Lines and Colors art blog

Yoshihiro Inomoto

Yoshihiro Inomoto
Yoshihiro InomotoThe twelve year old kid that lives somewhere at the base of my brain, happily soaking up cool stuff like robots, spaceships and dinosaurs, has an undying fascination with cutaway images.

These are the drawings and paintings that show the gleaming inner workings of something, usually a delightfully complex piece of sophisticated machinery like a racing car or jet plane, in the context of the outer appearance, as though viewed with Superman’s x-ray eyes.

These images reach mind-blggling levels of complexity. There is an assumption that the modern use of computer imaging somehow solves all of that, and makes it “easy”, but that’s far from the case.

And lest we forget that the era of computer based illustration is actually still quite young, we can look at one of the masters of cutaway illustration, Yoshihiro Inomoto, who has been doing unbelievably intricate renderings of the hyper-complex geometry and shining metal surfaces of the interior parts of cars, internal combustion engines, motorcycles and other objects of mechano-lust, since the early 1950’s, using traditional illustration techniques of pencil drawings, ink and airbrushed final renderings.

Inomoto left high school early, pursuing his own path through classes in illustration and design, went to work for companies like Mazda and Nissan; and eventually became a freelance technical illustrator. His cutaways start with a traditional pencil sketch, which he refines with the use of tracing paper to re-position and combine different components, to create a detailed drawing that is then transferred to illustration board for final rendering.

Though many manufacturers utilize 3-D models to create technical renderings these days, a number of current technical illustrators, many of them deeply influenced by Inomoto, specialize in 2-D illustrations, even if drawn with a computer stylus and drawing tablet rather than pencils and paint.

There’s just something about the feeling of an illustration, even one as complex and technical as these get, that can’t be easily replicated in CGI modeling.

In recent years Inomoto has learned the modern Illustrator and Photoshop techniques being employed by his juniors, but still prefers traditional methods.

Techincal Illustrator Kevin Hulsey has a section his site of Masters of the Cutaway, that prominently features a page on Inomoto.

[Via Digg]


Comments

5 responses to “Yoshihiro Inomoto”

  1. Loved this post. The links were great, especially some of the photoshop tutorials. Amazing work, great to see the pencil sketches too!

  2. I cannot even begin to imagine drawing a car like this without using 3D. Must be very time consuming.

  3. i love this artist!

    the red car caught my. that is an Acura NSX (in the states), but known as a Honda NSX all over the rest of the world.

    way ahead of it’s time. known as the “Poor Man’s Ferrari” it’s a hand-made car, aluminum chassis and aluminum motor…which made it really light…and 300hp depending on the trim…you had a very fast car!

    look at this one minute long commercial Honda made when it was first released. very aerodynamic car. smooth and sleek lines. it was well designed.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SRwLRNL7to

  4. Hello Charley,
    Would you know where some of Yoshihiro Inomoto’s art is located? I have an interest in his rendition of an Allard J2X. I would like the owner’s permission to reproduce it. I have a personal interest in that I have brought the Allard J2X back to life on a modern platform in the USA.
    Your guidance would be appreciated.
    Thank you.
    Roger Allard

    1. Sorry, Roger. I don’t have any current information; the sites I link to seem to be gone except for the Jalopnik article, and it’s had images removed. A brief search did not turn up much.