, Art, travel, Happiness
- Production Technology
- Calendars are handmade.
The designer cuts the output from the printer by month and attaches it to the backing paper with a stopper. The prints, adjusted and output many times until the designer is satisfied, entertain the viewer with vivid colors.
The material of the calendar (including the stopper) is made of paper and can be discarded as burning garbage.In addition to being usable as a wall calendar, it can also be used as a desk calendar by standing on the attached stand. - Design Challenge
- Because it is digital, what you print is what you actually see.
So I try to adjust the saturation and color many times to get the desired color. I sometimes print dozens of sheets until I get the color I like.
The problem was that the ink on my printer (a very old printer) was out of print, and I couldn't get the same color.
New printers have low saturation and do not produce beautiful colors. - Project Duration
- The illustration series was first exhibited at a group exhibition held in Tokyo, Japan in 2011, and has been produced continuously at my home in Nagaoka, Japan until March 2020.
- Operation Flow
- Postcards, calendars, art posters, etc. are sold at marketplaces such as Etsy, and are sold at private exhibition venues in Tokyo and Nagaoka using Tabineko illustrations.
- Research
- Digital illustration using Adobe Illustrator.
I take a picture of my favorite scenery on a bicycle walk and draw it based on it.
Cats model their own cats as models.
Because it is for calendars, colors and plants are selected to give the seasonal feeling of each month.
In addition, I am thinking about the combination of colors that can reproduce the images of the beautiful four seasons I felt.
In order to eliminate digital slipperiness, paper shading is added. - Inspiration
- I like riding a bicycle through the four seasons. When I decided to make a calendar, I decided to make an illustration of the landscape I saw on a bicycle. However, I thought that the landscape alone was a bit lonely, so I added the cat I had at that time to the landscape.
The result is the "Tabneko" illustration series. - Image Credits
- Image #1: Illustrator Toshinori Mori, Green wind, 2015.
Image #2: Illustrator Toshinori Mori, Hanami at the station, 2014.
Image #3: Illustrator Toshinori Mori, Snow sake brewery, 2020.
Image #4: Illustrator Toshinori Mori, Autumn color patchwork, 2018.
Image #5: Illustrator Toshinori Mori, Christmas song, 2018. - Patents
- ©Toshinori Mori 2020
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