About Masashi Kishimoto

Masashi Kishimoto ( , Kishimoto Masashi) (born 8

November, 1974) is a J apanese manga artist, well known for creating the manga series Naruto
where the main character is Uzumaki Naruto. His younger twin brother, Seishi Kishimoto, is also
a manga artist and creator of the manga series 666 Satan and Blazer Drive.

Works

Kishimoto's first work as a manga artist was Karakuri, which he submitted to Shueisha in 1995.
This earned him the Weekly Shnen Jump's monthly "Hop Step Award," granted to promising
new manga artist. In 1999, Naruto was serialized in Weekly Shnen Jump. Naruto is still
ongoing, with more than 45 volumes and just over 44 released in English, and has sold over 71
million copies in J apan and over 93 million copies worldwide as of volume 36, also being
adapted into two successful anime series. The Naruto manga series has become one of Viz
Media's top properties, accounting for nearly 10% of all manga sales in 2006. The seventh
volume of Viz's release became the first manga to ever win a Quill Award when it claimed the
award for "Best Graphic Novel" in 2006.
In his interviews and exclusively in the Naruto manga, he commonly mentions his deceased
plant, Ukki-kun. According to Kishimoto, the first time he had an office plant, due to missing the
country atmosphere, he fed it undiluted plant food. He continued purchasing several other plants
afterwards, but many of them perished.
Influences

When Kishimoto was originally creating the Naruto
series, he looked to other shnen manga for influences while attempting to make his characters
as unique as possible. Kishimoto cites Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball series as one of these
influences, noting that Son Goku, the protagonist of Dragon Ball, was a key factor when creating
Naruto Uzumaki due to his energetic and mischievous personality. To complement the character
Naruto, Kishimoto worked on creating a rival that was a "cool genius", as he believed this was
"the archetypal rival character". After reviewing different manga for ideas, he ultimately
developed Sasuke Uchiha. When creating the primary heroine, Kishimoto admitted, "I don't have
a definite image of what a heroine should be". He eventually created Sakura Haruno,
emphasizing "her energy and flirtatious spirit" as her primary characteristics. These three
characters would be the mold for the other three main Naruto teams. For Kishimoto, Sasuke
remains the most difficult character for him to draw. While drawing, errors and mishaps
commonly result in Sasuke's youthful appearance being lost, a result of Kishimoto's inexperience
in drawing characters mature beyond their years. Despite the time and energy Kishimoto spends
drawing Sasuke, Sasuke has become his favorite character to draw.
When drawing the characters, Kishimoto follows a five-step process that he consistently follows:
concept and rough sketch, drafting, inking, shading, and coloring. These steps are followed when
he is drawing the actual manga and making the color illustrations that commonly adorn the cover
of tankbon, the cover of Weekly Shnen Jump, or other media, but the toolkit he utilizes
occasionally changes. For instance, he utilized an airbrush for one illustration for a Weekly
Shnen Jump cover, but decided not to use it for future drawings largely due to the cleanup
required.
When Kishimoto was creating the setting of the Naruto manga, he initially concentrated on the
designs for village of Konohagakure, the primary setting of the series. Kishimoto asserts that his
design for Konohagakure was created "pretty spontaneously without much thought", but admits
that the scenery is based on his home in Okayama Prefecture. Kishimoto created Konohagakure
without specifying a specific era or location in the real world, noting that the village is "just a
place in [his] head". Without a specific time period, Kishimoto included modern elements in the
series such as convenience stores, but specifically excluded projectile weapons and vehicles from
the storyline. For reference materials, Kishimoto performs his own research into J apanese culture
and alludes to it in his work. In an interview, he commented that he "often visits J apanese
gardens and [goes] to Kabuki performances" for reference material.
Kishimoto added that, as Naruto takes place in a "J apanese fantasy world," the creator has to "set
certain rules, in a systematic way" so that he could easily "convey the story". Kishimoto wanted
to "draw on" the Chinese zodiac tradition, which had a long-standing presence in J apan; the
zodiac hand signs originate from this. Regarding technology Kishimoto said that Naruto would
not have any firearms. He said he may include automobiles, aircraft, and "low-processing"
computers; Kishimoto specified the computers would "maybe" be eight-bit and that they would
"definitely not" be sixteen-bit.

Manga
Karakuri (Published in Akamaru Jump)
Naruto Pilot (Published in Akamaru Jump)
Naruto (Published in Weekly Shnen Jump)
Other
UZUMAKI MASASHI KISHIMOTO
First Official Data Book (BOOK,
Hiden: Rin no Sho Character Official Data Book)
Official Fan Book (BOOK, Hiden: Hy no Sho
Official Fan Book)
Second Official Data Book (BOOK,
Hiden: T no Sho Character Official Data Book)
Third Official Data Book (BOOK,
Hiden: Sha no Sho Character Official Data Book)
PAINT J UMP: Art of Naruto