Heart Container 002: Lens Flare

Zelda gets the spaghetti western treatment, the Poké-pocalypse is upon us, and Nintendo goes feudal in our latest instalment of Heart Container.

By Katharine Byrne. Posted 08/20/2012 14:00 Comment on this     ShareThis

Interview: Jed Henry — Ukiyo-e Heroes

Suggested by Katharine Byrne.

You may have noticed a while back that we used this image to accompany Kyle England’s Nintendo Mythology: Mystic Creatures editorial. Well, the man you have to thank for such a stunning masthead is the hugely talented Jed Henry, a professional illustrator from the US. He normally illustrates children’s books for a living, but he’s also a huge video game nerd, and for the past couple of months, Jed’s been transforming iconic Nintendo characters into ancient Japanese warriors– and everyone from Mario to Kirby has been getting a slice of the samurai treatment.

“There are a lot of games that have left a real impression on me– games that really stuck inside my soul,” he says. “So I was sitting there one day, thinking, how can I combine all these things I love? And then I came up with this project: Ukiyo-e Heroes!”

The word “Ukiyo”, he tells us, was the pop culture movement in old Japan. “The Ukiyo crowd were the trendsetters of their day. Actors, artists, entertainers.” The “e”, on the other hand, means “pictures”, so one interpretation of Ukiyo-e could be “pop culture pictures from old Japan”.

“For my first couple of images, I was still kinda figuring it out, and I think I’ve really locked into an approximation of the style of Yoshitoshi. He’s my favourite, by far, primarily because he lived very recently compared to a lot of the other Ukiyo-e designers.

“He was the last big, great one; he was a great innovator, and he was around when Americans and other foreigners were making– basically they were forcing their way into Japan politically, so a lot of Western art and culture was also coming into Japan, and his art definitely reflects that. It’s a lot more Westernised in terms of […] objectively representing the human form– it looks a lot more [realistic] as opposed to the heavy stylisation and the symbolism you get in earlier Japanese artists. So as a twenty-first century, Western artist, it’s a lot easier for me to approach his stuff– though I totally respect and love earlier forms!– […] so I’ve been channelling him a lot!”

It’s been a pretty time-consuming project, though. “When I go to do a composition, […] I’ll do a rough sketch […], and then I’ll just go surf the internet and I’ll go to the library in my town and I’ll go through a bunch of woodblock books over there, and I just look for little snippets of other woodblocks that– like if I need a hand that’s in a certain position, I will look for hours until I find that hand!

“For every design that you guys have seen, […] each little part represents hours of searching on the internet and the local library for just the right reference, and I probably bring together dozens and dozens of little pieces of reference for each composition. So I spend half of my time researching and probably the other half of my time designing and refining the image.”

Unfortunately, it hasn’t all been fun and games. “It has been a little bit high stress working on this project,” he says. “I’ve produced a new design every week from late April to […] late June, early July, […] and that’s on top of my current workload.” But Jed’s confident that people will enjoy his designs.

“I think culturally we have a hard time connecting to the traditional designs because we don’t know who the warriors are or the famous kabuki actors, or, you know, famous beauties, the geisha– we don’t know who they are, and so that cultural connection is lost. So by continuing to do this, by continuing to bring new pop icons to it, I think that we’re just bringing back that missing piece, because the quality of that object was never missing. They’re cool to look at. I think the missing piece was just the cultural connection, in a world that’s moved on.”


Stop hogging the soap, Vega!

Jed’s also two thirds of the way through a KickStarter campaign to try and get some of these designs printed as authentic Japanese woodblocks. So far it’s been doing really well, and Jed couldn’t be happier. But he’s also got big plans for the future.

“The goal is to continue this project for a year. There are so many video games that I wanna do [… but] we’re not just out to sell just these prints. Just like the name Kickstarter implies, our end goal is to kickstart something much, much bigger.

“In terms of woodblock prints, I’d love to expand this project to include some other popular culture icons. I had an idea a couple of months ago to do a series of Akira Kurosawa’s movies– you know, like Rashomon and Seven Samurai– but only when I’m good enough, though! I mean, it’s all a measure of how much time I put into each design, but yeah, […] any of his movies are just so incredible, and his lighting and his compositions are an inspiration in themselves. So I think if I crossed his compositional sense with Yoshitoshi, I think we’d get some really cool stuff.”

You can see all of Jed’s designs in the gallery below, but if you’re interested in backing Jed’s project, just hit the link above to his KickStarter where you’ll find a tonne of awesome things going on. There are only ten days left to go before it closes, so make sure you check it out!

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