Now Viewing: toriyama_akiraTag type: Artist 鳥山 明 A highly popular and influential male mangaka and character designer. He was born on April 5, 1955 in Nagoya, Japan. He is so well regarded that in a 2010 poll on Mangaka that Changed the History of Manga, he came in second, second only to Tezuka Osamu, who is credited for defining the modern manga style. He is most famous for designing the characters for many video games like the Dragon Quest franchise and Chrono Trigger and creating Dr._Slump and Dragon_ball. Toriyama began drawing when he was a child. His classmates all loved drawing animation because they didn't have many other forms of entertainment, but Toriyama stood out from the rest of his class when it came to drawing. He believes that this happened when he began drawing his friends and, after he won a prize from a local art studio for a 101 Dalmations drawing, he began to think art was fun. In his professional career, he started off as a poster designer, but quit that job to become a mangaka. He made his debut with Wonder_Island in 1978, but made his breakthrough with the 1980 comedy manga Dr._Slump. When the manga started, he still lived with his parents, but the manga's success changed that. He followed Dr. Slump with his most popular and influential work, Dragon_Ball, which became his longest running manga, lasting 11 years, and led to him being cited by many subsequent action mangaka as one of their biggest inspirations. Along with many other conventions of shonen action manga, he is credited with popularizing younger and more innocent protagonists for such series. His post Dragon Ball manga tend to be much shorter. Although the original Dragon Ball manga ended in 1995, Toriyama returned to the franchise in the 2010s writing several canon Dragon Ball anime films, Battle of the Gods, Resurrection F, and Dragon Ball Super Broly. He is also involved with an anime TV sequel to Dragon Ball Z and the first two films, called Dragon ball Super, which ignores Dragon Ball GT. Besides manga, he is the character designer for the Dragon_Quest franchise and designed the characters for every Dragon Quest game to date. For the Dragon Quest games, creator Horii Yuji sends Toriyama sketches of the characters, which Toriyama fleshes out and colors. Toriyama notes that his video game designs tend to be more complex since the characters are mostly depicted as small video game sprites and only need a few distinguishing features to be recognizable. This gives him more freedom to flesh out the designs for the official artwork without worrying about having to reproduce them weekly as he would for a manga. Toriyama cites Tezuka Osamu's Tetsuwan_Atom and Walt Disney's 101_Dalmations as two animated works he greatly admires. He was also influenced by an adaptation of his own work, Dragon Ball. From animator Ashida_Toyoo's work, Toriyama learned that separating colors instead of blending them makes the art cleaner and makes it easier to color illustrations. Outside of animation, he was also influenced by Jackie Chan's films, particularly Drunken Master. Toriyama also loves cars and motorcycles, a trait inherited from his father, who was a motorcycle racer and operated an auto repair business. He is the founder of Bird Studio, named after his family name. However, he really does most of the work himself and only employs one assistant at a time and the assistant mostly worked on the backgrounds. He is good friends with fellow mangaka Katsura_Masakazu who has even appeared in his manga; the two of them like to make jokes about the other. He is also known for being rather forgetful when it comes to his creations. For example, he didn't plan out Dragon Ball's story beforehand and since he would forget what he already wrote/drew, he sometimes painted himself into a corner, forcing him to think of a way out. He has been married to Yoshimi_Katou, a manga assistant who also goes by Nachi Mikami, since May 2, 1982. Toriyama passed away on March 1, 2024 from acute subdural hematoma, with his final work being creating the story and character designs to Dragon_Ball_Daima. His work: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Toriyama#Works dragonball.wikia.com/wiki/Akira_Toriyama Other Wiki Information Last updated: 03/07/24 11:50 PM by jojosstand This entry is not locked and you can edit it as you see fit. |
     
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