Full-time cartoonist

"She knows you." Akimiya Akemi came out from behind Higashino Hibiki and whispered.

"You said my name," Hibiki Higashi pointed at her dirty clothes, "Doesn't it matter?"

"ah!"

So as soon as I came out, I went back to Toriyama's house to change clothes.

…

Pencil, black ink, white ink, G pen, cloud ruler, dotted paper...

There are a lot of tools scattered here and there.

The large painting table also became messy.

I heard that there is a tool called a digital tablet, which is much more convenient than hand-drawing. The technology in 1993 was still too backward.

"You should draw the background first, Higashino-kun."

Akira Toriyama doesn't like to draw backgrounds during battles. It's a tedious and meaningless task.

After the Third Tenkaichi Budokai, Akira Toriyama changed the setting of Sun Wukong to a Saiyan.

As the combat power increases and the character flies into the air to fight, there is no need to draw a background.

Higashino Hibiki nodded and accepted Toriyama Akira's request.

"Dragon Ball Z" is currently serialized in the "Majin Buu Arc" chapter "Satan runs away, and the angry Majin Buu appears."

Akira Toriyama asked Hibiki Higashino to draw a very classic temple that has appeared many times in "Dragon Ball".

Little Wukong once had a very exciting battle with Mr. Bobo here.

In Hibiki Higashikata's view, it was no worse than the battles in the World's No. 1 Budokai.

Square floor tiles, trees, and the temple behind it. After 20 minutes, Hibiki Hibiki finished painting.

He handed it to Akira Toriyama.

At this time, Akira Toriyama had just finished reading Akimiya Akemi's paintings.

"Well, the painting is very good," Akira Toriyama said, "I will leave my assistant work to you in the future."

"Yes, Teacher Akira Toriyama!" Akimiya Akemi bowed excitedly.

As the daughter of an ukiyo-e master, her interest in painting has been cultivated since she was a child.

Her drawing skills are very good, better than high school student Hibiki Higashino.

It’s just that my brain is not good enough to create interesting stories.

Afterwards, Akira Toriyama took Hibiki Higashino's painting and looked at it for a long time.

"There's nothing wrong with yours either."

Without any praise, he said calmly: "If you don't understand anything in the future, you can ask me."

…

Drawing comics is very hard work.

Today, Higashino Hibiki, Toriyama Akira, and Akimiya Akemi spent a total of 10 hours drawing, and only completed 6 pages of the manuscript.

Readers read it for 1 minute and it’s over.

A story has just begun.

But it requires three people to work hard behind the scenes for a long time.

Thinking of the scene when he was serializing it, Hibiki shuddered.

Comics are not just paintings. Before that, you also need to create storyboards.

Under normal circumstances, Jump's weekly comic takes three days to draw the storyboard, that is, after the story is conceived, each shot is drawn out with sketches.

The size and shape of each frame, the movements of the characters, the placement of dialog boxes, the lines of dialogue, etc., must be expressed clearly.

It can be said that apart from the more exquisite paintings, this is the entire content of the comics.

After creating these, it is tedious work.

Paintings one stroke at a time.

Draw characters, draw backgrounds, paint them black, and paste appropriate dots...

Higashino Hibiki finally went through the process today.

"The Battle between Gods and Humans" painted by the original master was more of a creation taken for granted.

He didn’t even know how to storyboard.

So the story quickly went off the rails.

Not to mention halftone paper, all the backgrounds are drawn one by one.

All in all, I learned a lot.

"Thank you for your hard work today." Akira Toriyama clapped his hands and ended today's work.

"Toriyama-sensei, thank you for your teaching."

Higashino Hibiki and Akimiya Akemi said.

Akira Toriyama stood up and stretched, and asked with a smile: "dinner will be served in about an hour, do you want to go out for a walk?"

"I'm sorry," Higashino Hibiki said, "I want to familiarize myself with the use of the G-pen."

"Yes, me too! I want to summarize the knowledge I have learned." Akimiya Akemi looked at the storyboard and thought about Toriyama Akira's thoughts.

"It's good to be young. You work really hard. I won't disturb you anymore. I'll go out and look at the horizon in the distance. Oh, my eyes are so dry and uncomfortable."

"You walk slowly."

Higashino Hibiki used to like Obata Takeru's works.

"Chess Soul", "Death Note" and "Dream Eater".

"Dream Eater" tells the story of two male protagonists, one is the original author and the other is the painter, complementing each other and working together to draw comics.

Therefore, it also describes a lot of content of drawing comics.

There are regrets among them, such as the male protagonist Mashiro’s tallest uncle, Nobuhiro Mashiro.

His dream is to confess his love to the girl he likes after he achieves success in comics.

Nobuhiro Mashiro's story is pretty good, but it's a pity that his drawing skills are so bad.

Because when I first started drawing comics, I didn’t understand the importance of the g-pen. When I wanted to save it, I couldn’t adapt to using the g-pen.

Therefore, his painting is always far worse than others.

This is a very big disadvantage. After all, the biggest difference between comics and novels is that the story creation of comics is expressed through paintings.

Your drawing skills are not as good as others. Unless the story is very interesting, you can make up for this disadvantage.

So now, Higashino Hibiki is waving the g-pen, hoping to get familiar with this thing as soon as possible.

The tip of the pen is soft and bifurcated in the middle. Use the strength of your hand to draw the thickness of the line.

Quite difficult to master.

Fortunately, when the original director painted "The Battle between Gods and Humans", he had experience with the g-pen, which gave Hibiki Hibiki some foundation.

Otherwise, you have to practice for at least 2 months before you can use the g-pen normally.

I don't know how much time passed while I was immersed in painting. It was not until Akira Toriyama came to the studio to announce that it was time for dinner that Hibiki came back to his senses.

"It's fun to draw comics," he said to Akimiya Akemi.

"Of course it's interesting!" Akimiya Akemi said matter-of-factly.

Otherwise, a young lady like her would not come to the countryside.

When a teacher teaches students, isn't it nice to feel comfortable?

With a father's fame, no matter what his ability is, he can still be boasted as a great painter.

The profession of a painter is much more difficult to identify than that of a writer.

…

Time passed like this, and on Thursday afternoon, the latest episode of "Dragon Ball Z" finally came to an end.

The next three days were the time for Akira Toriyama to conceive the storyboards, and Hibiki Higashino and the others did not need any help.

As the most powerful cartoonist, Akira Toriyama doesn’t need Hibiki Higashino’s “inspiration”.

Regarding the end of z, during the summer vacation of 1993, he may have had an idea.

Akira Toriyama's job before drawing comics was designing flyers and posters.

Because he believes that this profession is free and creative.

Unfortunately, there is still a layer of leadership above, as well as Party A.

They would make other demands, seriously interfering with Toriyama's creative freedom.

So, as a country boy, he resigned after working for three years.

Then came drawing comics.

"I hope I can draw whatever I want, but the business model is not like this. Comics are no longer under the control of the author. To be honest, I don't like the comic "Dragon Ball"."

So says Akira Toriyama, creator of the world's most valuable manga.