Ippei Gyoubu is a japan based artist who has collaborated with Sony, Coca-cola, Playstation, Sega, Konami, Lotte and Disney to name a few. Each of his illustrations depicts a distinctive main character. After seeing some of his work I feel like most of it is heavily concentrated on the Japanese fashion and pop culture as he has done illustrations and collaborations with fashion brands and names such as Adidas and Nike and many of his characters are always wearing fashionable and sometimes quirky, unusual outfits and hairstyles. A lot of his work is in a long horizontal orientation almost as if it were a panorama shot and usually the setting is a very common scenery in japan such as the buildings of Shibuya in the back ground or inside of a train carriage or a fast food joint. It's the design of the characters and odd colour schemes and use of colour which make the image look very irregular despite the very normal scenery.
This image above is set in Shibuya and has a panoramic orientation. The main character is clearly the girl in red plaid print clothing as she is placed the closest to the foreground as well as the girl eating noodles. The girl in the red has a very normal colour scheme compared to the other characters as she has fair skin and a natural hair colour and eye colours such as brown and blue where as the other characters look un ordinary with their alien- like yellow, green and red skin colours and unnatural neon hair colours. I think the characters are made this way to show the diversity of fashion and style in japan and mainly in Shibuya which is the setting as Shibuya is associated as the fashion district of Tokyo along side Harajuku. I think this also associates with how other people who are unfamiliar with japanese pop culture may view all things from japan as outrageous, crazy and downright weird. I have noticed in some of his work including this one it feels as if he has illustrated a blur between a digital dimension and reality as some of the characters have hair that looks pixellated whilst others have more realistic hair shapes and a lot of these characters also have a semi futuristic design to show that japan is a very digitised country. I find the lines in his work very crisp, fine and precise. His style doesn't ever consist of sketchy or sloppily drawn or texture line art and he also uses red sometimes as the colour for some of his line art like other anime influenced work i've scene which I am considering doing for my own artwork in my animation. Similar to the super flat art style he doesn't use any shading in his characters and only colours them with flat planes of block colours, he sometimes uses textures or patterns such as polka dots or plaid but he doesn't shade and the hair of his characters are line less also and are formed with just a single colour in the shape of the hairstyle without any lines to define the strands or shape of the hair.
This image uses an interesting mix of media and material as the background is mainly made up of photographed objects unlike the first image I talked about whilst the characters still maintain their 2D anime influenced style. The 'sky' in the background is a white and yellow diagonal striped pattern which i find is more effective than making the background completely photo realistic as it showed the blur again between realism and cartoon and makes the image look more like a collage. I think the photo realistic background makes the image more interesting as i think photographed objects makes nature scenes, temples and religious structures look more authentic and natural than a drawing of it would which is appropriate for the setting. The 2D characters in the foreground make the image and scenery look more like a combination of modern era and historical era but I also think that it represents the fact that even in today's modern and digitised world there are still remains of historical culture and traditions which are still being practiced, appreciated and are useful to this day. All of the characters in this image are female and most are wearing the same japanese sailor school uniform though the characters still differ drastically and are individually distinguishable despite wearing the same uniforms because of the unnatural skin and hair colours as well as having noticeable features such as the girl with striped socks and the girl with robot like legs. He has also used a complimentary colour scheme for some of his characters such as the girl with yellow skin and purple hair and the two girls on the right placed next to each other as their hair colours, red and green compliment each other.
I really like this illustration as he went for something different to what he usually does with his panoramic city setting and fashionable, modern character designs. The orientation is landscape and he has used a more minimal colour scheme using colours which are representative of japan, red and white as well as blue and black. He has also used a texture as well as a flat pattern for the skin and clothing of the character and rather than multiple characters he has decided to focus it on one. Instead of his usual modern imagery he has drawn a traditionally fashioned geisha smoking from a pipe with regular black hair and he has used a knitted like texture for her skin with red and white stripes, colours representative to the japanese flag. For the background he has used a dark blue for the sky and white to form clouds and smoke behind the geisha and coming from her mouth, he has also used the white to draw 3 planes flying across the sky. The planes look like battle or war planes and the way the red is being used also indicate to me a state or war and conflict although the geisha has a relaxed expression I feel like it says she is at peace with herself and her lifestyle despite the conflict around her. I find the proportion of the character slightly off though as her hand is far too big in comparison to her face so it looks out of place to me. The round red adornment in her hair also reminds me of the japanese flag and I feel like this image in general has a very prideful theme to it which is mainly portrayed by the colours and the posture of the geisha.
This image is obviously a piece he did for adidas as there is product/ brand placement within the image as the Adidas logo is on the trousers of the robot looking character. The image is of square orientation and I feel like the characters are more influence by western pop culture this time round as the robot character wearing the green adidas pants closely resembles Guy a member of Daft Punk, a band of 2 robot like characters. The colour scheme is also very minimal with only 4 colours, pink, green, white and black. The colours here work well together as they contrast and compliment each other and it gives the image a very neon, nightlife kind of city theme. The background is plain and is white with only some pink over lapping circles in one corner to create some sort of pattern so there is no specific setting for this image letting the focus be completely on the attire of the characters. I have also noticed a single object which is a completely random yellow colour which isn't found anywhere else in the image making the yellow bag stand out. There is a square object inside the bag which I would assume is a CD that has been newly bought by the character and I feel it relates to the other characters in the image which have robotic features and are wearing headphones or have wires hanging off of them. This again emphasises the digitised community which has become a reoccurring theme throughout Ippei's work and has influenced him greatly.
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