Category: Art

Enchanted

June 13, 2024

I walked from Ultraman Shopping Street north for about a half hour toward the nearby ward (or suburb) of Setagawa. My goal was a gallery to see a very special art exhibit, and I knew I was on the right track when signs began to appear on community notice boards:

By sheer providence I had seen a sign advertising this in a bookstore the other day. Junji Ito is one of my favourite manga creators, and I love his stories and his art, and to be honest he would have been at the top of my list had you asked who I’d like to see an exhibit of, so I was absolutely overjoyed to have a chance. But would it be good?

It was astonishingly good! This was a full blown exhibit of original art spanning his nearly 40-year horror manga career. There were dozens and dozens of pieces on display, photos were allowed, and we could get right up close to the works to admire their detail.

It was arranged chronologically, starting with Tomie and moving into Uzumaki and Gyo and his many short stories since. Almost all the original art – oils or watercolours – for the covers of his works were on display, as well as massive amounts of iconic manga pages.

Yes this is all his original work, not facsimiles or reprints; Hand drawn by him using inks and screen tone. Many are larger than the size they were printed, and it was fascinating to see how he created his work in detail.

Take the above for instance: the white lines on the top panel are actually painted on to a black background. And you can see white paint was used for the sound effects, which suggests they were added afterwards, over the art. Every black line is hand-inked, and the lightning appears to have been scratched (?) out of the tone used for the sky. In his comments that accompanied several of his example pieces, he mentions he doubts he could produce such detailed work today (he’s 60 now).

Much of the art was presented framed, but the gallery space itself was also wonderful designed and decorated to fit his work.

That’s the Uzumaki room, which contains many panels from the manga, as well as colour art for the covers and even early designs for characters or covers

As technology changed, so too did manga production, and most of it is digital now. Apparently Ito still works with traditional media (they had photos of his studio which didn’t look like it has changed much since the 1980s) and assistants touch up his line art digitally. Here’s a comparison from Hellstar Remina showing his original at bottom and after the tone is added digitally on top:

Those pages were very large, about newspaper sized each.

The exhibition included a lot of original oil or watercolour art pieces not created for particular manga stories, and the above one (look closely in the background) had a comment from Ito that when this was listed in a gallery years ago it didn’t sell but he thinks if he listed it again it would 🙂

For many years he was well known in Japan but a cult creator overseas. In the last five or so years his fame has exploded and he is now extremely successful worldwide. One room of the exhibit contained a dizzying selection of his publications in many different languages, and it was mentioned he’s been selling about half a million copies a year in the USA for several years now.

One room contained work he created as a child or while in high school! This was also the room that featured his famous cat manga (which he wrote about his experiences of adopting cats with his wife). The art in those books – which portrays cats in his distinctive style – is wonderful:

There was also this prototype figure made especially for the exhibit:

And this copy of the first manga monthly he ever had a story in:

I hate to reduce this man’s prodigious talent down to something base, but I just kept thinking about the fact that this exhibit of dozens upon dozens of iconic and extremely talented original manga art and paintings must now be worth a fortune. A quick search online shows that small sketches of his have sold for $3000+ in recent years so I can’t imagine what something like this painting could go for:

I can’t overstate how much I enjoyed this exhibit. I have two shelves of his work at home, and have been reading him since long before he became well known in the USA. It was a privilege to be able to see so much of his original work, and to read about their inspirations in his own words.

This was probably the highlight of this entire trip 🙂

Let’s Talk About Stamps

June 9, 2024

This post is dedicated to Sue, who (I think) wanted me to send her an eki stamp, and this gave me the idea to blog about rubber stamps!

eki stamps are rubber stamps available at virtually every train or transport station in Japan. Travelers can put these stamps into a stamp book as a record of their journeys, and they are very commonly collected. The first few times we’ve visited Japan we’ve done just this, but in recent trips I usually just put them on a postcard if I have one handy.

The above photo shows the two stamps available at Kinugawa station, and the imprint of the Tobu (as opposed to Metro) Asakusa station stamp.

Eki stamps are so popular in Japan that many other attractions including shopping centers and amusement parks have them as well. Both Tobu World Square and Edo Wonderland had them, but I didn’t have a postcard on me to collect the imprint.

Sometimes time-limited stamps exist to promote tourism or attract customers. An example of this is currently underway in Kinugawa: there are six demon statues around town, and next to each is a little wooden ‘house’ containing a stamp. The idea is to have fun finding all demons and collecting the six stamps. I found four in my wanderings, and put the stamps on postcards.

Another example are six bookstores around Tokyo currently having rubber stamps for the manga Frieren available free to use, and the sign next to them humorously says each time you use one you unlock a fast travel to that bookstore. These stamps are very cute, and I got one in January and another today. I wonder where the other four are?

Another common use of stamps is for a type of bingo or treasure hunt, and there’s one going on right now in Akihabara. Nine stamps related to the series Quintessential Quintuplets are available at various shops in Akihabara, and if you stamp them on the (free) bingo card you can get prizes. This is of course a way to get customers into shops, and it’s clever since 5 stamps are free but the other 4 require you to buy something. So everyone can get at least one free prize (a sticker) but if you spend money in the shops you can end up getting much more.

