The Day I Met Katsuhiro Otomo, Director of Akira
There are a handful of moments from my animation career that still feel a little unreal when I think back on them. Meeting Katsuhiro Otomo, the creator and director of Akira, is definitely one of them.
It was 2012, and I was working as a Look Development artist at Walt Disney Animation Studios, deep in production on Wreck-It Ralph. The studio was in an interesting period at the time. There had been layoffs, while at the same time a lot of younger artists were being hired, so there was a mixture of excitement and uncertainty in the air. We were also working hard, and I was tired in the way you tend to be when you're right in the middle of finishing an animated film.
Then we heard, almost at the last minute, that Otomo-san was coming to the studio.
Disney hadn't really publicized the visit much internally, either that or I just hadn’t gotten the memo lol, so when I went to the theater I was amazed by how few people were there. For someone as influential as Katsuhiro Otomo, I expected a completely packed screening. Instead there were barely any people in the room, which made the whole experience much more intimate than I ever could have imagined. Can you imagine?!
Otomo was there to show his animated short film Combustible (Hi no Yojin), set in Edo-period Japan. It was fascinating seeing him explore such a different world from the futuristic Neo-Tokyo of Akira. The film drew heavily from traditional Japanese artwork and historical imagery, but that incredible attention to atmosphere, composition, movement, and environment was still there.
For me, though, simply being in the same room with Otomo was difficult to process.
Akira had genuinely influenced my decision to go into animation. Even now, the film's colors, lighting, scale, movement, and emotion feel almost unreal to me. There is something beautifully tragic and surreal about it. Neo-Tokyo feels enormous, luminous, dangerous, lonely, and alive all at once, and so many of the ideas running through the film still feel strangely pertinent decades later.
As a young artist, Akira helped show me what animation could be. It could be cinematic, beautiful, unsettling, complicated, and emotionally powerful. So there I was years later, actually working professionally in animation myself, listening to the artist responsible for it talk about his work.
I had brought a little notepad with me because I thought I was simply going to listen to the presentation and take notes. I had absolutely no idea we would get the chance to actually meet Otomo-san, shake his hand, take a photograph, and ask for an autograph afterward.
That realization immediately made me nervous.
I had nothing for him to sign. No Akira book, no poster, not even a nice clean sheet of white paper. All I had was the little notepad I'd been using during his talk, and I remember feeling genuinely embarrassed handing it to him. This was someone I considered a legend, an artist who had helped inspire my own career, and somehow I felt like my little piece of notebook paper wasn't important enough for him.
I was nervous enough that I tried speaking to him in my very broken Japanese, mostly because I wanted to make sure I was being as polite and respectful as possible.
And then he did something I never expected.
He drew a little picture of himself for me.
Suddenly that ordinary piece of notebook paper became one of my favorite things from my entire animation career.
Looking back, I actually love that I wasn't prepared. I hadn't brought some carefully chosen collectible hoping to get it signed. I had brought a notepad because I genuinely wanted to hear him speak about animation, and that's what ended up becoming the place where Otomo drew something for me.
I was equally unprepared for the photograph.
I was in the thick of production on Wreck-It Ralph, exhausted, and very much dressed like someone who had simply shown up for another day at an animation studio. I hadn't done anything special with my hair or makeup and definitely hadn't expected to have my picture taken with Katsuhiro Otomo. If I had known that morning, I would have been way more prepared.
But I actually appreciate the photograph more now because of that. It captures exactly where I was at that moment in my life: a tired young artist working in animation who suddenly found herself standing next to one of the people who had helped inspire her to be there.
By that point in my career, I was also beginning to understand just how much work exists behind every finished image. Working in animation changes the way you look at great art. You start seeing all of the decisions underneath it: color, lighting, texture, environments, materials, composition, effects, drawing, timing, storytelling, and countless revisions.
That is one of the things I've always admired about Otomo's work. His films have such a strong visual identity. They remind me that great art is about deciding what a world should feel like and developing the visual language to communicate it.
That idea has stayed with me throughout my own career.
From Animation to Manga Brush
My years working in animation exposed me to so many different areas of art and production: look development, character artwork, textures, materials, environments, lighting, effects, drawing, and the constant problem-solving required to turn an idea into a finished image.
Over time, I started creating brushes and tools for my own artwork to make some of those processes faster. Those tools eventually grew into Manga Brush.
The Manga Brush Megapack is really an accumulation of everything I've learned over years of drawing, working professionally in animation, studying other artists, experimenting, and developing better ways to solve the repetitive technical problems that come with making art. Today it includes more than 3,000 professional anime and manga brushes for Procreate, Photoshop, and Clip Studio Paint, including tools for inking, lineart, screentones, hair, backgrounds, textures, environments, speed lines, lighting, effects, webtoon artwork, and finishing details. You can see it here! https://www.mangabrush.com/products/manga-brush-megapack
For me, though, the point has never been to create endless amounts of brushes. The goal is to give artists a solid toolkit that is inspiring and allows artists like you to spend more time on choices that make their work their own: the atmosphere, storytelling, emotion, and visual language.
Meeting Otomo was one of those experiences that reminded me how powerful that visual language can become.
I'm incredibly grateful that I happened to hear about that last-minute screening in 2012, that the theater was surprisingly intimate, and that the only thing I happened to bring with me was that little notepad.
I still have the drawing. And I still can't quite believe I got to meet him!
I also had another incredible experience before that period involving the Studio Ghibli team and the release of Ponyo before it came out in theaters, but I'll save that story for another blog post.
Until then,
Happy Drawing! xx
Audrey
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