Sonehati
Bio Twins
The truth is that I could write an entire dissertation on Sonehati. I know so much information on him that it has been somewhat difficult to discern what specific element of his work is the most important to me. In the end, I have chosen to discuss his most notable work, the Polygons Album, Sonehati CG Works 1999. This album is a large compilation of Sonehati’s work. Specifically, it contains his preliminary character design renders, stories, and completed compositions. There are even movies, and each of the images featured in the album are already pre-scanned on a CD. This album is likely to be considered his magnum opus, not merely based on the comprehensive and exhaustive curation of his work, but also because it greatly reflects his character design ethos and aesthetic during his prime.
Sonehati is a graphic designer and CG artist. He started to work as a designer in the early 90’s after having gotten a degree in oil painting from Tama Arts University. In 1995, he started up a studio titled “Polygons”, where he and his associates worked to create “computer-generated cute girls” (Virtual Beauties 2020, 148). Some of these characters would go onto be apart of movies and some went onto become apart of games. Polygons is a reference to the fact that digital rendering software contains polygons from which the figure is formed. Sonehati’s specific software is NewTek Lightwave 3D, which I find is somewhat common among 3D artists in Asia. In places like the US, most 3D artists use Blender, Cinema 4D, Modo, or a combination of the three. The use of Adobe PhotoShop is also an almost inherent component of the digital rendering toolkit, and Sonehati does use that too.
Virtual Beauties 2020, pg 173
Beyond being the name for his studio, “Polygons” is also the same of a self-created race of beings emerging from the virtual world as cybernetic life. Sonehati believed that these virtual characters were more suited for the internet as opposed to mere illustrations or pre-rendered movies (148). From the internet their stories would begin. It’s fitting then, that these “Polygon people” are the focus of the Polygons Album.
There is a thorough cast of figures Sonehati has designed, more than I could ever hope to touch on in this entry. I have elected instead to focus on the characters that I personally find to be the most interesting and most appealing, and who happen to be more famous than the others. Something to keep in mind about these characters though, is that regardless of their differences in identity, they are all made out of polygon skin, are usually quite racially ambiguous (Japanese, Jewish, German, and potentially Italian to be specific), and are incredibly futuristic. I believe that Yukari of the Copyright Guild is the best first example of this.
Yukari: When she was making a scientific experiment, “The Thing” happened by chance. Her sensation has changed a lot since that happened.
Scientist Yukari becomes a victim of a freak accident of her own making. “The Thing” is soon revealed by a riquid (render + liquid = riquid), which takes her name (Yukari Riquid), and that continues to make many forms of herself.
Yukari Riquid, which makes riquid to develop her own copies. The riquid that is a little devilish attracts Yukari. Many kind of sizes of her own copies are developed, and they become riquid, then they are developed new sizes. It is repeated.
Truthfully, Yukari has no control over the riquid and its constant replication of herself. But she makes the best of it, eventually forming the Copyright Guild (CRG). She, as the original, is the leader. Together they aim to save the world. “To the Man; to the Earth; to the Right…”
Ichijouji Yukari
Some of the Yukari, such as Hyper Yko., appear to do their own thing and become the most popular of the CRG. Hyper Yko. is so popular that the alternative title for this album is Yko Hyper Album. Some pages of her own notebook are spliced in.
Hyper Yko Notebook
There are so many more characters that I would to discuss, but I will end with the reference of BeamMan, Sonehati’s award-winning character.
TDK Beam; 1997
I say that BeamMan is award-winning because he appeared on the package design that won Sonehati a prize in London in 1997.
There is something about BeamMan that might draw people to him. On the surface, he seems to be the antagonist the other characters are hoping to defeat.
88880087 (BeamMan)
But then he cries while looking up at the night sky.
In the end, Sonehati’s work explores in great depth the refuge and freedom his characters desire. There are women scientists force to reckon with their sense of identity (Yukari), a teenage girl who doesn’t know her own power (Sayaka 17), and then another that is too afraid to tell her dad that she has claimed hers (Misato Yamaha and then Mega-Misato). They put on power suits and go to battle with an enigmatic force, which is ultimately the Devil Riquid who attaches itself to young girls and women with power. Nearly all of these characters are implanted with Sonehati’s own identity, whether it’s his attraction to women with larger breasts, his affinity for music, and finding his own sense of self on the cusp of the new millenia as a new designer.
Like I said, there is so much more to this book that I could write a book of my own about it. I am very lucky to have obtained the greatest book I have ever owned in my life, in such great condition. It came with the original CD with the scanned images, movies, and even files on how to create the characters yourself using the Lightwave software. This book turned 20 years old in January and I am 21 since February. I believe that the greatest depth to this book outside the self-discovery of young girls and women is that is a relic of its time. In that people my age and even younger were expected to inherit a new and better world at the turn of the century. Obviously this never happened. In seeing young girls and young women fighting the same late adolescent, early adulthood fight, but playing drums during it all or maybe building a better body to fly in, I wonder what would have happened for young people this day if this world wasn’t plunged into chaos in 2001.
Hyper Yko broadcasting from Heisei-X is the most ghostly image of them all. In 1999, the incoming Heisei era was considered a good thing. Now it is known as the “Lost Era”, and Japan is just now getting out of it. Again, I wonder what would have happened for young people of now if the positive predictions of our futures came to fruition.
I plan to write a total analysis of the Polygon Album one day very soon. Until then, as Sonehati would say, “Love and Pixels”. I had a great time writing on this blog and I learned a lot. Thank you!
Works Cited
Sonehati. Polygons Album: Sonehati CG Works 1999. IDG Communications, 1999.
“Virtual Beauties 2020.” Virtual Beauties 2020, Agosto, 2002, pp. 148–173.
