I was inspired by the large, double-pronged horns of the Noko Kuwagata (Japanese stag beetle), so you’ll see a lot of branching and twisting throughout the design.
Also, if you’re of the same kind as me, you’ll probably recognize that I added a bit of feathered dinosaur influence.

Ancient Creatures and Cats

Edo-period ukiyo-e **never featured dinosaurs or paleontology-related subjects**.Even the **brilliant, eccentric ukiyo-e artists** couldn’t conceive of anything from **160 million years ago**—it was simply outside the realm of their imagination.
But depending on how you look at it, this means we’re in a unique position to “re-experience” what they must have felt.
It’s like when they heard rumors that “There’s a giant striped cat on the continent!” and painted tigers based on that vague idea.
Now, I get to do the same—but with dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures.
While working on this, I found myself wanting to explore more subjects like this.

The Struggles of Making a Timelapse

I’ve always known this kind of artwork takes an immense amount of patience,
but every time I attempt to make a process video, even I find myself a little overwhelmed.
Procreate’s timelapse export records absolutely everything—
layer visibility, opacity adjustments, redo/undo actions—so it results in a flashing, chaotic mess of a video.
Naturally, since this piece required me to push my creative boundaries, the number of recorded actions was absurd.

Hello there!
This artwork is a Skeb commission.
Apparently, it’s going to be turned into a mobile battery!

I painted the background with a touch of elegance.


Making of Timelapse
Dragons are the best!!
I feel a bit sad now that it’s finished.
That’s all for now!

Hi!
I really wanted to draw a Spotted Gar in a ukiyo-e style!!!
Isn’t it amazing that this fish has remained unchanged for 400 million years?
It’s practically a dinosaur’s grandpa.

By the way, Kaido-maru refers to Kintarō, meaning it’s the childhood name of Sakata Kintoki.
I struggled with this part quite a bit—given today’s chaotic times, I wondered if Kintarō’s signature outfit would be acceptable from a compliance perspective. If I were to turn it into merchandise, would someone flag it?

Anti-Amazon Knockoff Measures
Starting this time, I’ve begun experimenting with embedding unauthorized-use warning text directly into the artwork to counteract bootleg products on Amazon.
For any actual merchandise I create in the future, I’ll replace this section with different text.
Read more

I had the honor of working with Intel.

I finally drew an original piece after a long time.
I created it for Twitter’s Children’s Day tag, so I actually released it about a month ago…
I had planned to make a making-of video before posting it on Blog, but my schedule got a bit disrupted when it overlapped with work deadlines, so here we are now.
Since it’s been a while, I thought I’d include some commentary as well.

Brave and Energetic (勇壮活発 | Yūsō Kappatsu)
Meaning: Courageous and lively.
Doesn’t the Boys’ Festival make you want to swing decorative swords around? I certainly did.
I remember getting all excited wearing a kabuto (samurai helmet), then lining up my SD Musha Gundam plastic models for a commemorative photo.


Making-of Timelapse

Oh. My. Goodness. It was absolutely brutal. :(；ﾞﾟ’ωﾟ’):