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Interview

Shingo Adachi

READERSVOICE.COM aims to collect a few interesting reading tips. For this issue I asked some Japanese animators from the series Sword Art Online: Alicization for some reading favorites. And also for this issue, Norman Wallis continues his Bookfest project: he aims to review every book at the Lifeline Bookfest. There are millions of second hand books for sale at the Bookfest, which is run by the charity Lifeline, to fund services like phone counselling. The next Bookfest is in Brisbane from June 15 to 23.

Some of the character designers from the anime series Sword Art Online: Alicization came to Brisbane on a whirlwind visit recently. They arrived on a Saturday, and were due to return to Japan on Tuesday. They showed how they drew characters: a camera looked over their shoulder and projected what they were drawing onto a screen behind the stage. They drew a rough outline in pencil first, then drew more detailed lines in black felt pen, and then they colored them in with colored felt tip pens.
Shingo Adachi is an animator and character designer for Sword Art Online. He has worked on the series since it started in 2012. He said this series was the first time he’d been in a series that had been loved so much by people overseas.
When asked what was the most difficult expression to draw in the series, he said the “expression Yuuki had when she drew her last breath. I remember redrawing it about ten times.”
His drawings changed considerably in the first series, because he was “inspired quite easily”. He was sometimes influenced by other anime; he liked to see what people liked: “what was in the now”. The characters he drew evolved over the series, too. They aged, and there was physical and mental growth over the years. Girlfriends changed the characters, because men grew with them and learned from them, he said.
As far as favorite books he liked Legend of the Galactic Heroes, which he said was really interesting. This is a series of science fiction novels by Yoshiki Tanaka. In the distant future, two interstellar states – the monarchic Galactic Empire and the democratic Free Planets Alliance – are at war. The story is about rivals Reinhard von Lohengramm and Yang Wen-li, rising in their respective empires.
His own book, Shingo Adachi Artworks, would be released on July 5. There would be 15 years of art work in the book.

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