| After you graduated from university, you went to graduate school in Tokyo and continued to do CG. Did you ever waver in your choice of career? |
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Well...it wasn't so much a case of wavering or not, but rather the fact that there was no connection at all between what I wanted to do and actually working within society. Furthermore the Kyushu Institute of Design was not a place to genuinely pursue art. It was a place to learn so-called "art engineering." I wanted to do more creative art.
Anyway, I looked for a national graduate school with inexpensive fees because I did not want to place much of a financial burden on my parents. Then, I applied to the Tokyo University of Education (now University of Tsukuba) which had a course for hand-drawn art, which was close to what I wanted to do using CG. |
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| Did you continue CG there? |
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| No, no. It was the beginning of a tough period in my life. The classes at graduate school were for hand-drawn art. Of course there were no computers. At the time, computers cost the equivalent of tens of millions of yen. There was no possibility to buy one. So I was in trouble. When I found out that there was a computer at a calculation center at the University of Tokyo, I visited there immediately and I discovered that they charged tens of yen per second. Using one for a few hours would cost the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of yen (laughs). I was in trouble. |
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| So what did you do then? |
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At the time art education only involved hand-drawn art. The tools were rulers, compasses and so on. CG was still unknown. When I went for a drink with an industrial design teacher by chance, he told me "If you want to do CG, you should visit the Industrial Product Research Institute at the Agency of Industrial Science and Technology, MITI." Sake is a good mediator (laughs). The research institute was the place where product design was being researched using such things as CAD tools. When I went there, I found there were the same model computers as those used at the University of Tokyo, and even some higher-end models as well! I really wanted to use them so I asked: "Do you have any part-time jobs?" Then they casually said "you can come as a research student from tomorrow" (laughs). While helping with research I could freely use the computers.
Finally, I was able do at the research institute what I had done as an undergraduate. If I had not had this opportunity, I would be a different person from who I am now. Life is really like a tightrope, isn't it? (laughs)
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| Were you involved with CG at the research institute while continuing your postgraduate studies? |
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| I suffered very much from this situation because the hand-drawn assignments at graduate school and my job at the research institute were totally different. People questioned me from both sides. At graduate school, people asked me: "Why do you put math into art?" or "There is one cancer cell in this class" (laughs). At the time, art was all hand-drawn, so I was seen as a bit of an oddball. While at the research institute people asked: "Why do you make hand-drawn pictures using a ruler and compass!" (laughs). There is no connection between traditional art education and the latest media formats. I did not have enough time for both and it was hell. It was really the dark period (laughs). |
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