- Did your father, a potter, influence you to become an artist?

There was a kiln in my parents' house, and I saw my father making pottery every day, but I didn't have any particular dreams about what I wanted to be in the future. Painting was just a hobby. However, I joined my father's band and played music together, and I think I was greatly influenced by the fact that I continued to do what I loved.

-- The "Skull Boy" series is your signature work, but what inspired you to start drawing skeletons?

My father collected a lot of records, and I saw skulls on the album covers of rock albums from the 60s and 70s as a child, and I thought they were cool, so I started drawing them. I was especially influenced by the covers of the Grateful Dead. I also saw skull tattoos on rock posters and my favorite musicians, and they were a symbol of cool things.

-- Was it the pop skeleton it is now?

It's completely different. I've always drawn in monochrome with a ballpoint pen, and they have a scary feel to them, and when I look at them now, even I think they're pretty gruesome.

-- Why did you start drawing cute, gentle skeletons?

About four years ago, I was drawing pictures and working part-time at a restaurant at night, but the restaurant closed down due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. I lost my job and just continued to draw vaguely, and due to the atmosphere in the world at the time, I became depressed, and the skulls I had been drawing all this time began to look like symbols of death...and that's when, for the first time, I started to hate my own drawings. But I really didn't want something I loved and had been doing for so long to become something negative.

It was around the time that I started doing acrylic painting, and people around me started saying they wanted to see more bright colors, so I realized I had to change something, and so I developed my current style of painting pop characters using colorful colors.