The art book will be over 200 pages long and will have around 300 drawings. I have scans of some of the drawings I gave to people, so I plan to use them. This picture was made by pouring color into one of the line drawings that was left.
There was a picture for which I just couldn’t find the master data. Normally I would keep a PSD of the color layer with the scanned data of a line drawing, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I used my only remaining B4 size, high resolution JPEG to create the data to be used in the art book.
The original picture has a white background, but the designer suggested adding color, so I created a mask and added color. I also made some minor corrections. If I add or edit something, it will be compared to the previous picture on the internet and I will be exposed, so it’s a huge pain, but I want people to see it in the best possible way.
For Yamato 2202, there were no official illustration requests other than for the novelization, so this was a private drawing. It will also be published in the art book, but I have had to go through major surgery and make some corrections. At the initial stage, Kodai’s head was a little small, so I enlarged it by about 1.6 times at the line drawing stage, correcting it while taking care of the position so that the two characters’ eyes would not move. I do the same thing here and there with other illustrations, so it will never end.
I heard that the release of the art book has been announced on Amazon, but I’m still working on it! I haven’t even drawn the cover yet (I submitted the rough draft to the editorial department). I’ve been working on pictures from almost 20 years ago, and I’ve ended up overdoing it and making major revisions. There are almost no pictures left as they were, and I’ve been adding and correcting them here and there. Anyway, I have to keep moving forward. The battle continues.
The earliest release will be on 3/15 at the Yamato corner of Kinokuniya Bookstore, adjacent to the venue floor of the Yamato Complete Records Exhibition held at Shibuya Seibu. So far, I haven’t heard anything about signing books or autograph sessions. I think it will start being sold on Amazon and in bookstores on the 24th, the public release date. There have been no requests for it to be sold on Yamato Crew’s online store. I’ve heard from Maruzen Ochanomizu that they want to do signed books and offer purchase bonuses.
There’s a page like this in the art book. Sadly, monitor graphics images are not considered to be on as high a level as design art, and therefore are rarely seen by the general public, so in the Yamato art book I created a collage for the break pages, mainly featuring graphics from 2202.
