Free! Creation Notebook: Voice of Creative Staff (Tachibana Makoto)
When I first started drawing him, I had to draw his shoulder width to the point where I went “this much!?” for it to be just right, and it took some time until I got used to it. Thanks to Makoto, now I’ve gotten used to drawing characters with broad shoulders!
Personally speaking, I watched season two like it’s Makoto’s story. It’s the “friendship” part out of the three main principles of shonen manga: hard work, friendship and victory.
Because of his broad shoulders, I had a lot of trouble balancing his proportions to make him good looking. I took care to make sure his gentle expression doesn’t look uncanny.
Since I declared that “I like Makoto,” I was able to work on a lot of Makoto’s cut scenes. I put a lot of passion into Makoto and Haruka’s scene in season two episode 6!!
I put a lot of feelings of “become an angel…!” into my drawing, and the result was the childhood scene in season two episode 6.
For some reason, I kept being put in charge of Makoto’s cut scenes. I remember timidly asking my senpai “does our animation team only draw Makoto…?” who bursted out laughing.
I wanted Coach Tachibana to teach me how to swim too.
I like now Makoto is usually gentle and calm but when he swims he has a very powerful style.
Coach Tachibana was really lovely! He really looked good in the coach swimsuit. Also 100 points to him for being so gentle with the children!!
I was working on the cut scene where he went “I lost~!” in his freestyle match with Haruka in season two episode 6, and I painted it with the utmost care since I feel that it is a very important scene. It’s nice that the fact he’s always thinking for Haruka never wavers.
The director is extremely attached to him… she kept explaining to me how good he is many times, but I couldn’t get them in my head…
Since I also used to swim backstroke at my school’s swimming club when I was in high school, I drew a lot of Makoto’s swimming scenes. When I was drawing his swimming during season one episode 7 and season 2 episode 10, I put a lot of effort in it while recalling my own swimming experience in the old days. When I was working on the quick turn scene in season one episode 7 and the scene where Makoto was reaching for goal in season two episode 10, I kept thinking “I want to swim again so I can remember what it feels like.”
In the first stripping scene in season one, every single slide is too beautiful that I was staring at them like I was licking them with my eyes!!
He’s a character who speaks a lot and has a lot of fun expressions. I took care to draw him so he didn’t become overly muscular. It’s surprising difficult to draw backstrokes.
Because he always has a gentle expression on his face, he’s the kind of character who’s quite comforting to draw while you’re working.
The way he said “I specialize in back(strokes)!!” during the club introduction is stuck in my head.
scan courtesy of @aliasanonyme
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