I have been procrastinating about writing this first newsletter because my default idea was to outline my process of a recent artwork, but didn’t seem like it would be that interesting. Since Mr. Akira Toriyama’s passing (may he finally get some rest), I thought about how much he influenced me from the very beginning. Like every other artist, I collect artbooks, and today I want to share one of my treasures that I found nearly 20 years ago.

It was my first time at New York Comic Con – a friend from high school Go Club had invited me but when I arrived he quickly ran off with some people I didn’t know. But I really couldn’t care less! I was surrounded by amazing artists, most of whom were too scary to talk to at the time, but there were so many books.

At the very back of the exhibitors hall was a booth selling used books out of cardboard boxes stacked on fold-up tables. After flipping through the entirety of several boxes, I found this treasure wrapped in plastic, with a neon orange sticker price of $59.99: The World Special: Akira Toriyama Illustrations.

The book is housed in a beautifully designed slipcase with the cover illustration framed by a blue and silver diamond motif of Son Goku’s face from Dragon Ball. The Dragon Ball series preceded Dragon Ball Z and was loosely inspired by the Chinese novel, Journey to the West. He dons the infamous circlet that Monkey King wears on his head and the kanji on his bandana is “Son” of Sun Wu Kong (a.k.a the Monkey King).

I loved Dragon Ball and watched for as long as it would rerun on Cartoon Network. What attracted me most was the universe Akira Toriyama presented through Goku’s adventures. There was always feeling of childlike wonder in Toriyama’s depictions of human and animal characters, sci-fi mechs, and dinosaurs that roamed the frontier.

There’s a beautiful black and white drawing on the table of contents. It depicts a moment when the Dragon Ball crew traverse the giant mushroom forest in the desert. I really love the tilted angle, simplified tones (only two!) and the linework. The lines are mostly uniform in width but the curved hatching lines show the form of the dinosaur, its rough skin texture as well as the lighting direction in the environment.

The real treat of this book is seeing his works in progress. In one chapter, Toriyama shows his process for the cover artwork. I tried my best to summarize his words using Google Translate. He says the entire piece took him two days to finish.

(Click on images to expand)

In step 3, he mentions his pen that he’s used since he was a teenager. There is a close up of it on the header image of this post. I had to do a little more research because the photo isn’t clear; “It’s cut short” seemed like a bad translation. But yes, the pen was literally cut short. It’s a wooden pen holder that he shaped to suit his preferences using a knife and sandpaper. He says he bought many other pens over his career but always came back to this original pen because he felt that his drawings came out badly if he used any others. He even stopped drawing after finishing the Sand Land manga because he had lost his favorite pen!

Here are some more closeup photos of a few pages. The page of DBZ rough sketches is one of my favorites – that one of Gohan with his arms spread out feels so visceral – the direction of the hatching adds to the emotion so well.

This book has hundreds of beautiful drawings that I can’t possibly share them all, but many of them have been digitized and can be found fairly easily on the internet. It was nostalgic to flip through this book again to remind myself of my earliest drawings. But now I also am able to appreciate the artistry in Mr. Toriyama’s works that weren’t apparent to me back then. The biggest takeaway looking through this book is that he had so much fun making these drawings – something I struggle with nowadays. This is a great reminder to try to find that again. As a start, I actually had fun drawing a little tribute of Arale, the robot girl protagonist from Toriyama’s debut manga Dr. Slump.

At the end of the day at New York Comic Con, I managed to run into that friend again. We had no phones back then, only serendipity. Munching on some chips, he asked, “Get anything cool today?” I glanced at his fingers, orange with Dorito dust. “Nope, not really!”

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Plenty of people do book reviews but I decided to share my favorite bits from my personal collection instead, as I’ve acquired some pretty special ones over the years.

I would love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, or what you’d like to see in future posts. Do you have a favorite tool or item that you cannot do without?