Produced the opening video used for the 9th Crazy Raccoon Cup Apex Legends. For fans of the event, audio from the previous tournament was incorporated into the footage, creating a piece that lets viewers relive the excitement of the competition. To heighten anticipation with a movie-trailer-inspired style, narration reminiscent of a tale being passed down through history was paired with the visuals. For the typography, Gothic typeface was used for kanji and Mincho typeface for kana. A bold, ultra-thick font was chosen with the intention of powerfully conveying manga-like, message-driven words. By displaying comments posted on social media during memorable scenes, the viewers’ “words” were visualized as “cheers” and “support,” together with the voices of the players.

CG animation for the “Nemuru Ma Anime” segment included in U-NEXT Kids’ picture-book reading program “Nemuru Ma Ehon.” By weaving together the factory motifs that Masaya Ishikawa had explored in his previous works with the absurd ideas of Senpuukyaku Hoshiko, the piece was brought to life as a mysterious and charming visual work. The 3DCG production was handled by Hoshiko. Through repeated trial and error, the process by which “something” whose state keeps changing—such as being stretched or painted—is manufactured was visualized. In the latter half, frame-by-frame “faces” are given to the manufactured objects to endow them with emotion, retelling the factory line as a single story.

As in the previous year, I was in charge of the visual for the call for proposals for the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ Media Arts Creator Development Support Program. I created the base 3DCG motion in Blender and animated it using rotoscoping techniques. The way the letters of MAC (Media Art Creator) transform freely expresses the process of refining ideas during the proposal stage.

Description: We produced a television commercial for JA Zennoh Tottori’s new rice variety “Hoshizora Mai” as an animation created with non-trace drawing. It was commissioned by a project team led by art director Reina Endo and photographer Akiaki Hamasaki, both originally from Tottori Prefecture, through a connection with VOQ, who composed the music and had stayed and worked in Tottori for the prefecture’s “Daisen Animation Project” (2016). This work was inspired by learning about a local culture in which a long history still lives on in people’s lives today, and by the sense gained through exchanges with many people who hold a deep love for their hometown of Tottori. The new rice variety, developed over twenty years, was named “Hoshizora Mai” because of its large, brilliantly white grains. Based on a childhood memory of looking up at the starry sky with friends from the sand dunes, Art Director Endo imagined the vital force of ripening rice ears as countless stars raining down.