Zakki Mokuroku

Pamphlet

 

The cover page of the pamphlet I designed last year for a concert in Osaka, Japan. It is a memorable work because this was my first experience to design the whole pamphlet itself, including its content and layout.

 

 

 

The parody of the well-known whale and birds image from Twitter and Gegege no Kitaro, a famous yokai (Japanese folklore spirits and ghosts) manga.

 

The characters use bunch of crows like above for their transportation.

By the way, this is not my original image, but I googled "Twitter is overcapacity" and found this kind of black but funny image.

 

Geez, I never had that idea.

Anyways, have a great trick or treating!

High School Works

The part of series of 12 works that I created during my high school years for AP art (although I didn't get a UO credit from this). The theme is "Railroads & Japanese Culture"

This is the time when I started to see importance on color in order to control the viewer's eyes.
It is also the time when I only had less than a half of Photoshop knowledge that I have now.

 

 

 

From America To Japan

I'm currently working on a group project that contrasts Japanese ads and American ads.
We are starting off from comparing how the products sold both in Japan and America are advertised in each country.
Starting the research, I noticed one unexpected point about products that came from America to Japan. That is, American industries do not seem to change their main advertising concept even in outside countries.

Here are some examples I found.

   

 

   

 

   

 

I will present the ads of products that moved from Japan to America next time, but I can say that advertisers usually change the strategy when they promote Japanese products in America.

When I first thought of this topic, I thought that there would be no difference between products that moved from America to Japan and vice versa, but it seems like this could be a key point of our research.

One of My Most Favorite Work

 

This is an illustration I made for the same music video I designed the logo posted before.
It's the collection of characters from 30 animes related to Starchild, a Japanese anime record label.
It took me about three months to complete the whole work.

Logo Designs

I sometimes work on designing just the logo of the work.

 
The logo I designed for a certain music video. The main design concept was "stars and space".

 

 
The logo I designed for a shootime game created by my friend.

Additional Japanese Ads

Here are some additional samples of Japanese TV ads that use original songs or the parody songs.
There are lot of similar TV ads in Japan, especially around foodstuff ads.

 

The ad for Shin Nihon House, a house reform company.
Ikuzo Yoshi is the famous Japanese singer.

 

 

This ad for a sponge cake of Bunmeido is the parody of "Can-can".
Since the first ad was created in 1962, this ad has been continuously remaked and is still broadcasting today.

 

 

The ad for Nenshou-kei Amino-shiki, a sports drink like Gatorade.
The song says that you don't have to do such an excecise but just drink Nenshou-kei.
This ad was remaked seven times, each showing an amazing excercise performed by the actor.

 

 

The ad for Poporo Saraspa, a pasta made specially for salads.
The song is the parody of Sarasponda, a folksong commonly sang by Japanese elementary students (it is said to be the Dutch folksong).

 

 

The ad for Shaki-tto Corn, a canned corn. It is the product of same company as Poporo Saraspa from above.

The common factors about these musical ads can be seen in their YouTube comments (although they are in Japanese).
Many people say the ad and especially the song brings back old memories. Some even say they still hum the melody even today.
This shows how an ad with cactchy music can be both impressive and both unforgettable.

TV Ad - Long and Short

Looking from the Japanese perspective, the biggest difference of Japanese and American TV ads is their time lengths. The average time length of an American TV ad is about 40 seconds. However, in Japan, the average time length of an TV ad is only about 15 seconds. It is very rare to see an ad that exceeds this time.

This difference directly affects the contents of ads in each country. In America, we see a lot of ads with short stories (or a skit, I guess). Below is my favorite example, which is the ad for Pepsi Max.

 

On the other hand, Japanese TV ads tend to use music to catch the audience's interest, as I mentioned in the post before. There are ads that use songs by famous artists, but there are also many ads that use original songs. Below is the Japanese snack TV ad.

 

Speaking of that, in Japan, we call these songs used in TV ads (regardless of whether its original or not) "CM song", meaning "commercial song". It is a popular way of grouping a song other than basing it on its genre, but it seems like I still have not hear the work in America yet.

Designing an Impressive Character

Designing an original character can be an important part of creative work. An attractive character can be an iconic symbol of your ad or goods, which makes it impressive and unforgettable.

The great example of this is Kerrogg's characters like Tony the Tiger or Coco the Monkey.
Kerrogg's cerial boxes definitely stand out from others in the supermarket shelves because of their package using their unique characters.

So, what makes an unique character? Of course there are several factors that makes a character unique, but let me tell you this.

A unique character can be identified just from a silhouette.

Okay, let's check this out.

 

 

Yes, the son of that famous family. Okay, here's next.

 

 

The world's most famous mouse.

 

 

Hmm...this Japanese game character may be the second world-famous mouse now...
Of course, it doesn't have to be an inhuman character. You can create unique silhouette in other ways.

 

 
The famous hero from Marvell Comics. That unique hand pose is his trademark.

 

 

An extra. Yes, he is a real person.

CD Jacket 2

 
 
 
Another Jacket I designed for my other friend's CD Album Parody. The concept of the work was "musical toybox". I especially like the Queen of Notes (not Hearts!) playing the flute.