Japan Worldcon 03 (Amano Hunter K)
Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 8:26 amOn Saturday I make sure I get the to con on time for Yoshitaka Amano’s talk with Nozomi Orori. In person Amano seems easygoing, honest, witty and down-to-earth. At one point he says he’d like to travel with a backpack for a couple of years, staying anywhere - even sleep in parks. Most of the questions are of a general nature rather than the specific things an art fan might want to know, although Amano discloses that after producing several detailed works he likes to draw something very simple. I’d like to know whether he does a lot of preliminary work, since his paintings often have the distinction of being very detailed, in whole or in part, beautifully composed, and also very fresh and immediate in their execution. He mentioned having had trouble drawing a torii gate (he had never drawn one before) in one of his illustrations for Neil Gaiman’s Sandman: The Dream Hunters, so perhaps he sometimes makes practice drawings and sometimes doesn’t. There’s very little question time at the end and I don’t have a chance to ask.
What I do, as soon as the interview is over and he’s getting up to leave, is bolt to the front with a fair few other people, my big glossy book from yesterday clasped to my chest. He isn’t going to have an official signing session, and this seems like the best chance to get his autograph. Amano accepts a business card from the first man in line, then plainly seeks to make his escape. Photographers and journalists follow him and hold his attention. He is gracious, but I can see why he might have a backpack and a park bench in mind. I can’t catch his eye. I see Tessa Kum, who I know from conventions in Australia, standing there with a book. We exchange wry dashed looks. Amano is heading for the door, the hounds of the Fourth Estate keeping up with him. I want Tessa to play the Gorgeous Young Thing card, which I think might trump the Yet Another Journalist card, and leap in front of him. But she doesn’t. Daydreams of a Japanese translation and an Amano cover actually sustained me through some of the writing of TEC. I owe this man for a lot of inspiration. I really want to thank him. But to say there isn’t going to be time is so much of an understatement that it’s practically subterranean. So what I do, instead, is pounce like a groupie and call out ‘Amano Sensei!’ from behind him. He turns around. I gaze up at him worshipfully and babble very fast: “IloveyourworkI’mawriteryou’veinspiredmesomuch…would you?” thrusting out opened artbook and pen.
“Hai, hai,” he says. I’m expecting a 0.001 second scrawled initial, and would have been grateful for that. Instead, he takes the time to draw a sketch of a profile recognisably his, facing a creature recognisably a Moogle (might that be me?), with a love heart in the middle. I thank him, my eyes having gone as round as bubbles, and then he’s gone, and a reporter with a French-sounding accent is asking if he can see the picture. Which looks like this:
Nanny Mouse is there. He says, ‘You looked like a hunter’. I assure him I rarely behave like that. His eyes narrow. ‘I’m not so sure’. In a strange instant replay of events, located far further down the fame chain, his friend Lilith is waiting with a yellow Prime edition of TEC for me to autograph. She asks me to draw Gwynn and Raule inside. I do the best I can, and perhaps some of Amano’s magic has rubbed off on the biro, since I’m fairly pleased with the results (Gwynn doesn’t half look like Vampire Hunter D, though). Lord knows what Lilith thinks of me, as all I do is babble about Amano, I’m fairly sure. We take cellphone pictures of each other, but I have no idea how to drive the camera on my rented phone and the shot comes out blurry. I hope I’ll get to catch up with her and Nanny Mouse again before I go home.
For one reason and another - chiefly the fact that my kaffeeklatsch is scheduled in the middle of it, even though I asked the programmers not to timetable me against Amano - I miss his dual painting session with Bob Eggleton. Marianne Plumridge-Eggleton tells me about it afterwards. They had five pieces of paper, and each artist started at one end and worked towards the middle. At the end, the audience played elimination rounds of scissors, paper, rock (called ‘janken’ in Japan - it probably originated in China , all you trivia buffs), the winners each receiving one part of the painting. What a lovely thing to do.
I’m afraid I spent the rest of the day telling everyone about my good fortune, whether they wanted to hear it or not. Or maybe I didn’t. I don’t quite remember. Perhaps that’s just as well.
September 7th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Envy envy! Man, you’re so much braver than I am. I would have been terrified of him being annoyed at me and telling me to go away, and wouldn’t have even tried.
September 7th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
I got the impression that he was just too nice to do that. He really seemed like a lovely guy. Siiigh.
September 7th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
That’s very cool. =D
I wonder what an artist’s groupie would do. Maybe she would get painted on. Maybe that’s how he practises his work. ;D
September 8th, 2007 at 3:52 am
That would be bad. Because I don’t know about Kirsten, but if Yoshitaka Amano painted a picture on me, I don’t know how I would ever bring myself to bathe again.
September 8th, 2007 at 5:48 am
It would have to be a tattoo!
September 8th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
You’d run out of skin too fast if he drew them too big, so he’d have to do thumbnail sketches. You could be covered in them, like tiles. You’d look like a really fancy bathroom wall.
I… am going to have to put someone with tattoos like that into a story now.
September 9th, 2007 at 9:43 am
What I see is someone covered in tattooed postage stamps!
September 10th, 2007 at 12:42 am
That’s a lovely story, ready to be spanked into the heads of grand sons and daughters for further reference.
Nice, indeed.
September 11th, 2007 at 5:01 am
Oh, but not spanked, surely? Perhaps painted into their heads with a very fine brush, or tattooed?
September 11th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
I am of the school of violent presentation of foregoer’s life learnings as it has this particularity of sticking out like a sore thumb, drawing attention.
Love is to be used after they take a bad step, to comfort.
September 11th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
I do hope you’re joking.
September 11th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
A joke’s too streched when someone says what you just said
I like to push until there’s a push back. Helps you see the build of a person faster than pleasantries.
September 11th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Heh. I’m usually an adherent of pleasantries, but you picked a subject that I’ll always push back on if it’s raised on this blog.
September 16th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Gorgeous young what card? Haha, you make me laugh!
I found it odd that he had no offical signing session slated, and given the way he fled the room, I didn’t comfortable jumping him. You did very well though! (And for the record, you’re much better looking than a moogle, you gorgeous young thing. ;p)
September 17th, 2007 at 7:47 am
Lol - I thought there should have been a signing session too. Rightly or wrongly, I get frustrated when people are so famous you can’t talk to them unless you’re a journalist (or another superstar).
October 6th, 2007 at 6:46 am
Hi KJ!!
Nice to read about your trips and travails around Japan. To set the record straight, Amano-san is really quite shy. He warmed to Bob during the hour and a half talk before the sketching bit. And he stood around for a while afterwards, outside, autographing and drawing for people. Bob did the same.
How are things with you?
Cheers
Marianne
October 10th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Hi!
He did seem shy - though obviously used to giving interviews. No reason why an artist shouldn’t be shy, really - or a writer. (I’m not naturally a shameless groupie, honest injun!) I’m sorry I missed his and Bob’s drawing session - damn organisers for double-booking me.
I’m just back in Bangkok now, writing and working, and getting wet in the tail-end of the rainy season. How about you?