Taiyo Matsumoto

Taiyo Matsumoto (松本 大洋, male, October 25, 1967) is a Japanese manga artist. Born in Tokyo. He dropped out of the Art Department of the Faculty of Humanities at Wako University.

His representative works include "Tekkonkinkreet" and "Ping Pong. Using sports and battles as his subject matter, he expresses the aesthetics and worldview of men with a unique touch. His early work in Kodansha's "Morning" magazine failed to gain popularity, and it was not until he moved to Shogakukan's "Big Comic Spirits" that he began to receive recognition.

His mother is the poet Naoko Kudo. His wife is the manga artist Saho Fuyuno, who often assists Matsumoto. His cousin, Santa Inoue, is also a cartoonist.

He has been influenced by Katsuhiro Otomo's manga ever since he was first exposed to Otomo's works through "Dome" given to him by his mother when he was in high school. The pattern of his drawings was boldly changed from work to work and in his early works such as "STRAIGHT" and "Dots & Faces," figures with the symbolic omission of faces appear, a touch that seems to have been influenced by Mine-taro Mochizuki [9]. Since that time, he has been particular about lines. In his compositions, he often used angles that extremely emphasized the expanse of space, as if he were shooting with a fisheye lens, but he did not use such a technique in his works after "GOGO Monster".

In terms of screen composition, while "ZERO" emphasized light and dark, "Hana Otoko" used deformed patterns with a bright touch influenced by bands dessinée, "Tekkonkinkreet" used a crisp black and white illustrative touch (said to be strongly influenced by Frank Miller), " Ping Pong" used a less black touch with thin lines, "Hana" used a black touch without using tones, and "Takemitsu Samurai" used drawing paper to match the atmosphere of a period drama and used diluted Sumi ink instead of screen tones.

In addition, there are very few female characters in his works, but this is because he is not good only at drawing girls, and there is no particular meaning beyond that[.