Bored Panda reached out to Hito and Senpai with some more questions! Since Senpai is the one who does the actual illustrations, most of the questions will be answered by him.
First, we asked Senpai if he had any life-changing influences that might have helped him with his art and art style in general when it comes to his comics.
"Since I remember, I’ve really enjoyed anime and manga comics and that was my first motivation to start drawing. I wanted to be able to draw my favorite characters as well as create my own. Personally, I love the works of Hayao Miyazaki and Eiichiro Oda, my style is very much different from theirs but those are for sure two main figures that I admire and that inspire me. In the manga, very often artists use the 'chibi' style for comedic scenes and that’s the main style I use for Hitopotato comics."
Art, in any kind of form, takes a lot of time not only to practice but also to produce, therefore we asked Senpai how long it takes him to fully finish their comics.
"That depends on how many panels I have to draw, but a regular 4-5 panel comic usually takes around 3 hours to draw. Though the whole process is a bit longer. Sometimes we need to sit and brainstorm with Hito to come up with an idea for the comic and the way to deliver it so that it’s understandable and funny for people who read it. It’s not always easy because we have many inside jokes that are amusing for us yet we need to select those that are most likely relatable for more people. It takes from 30 minutes to 1 hour. Then Hito checks and corrects the grammar for around 20 minutes as we are both non-native English speakers. So the whole process is around 4 hours."
Being an artist is not easy, one can easily encounter a lack of inspiration, burnout, etc, so we wanted to ask Senpai and Hito about their ideas for the comics.
"When it comes to comic ideas, sometimes it's Senpai who comes up with an idea and sometimes it's Hito. Most of our comics are based on our daily life events when we realize 'hey, what just happened was pretty funny, let’s make a comic out of it but also many of them come from brainstorms—we sit, try to recall some funny situations that happened to us or even disasters that get funny with time, we write them down and discuss how to deliver them. Sometimes we have two different points of view on a story and each of us want it to be delivered in a certain way so sometimes it's pretty hard to decide which of them we should agree on."
As we mentioned before, sometimes creative work can cause quite a burnout, therefore we asked Senpai how he dealt with that as well.
"I think that’s very normal for an artist to feel burned out at some moments and sometimes I feel this way too. I work as a full-time freelance illustrator and except for drawing Hitopotato comics, I also draw many different commissions. And because I very often don’t have full creative freedom, I sometimes need to take a break to draw something that gives me personal fulfillment (Hitopotato comics and landscape illustrations are some of those things)."
We also asked Hito and Senpai about how people reacted to their comics.
"We are lucky to have a community of Sweet Potatoes (that's the way we call our followers) who are kind to each other and to us! We get amazing feedback from them and fortunately, we don't get many hate comments but obviously, once in a while 'stuff happens.'"
The creative process is not easy, but there are many enjoyable parts to it.
"From the whole process, we both enjoy the sketch part the most when the idea is still fresh and it’s just appeared on paper. When our idea starts to take shape. At this point of the process, our comic makes us laugh. The longer we work on it, it’s like repeating the same joke for 4 hours—especially Senpai might feel this way because his work on the comic takes longer."
We also asked about the inspiration behind their Instagram account.
"To be honest, since we’ve become a couple we thought about making a comic. We were at the beginning of our relationship, we had many new topics to discuss, especially that we’re from two different cultures, so many of those aspects gave us a really good laugh. Also, we have a very similar sense of humor and sometimes we were laughing so hard that we thought 'OMG, that’s the joke of the year, it's a big loss for the world that it hasn't heard that'—no, it probably wasn’t much of a loss, haha.
Besides that, we’ve followed many comic artists and we really enjoyed sharing their content with each other. So all the time we’ve had this idea in the back of our heads to create our own comic. And one day Senpai just created the first Hitopotato comic which was so cute (we didn’t have the name for it back then) and we decided to give it a try."
Digital art and art, in general, is not easy and requires a lot of patience, time, resources, and in most cases even money, therefore we wanted to know how the talented comic artist started his own career in digital art.
"I have been drawing since I was little. Drawing on the walls and floor seemed to bring me joy back then. And I’ve kept this hobby but I upgraded to more portable tools such as paper and pencil. I draw during my breaks and classes at school and in my free time. I drew traditionally most of the time until 2016 when I bought my first digital tablet. Personally, right now I prefer creating digital art over traditional."
Artists tend to get motivated by a lot of things such as curiosity, the search for beauty, or even meaning. Therefore, we asked Senpai about that too.
"My main motivation as an artist is to create artworks that tell stories. I’d like to spark an interest in people who look at my art and make them wonder e.g. what’s the story behind it or how that story might end. I’d like my art to be free to interpret, fun to look at, and most importantly giving space for imagination. When it comes to comics, my main goal is to make people smile or even laugh. I’m very happy when they can relate to it and have fun while reading it."
