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Movies are another source for his ideas, albeit an even more
subliminal one than his on-the-street observations. Toriyama doesn't
watch movies as much as let them play in the background while he works
("Subtitles aren't good for me — I can't work!"), but
sometimes, little inspirations shine through. "In terms of story
they're of no use," Toriyama says. "But how to show things,
like explosions, where something doesn't just blow up — it might
flash first, and then the sound might follow a little afterwards.
Also, Jackie Chan's movies might be a reference for the rhythm of
battle.
"The only other time I might use references for my art would
be in drawing cars and planes," Toriyama continues. "Plastic
models are useful. You can examine them from every angle when you're
drawing cars." This need for detail, apparently, is part of what
led to Toriyama's cute, cartoony style of drawing machines and other
gadgetry. "If you want to depict something exactly the way it is,
it takes a tremendous amount of time. If you don't get the details
right, the inaccuracies will accumulate somewhere. But it's no problem
if it's caricatured. I try to get done as quickly as possible.
"I probably have the most fun thinking up original
vehicles," he continues. "I usually consider details such as
how to get into them and where their engines are. When you draw a
real-world car, you have to obtain some references. I'd hate to have
someone point out that I'm wrong," he laughs. "But if it's
something I invented, I can have it my way." In fact, this
caricatured style is truly essential to the Dragon Ball world as a
whole. "My manga is in the slapstick style, so if the characters
are caricatured humans, then it'd be strange for everything else not
to be caricatured."
Besides Dragon Ball's version of Earth, the series indulges in many
adventures "off world" — on the planet Namek, searching
for the more powerful grade-up version of Earth's Dragon Balls. “I
came up with the Namek architecture and spaceships based on Piccolo
[Daimao’s] throne. I really only gave thought to making the setting
coherent when they went to Namek," Toriyama claims. Another
unique setting is Dragon Ball's very Asian heaven and hell, where Goku
spends more than a little of the series, trying to get back to Earth.
Toriyama's take, however, is far from the typical one. "God's
shrine looked rather mystical, so I thought it might work to make the
other place look conversely worldly. So Enma [king of the Spirit
World, city of Hades] and the ogres show up wearing suits like
businessmen." The Afterlife, in Toriyama's vision, is filled with
references to Earthly routine—from street-cleaning trucks on Snake
Way to ogres wearing T-shirts and jogging gear and souls traveling to
heaven on an airplane. In explanation, Toriyama refers to a world map
in the Dragon Ball illustration collection.
"This map was something I originally drew at the request of an
animator, but I used this opportunity to make [the world] complete. I
usually come up with the story first and then set up the world. A real
manga artist would probably draw the map first and then think up the
story. This might make me sound like I work without thinking, but
that's not true. I do have a vague notion before coming up with the
story."
Playing God
In the same vain, Toriyama's approach to character design is to
create characters to fit his story. In Dragon Ball, even the premise
that the characters were aliens was something Toriyama just came up
with at the time. "I didn't have in mind that Goku would be an
alien when he had a tail or turned into a giant ape. The same for
Piccolo. I came up with that when God showed up. I usually come up
with some retrofitted explanation."
Likewise, Toriyama begins his character designs with the
personality, filling in details as he goes. "I start with the
face, and as I think up the face, I come up with the physique. After
the head and body, I get a notion of a costume that would be suitable
for the world he lives in, or for a fighting character, something he'd
be comfortable wearing in combat. Basically, I think in monochrome —
after I come up with characters, their color schemes are roughly set
in my mind. Of course, they come up differently when I actually color
them in on paper."
Dragon Ball aside, nowadays Toriyama is possibly even better known
as a video game character designer, especially in America, where
Japanese animation and comics are still only really beginning to catch
on. Toriyama's characters for popular video games such as Chrono
Trigger and Tobal No.1 are instantly recognizable, almost to the point
of being characters that could just as easily have appeared in Dragon
Ball (we know of one DBZ fan who managed to use the
"customizing" feature in Tobal 2 to replicate Gotenks).
Toriyama says of his adventures designing for video games that it was
probably first suggested to him by his editor. "I didn't want to
at first," he says, "but it did expand my horizons." On
the difference between designing characters for video games and
designing characters for manga or animation, Toriyama admits that
"It's different," and notes that although video game
characters are tiny, it's still possible to draw intricate designs.
"In manga or animation, detailed designs make for hard work,
but: you don't have those restrictions with video games. You have to
give them distinguishing characteristics, even when they get reduced
to a few pixels. It might be the same for animation. You'd have a dark
character, a brown character, or even a purple character. For my own
manga, I like to avoid the effort of using screen tones, but in
animation, the very same thing has to be done to distinguish the
characters. In video games, they might have costumes that I'd have a
hard time keeping up with in manga. For animation, I have to come up
with a compromise that won't tax the animators while still resembling
the video game.
Akira Toriyama interview segments
excerpted from the Dragon Ball World Guide book series, published by
Shueisha, Inc.
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