If you read yesterday’s blog post you will also remember the maze also used rubber stamps as a record of completion, which is the same basic idea.

Of course all these rubber stamps can be used to stamp anything you like, and reports say a handsome and wise young Australian was seen today putting one of the Quintuplet bingo stamps onto a postcard…

And then there’s this incredible rubber stamp at the reception in my hotel. It’s a three-colour design created by successive application of three different stamps. A plastic guide is provided to make sure the three align, and I’m sure you’ll agree it looks great! While using the stamp is free, it’s actually an advertisement, and you can order your own (in multiple designs with whatever text you like) for only $200!

You may have guessed with all the talk of mad postcard stamp applications, but some of you will be getting a card with a stamp on it. I’ll let you wonder which one, but so far it’s not the hotel one since it’s specific to this hotel rather than a place and I’m not sure you’d be interested. But it’s so cool if you want it, just text me or leave a comment (and don’t delay for obvious reasons).

Enter the Machine Brain

May 13, 2024

As hinted yesterday, this years postcard contest was separately and individually assessed by an impartial third party. I don’t know her name, so we’ll call her Machine Brain. I also don’t know what she looks like but it’s probably something like this:

Machine Brain is an AI, specifically a ChatGPT-powered AI that utilized image analysis methods to evaluate our works. After a few failures (where the AI had trouble understanding the request) Bernard managed to refine a way for AI to assess and judge our two works week-by-week alongside the other five judges.

The multi-step process was complex, but essentially Machine Brain judged each pair twice (to avoid left/right bias) and gave a score out of 2 (one for each assessment). The score was based on evaluating each painting in four categories: colour, composition, detail and theme.

To be expressly clear: the contest results were decided by the five official judges (the results of which are in the previous post). AI judging was an experiment to see how closely (if at all) a machine could reproduce the opinion of five individuals. Before I get to its results, let’s go through some examples of its evaluations. In every case the text I quote below is verbatim what Machine Brain ‘said’ after she judged the paintings together:

The above was the first country, China, which the judges gave to Bernard (on the left). The AI disagreed and gave me the win with this explanation:

The left image uses simpler, less varied colors and has a less dynamic composition compared to the right. The right image has a richer color palette and a more interesting composition with the mountain shapes and bridge. Both images fit the theme of ‘china’ well, depicting the Great Wall on the left and a traditional Chinese landscape on the right, but the right captures a more quintessentially Chinese aesthetic with its mountain scenery.

Here’s Egypt, which I (on the left) very slightly won. The AI said this one was a tie, with this comment:

The left image has a more realistic color palette but lacks vibrancy, while the right image uses bold colors that catch the eye. The composition on the left is more cluttered and less focused than the right, which has a clear subject and horizon line. Both images connect to the Egypt theme, but the right image’s inclusion of the camel silhouette and pyramid gives it a slight edge in adhering to the theme.

The above seems like a win for Bernard and it was, but as I said the AI judged twice and the second time gave me the win so overall it determined Egypt was tied.

For Japan it agree with the judges and gave me a clear win:

The left image uses a bright palette but lacks some depth in color variation. The right image shows a bit more complexity in its use of color, creating a vibrant scene. Compositionally, the right image shows a more dynamic and engaging use of space with the torii gate framing Mount Fuji, while the left image is more simplistic and less engaging. Detail on the right is better executed with some attention to textures, though both show a naive style. Thematically, both images clearly reference Japan with Mount Fuji and cherry blossoms, but the right image adds the iconic torii gate, enhancing the theme.

And for Antarctica it also agreed with the judges and gave the win to Bernard’s depiction (on the left):

The left image has a brighter color palette, suggesting the reflection of sunlight on snow, fitting for the Antarctic theme, while the right has a more muted palette, but less variation in color intensity. The composition on the left effectively conveys depth with penguins as a focal point, whereas the right has a good central focus with the whale tail but lacks the same sense of space. Both images capture elements of Antarctica but the detailed depiction of wildlife and landscape on the left aligns slightly better with the theme.

These are amazingly nuanced comments from a machine aren’t they?

Interestingly, Bernard also wanted to see what an AI could create if they entered the contest as an artist. This proved challenging, since it was difficult to get the AI to account for the small canvas or inexperience of Bernard and myself. The idea was abandoned but here are some examples of what various AI image generators created:

The above was ‘acrylic painting of Egypt by someone with only a weeks experience’.

The above was similar for Netherlands.

And that was ‘an amateur painting of France on a small canvas’. The entire image above is AI produced, including the background and brush.

On to the results! To summarize:

The five official judges gave me six wins (France, The Netherlands, Egypt, Japan, India and Australia) to Bernard’s four (China, Italy, Antarctica and Atlantis). The final tally was therefore 6 to 4 in my favour.

The ‘Machine Brain’ AI judge gave me six wins (China, France, The Netherlands, Japan, India and Atlantis), Bernard one (Antarctica) and tied three others (Italy, Egypt and Australia). Awarding 0.5 points for a tie therefore makes the AI tally 7.5 to 2.5 my way.

The final judgement is up to you: did the AI agree with the official judges or disagree? And if not, then who was the most accurate?

Robot Claw