INFLUENCES! (Patreon)

Hello, all!

Today I’d like to share with you a huge influence of mine. It’s the 1991 artbook Intron Depot, by Masamune Shirow of Ghost in the Shell, Applessed and Dominion Tank Police fame.

Around 1995, I think, I was living in the seaside town of Skegness and going to the high school there. They had this work experience thing where you could go and “work” at a local business for a few weeks to supposedly get you ready for when you’d leave school and get a job. The anime boom was in full swing in the UK at the time, and I somehow managed to convince the teachers to convince Manga Entertainment to let me travel down to London and do my work experience there. It was a pretty crazy time, being my first time living away from home in a bed and breakfast place for a few weeks and taking the tube to Manga Entertainment’s HQ in Hammersmith. On the weekends I’d go into the center of London and check out all the comic and games stores. Travelling around on the underground on my own and hanging out in Forbidden Planet and the Tottenham Court Road Games Exchange being surrounded by all kinds of imported manga and model kits and Japanese-only Saturn and Playstation games stuff was truly a magical time! It was probably the defining adventure of my youth. 

⬆  The london Underground was a bit grubby in 1995 as you can see, but I loved it!

I bought loads of manga like Battle Angel Alita and Ghost in the Shell, and I’d be watching unsubbed raw Japanese anime titles on VHS that I borrowed from Manga ENT every night. I think I got about 4 hours’ sleep each night, if that! 

⬆  Sega World (RIP) in Picadilly Circus was the largest indoor arcade at the time, I believe. Sadly, it only lasted a brief few years, as Sega just couldn't afford to keep seven floors of games and rides in the center of London running.

But the purchase that really stuck with me was Intron Depot.

I knew who Masamune Shirow was, since I owned Tank Police and Ghost in the Shell on VHS, but the book was kind of a revelation. For one thing it was in Japanese and English (translated by Studio Proteus, early 90s manga translation gods) so I was able to read Shirow’s thoughts and comments on each of his drawings, and it was my first time seeing the combination of pretty ladies and mechs rendered in acrylic paint. And I was seeing Shirow’s art in all its unfiltered glory, without being simplified for animation, etc. Digital art software was also taking off at the time, and some of the images had realistic textures on the metal surfaces, etc, that Shirow achieved by placing various materials on a scanner, then printing out the results and sticking them physically into the picture.The guy really was a shameless technology otaku as well, always talking self-deprecatingly about the lack of fuel tanks on his mechs or how you'd never open the cockpit at such high speeds, etc etc.  ⬇

It all got me completely hooked on painting mechs and girls in acrylic paint, which I did (badly) for the rest of the 90s. I always had Intron Depot open as reference next to me and I remember the smell of the pages to this day.

Obviously, nowadays we have access to loads of art books scanned in high quality and it’s easy to just click through them on a website and be finished consuming one in about ten minutes. But sitting up in bed at 2am on that work holiday holding the book in my hands and spending 20 minutes looking at each page and trying to figure out how the hell he managed to paint like that was really a different experience. I guess you could say it was a different time!

Of course, these days I focus on cel-shading stuff specifically for animation and haven’t picked up a physical paintbrush in decades! And removed from the time and the context around it, I wonder if anyone reading Intron Depot now would feel any of the same impact that I did back then. Regardless, I give it my full and wholehearted recommendation, and would even say that if you only ever own one physical art book, make it this one!

Do you have any formative events or purchases like this?

-Paul