Yoshitaka Amano - Tumblr Posts - Page 2

Poster art for a 2006 performance of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni at the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan concert hall. From Yoshitaka Amano: The Illustrated Biography.

"Vampire Hunter D" illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano and written by Hideyuki Kikuchi since 1983.

Beautiful, and thank you so much for taking the time to explain! Now, I have more references to look at and study. I have loved dark fantasy ever since I laid my eyes on it at a very early age. I was watching vampire hunter D and playing castlevania lol.

What/who, were your inspiration(s) that contributed to your art style? Any advice or techniques that you learned to help implement them to your art?

I've been searching for dark fantasy artists that have somewhat the same type of drawing style. I'm heavily inspired and would love to learn how to make my art have the same feeling to it.

Difficult question but I'll do my best to answer it as coherently as possible! First of all - massive inspiration for me is 80s and 90s fantasy, folklore, video games, music, the usual. I always jokingly said that my art style is the result of a person who has been sat in front of Diablo 2 at a way too young age but the game is still one of my biggest inspirations in art. Especially as time goes on I massively prefer those old school late 90s, early 00s graphics over any remaster. Beyond that, campy and colourful 80s fantasy in the vein of Ridley Scott's movie Legend is much more appealing to me than the next gritty and eternally grey HBO series. I'm also a big fan of Sergei Parajanov and his movies tho. As it stands with dark fantasy, I truly believe that while it's also often a core feature of it, it as a genre is not ultimately defined by gore, blood and mature topics, but rather a raw and unfiltered experienced that is not supposed to be palateable to a broad and corporate audience. In my experience, people writing and designing dark fantasy things for the market create the most shallow and boring content filtered through 50 layers of "what is cool and badass" instead of "what is unique and feels honest". This one goes more for writing but writing and drawing goes hand in hand for me - starting in the 2010s I feel like there's a belief that a story can only be mature if people say fuck often enough and if the setting is as grim and hopeless as possible, ultimately resulting in dishonest and shallow writing. You can see it in many things, such as Netflix' Castlevania, which carries over nothing of the games awkwardness that resonated more with me than any cool one-liner. When it comes to designs, give me Blasphemous' Altasgracias, a three-faced bearded and naked woman, over any badass Artstation dude bro design. I massively adore quirky and goofy aspects in darker settings. It took me very long to be interested in Dark Souls because I thought it's just going to be another throwaway epic fantasy game, as this is what people tried to get me into, until a friend told me about dumb stuff like Frampt dangling from the ceiling and Big Hat Logan, which clicked with me more than Cool Badass Boss Fight With Orchestra Number 24. I don't think I can help you much with techniques. I draw massively on intuition alone and describing why I do what I do is difficult. I can give you basic art advice in the vein of composition, lighting, yadayada, but why my style looks the way it does... dunno, I sieved it out of the dirt, then cooked it with all my interests until everything evaporated and this was left at the bottom of the pot. As for the music side of inspiration, I mostly listen to Black Metal, Neo-Folk and Trip Hop. Bands like Bethlehem, Kinit Her, Dead Can Dance, E-L-R, Portishead, Ulaan Passerine, Rope Sect are always on.

This post got long. Have some pictures under a read more, and thank you for the interest and the ask!

Diablo 2

Blasphemous

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors \ Тіні забутих предків by Sergei Parajanov

The Colour of Pomegranates by Sergei Parajanov

Album cover of Storm of Radiance - Kinit Her

I went to Sydney for Alphonse Mucha

by: Icie

One thing to know about me, I was an interior design major back in my home country. I absolutely sucked at it, but I fell in love with Art History. In that minor, our professors taught us about different art styles through the ages and bit by bit I saw the progress of art through the ages. I loved the OG Gothic Style, Romanesque, was disillusioned with Baroque and Rococo from the west... It was too Western focused and it didn't interest me as much (because I was an Asian kid) until we got towards the end of the 19th century where the grandparents of weebs (of which I am a part of) hailed from and Japonisme was a thing. Japonisme inspired so much beautiful art and it triggered a domino effect that ultimately led to Art Nouveau where Alphonse Mucha was a main character.

This was it. My favourite art style! I can never go back to loving other art styles after discovering Art Nouveau. It spoke to me about how feminine it was and it awakened something from my mostly masculine soul. I wanted to see more of these beautiful girls surrounded by flowers and stars, wearing kimono-inspired clothes in pretty pastels. The macaroni hair only added to the romanticism of it all. This is what love is like, but in art form!

Fast forward to 2024, The Mucha Foundation collaborated with the Art Gallery of New South Wales to host over 200 of this master's works which was "the most comprehensive exhibition ever seen in Australia of this visionary artist's work". I had to see it. I needed to see it! I am a big fan of Mucha and Art Nouveau, and one of my dreams was to go to Paris, Brussels, and Prague for all of the beautiful swirly-whirlies. Being a Brisbanite, I was exited. Please come to my city! Please, please, please! But AGNSW said "sorry, it's exclusive to Sydney."

Dammit. It's off to Sydney I go. I donned my Sailor Moon dress, packed my bag for a 3 day trip with my partner just so I could see this legend's works and boy, I was not disappointed. I learned to love Mucha and his works even more. We landed in Sydney, didn't check in our hotel, and went straight to the main quest:

Outside, they had this big banner of Mucha's name. Inside was this glorious area that showcased Summer (left) and Rose (right). Oh wait, the exhibit is next door. So we went to the more modern building, down two floors, bought tickets, and enjoyed the art.

In the newer building next door, I was treated to pre-art nouveau Mucha. We learned about what his life was like before his popularity. He designed some clothes for a theatre, hung out with everyone's buddy Paul Gaugin, Ludek Marold and Annah the Javanese. The tour guide said, "if he wasn't a painter, he would've been a great photographer".

Then we were treated to the meat of the exhibit: the Sarah Bernhardt stuff, his lithographs, his sketches, but what struck me most were his concept art to reality. (Excuse my phone's shadow. For some reason, AGNSW decided to put these works on a 45° angle under bright lights. The girl beside me even said "fucking glare!" and I wholeheartedly agreed.)

We were treated to so many wonderful works and I cried when I saw parts of Le Pater. I'm an atheist but this made me think that maybe there is a god. Maybe. But still, beautiful artwork that left me speechless.

I got to stand next to my favourite work of his: White Star. Joy!

At the end of the exhibit, the tour guide talked about how Mucha who was somewhat influenced by Japan, now influenced Japan. Now we come full circle with anime and manga characters depicted in art nouveau styled paintings and posters. Oh boy, we had our Lord Yoshitaka Amano's works in the gallery as well. I was so lucky to see works of my two favourite artists in one day!

It was almost 2PM by the time we finished the tour. We spent at least 4 hours in the gallery after landing just because I fangirled and was willing to spend money on Mucha. Yeah, I bought stuff. A reproduction of Alphonse Mucha's original "Documents Decoratifs" which focused more on his industrial design work (jewellery, cutlery, furniture etc) which I rarely see on the internet, a set of badges and make-up from Japanese brand MilleFée.

I went to Sydney for Alphonse Mucha and it was worth it. I end this rabid fangirling with the parting words of the Art Gallery of New South Wales' tour guide: Mucha's style has never been as well loved and as well represented as it is in Japan.