Hirohiko Araki

Born june 7th 1960th in Sendai, Miyagi. Hirohiko Araki grew up drawing comics in secret for most of his childhood. He claims his inspiration to start illustrating to be reading his father collecting art books and reading them when he was board as a young child. He notes his earliest inspiration for his style is Gauguin. Has been a mangaka for more than 30 years. Starting in highschool, but getting rejected several times during his time in school. It wasn't until he left Miyagi School of Education he began his actual professional career as a mangaka where he published his first works Cool Shock B.T. (1983) , Baoh: The Visitor (1984), and Gorgeous Irene (1984). Araki’s most noted work is his work on the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (1986), which is a long running series comic (manga) published in magazines. Araki come up with the idea for the manga while eating with his editor in a dinner called “Jonathan's”. The manga became a hit, and is seen as a cornerstone of manga in Japan. Araki style would come to be one of his most noted features. Araki has noted that he tries to never have his characters or settings have a set color theme but rather have the designs of his character speak for themselves. His characters have been originally drawn as brawny huge men with barrelled chest and exaggerated figures. He based his designs primarily around the 80’s action hero frame. He would start to have his designs transform into more sexually-engriousness and slender model figures with perky lips and thin legs. Noted inspiration for his Araki’s characters are movie anti-heroes, action characters, Bands and musical Artists like Mad Max, Dirty Harry, David Bowie, Queen and Fleetwood mac. Araki’s love for western music has even gone into naming and directly influencing designs of characters. This has even caused problems for sending his magnum opus, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, west as the naming of the characters has copyright ownership issues from the referenced sources, such as Prince, ACDC and Metallica. Araki is now currently married to Asami Araki with his two daughters and is still to this day is working on the JoJo manga, that is now more than 30 years old. JoJo has made Araki to be considered one of the most prevalent Japanese illustrators of the current decade as he has had his works featured in the Louvre, a collaboration with the clothing Gucci, and for the celebrities ha has referenced in his art.