NOURS Magazine - Kyozo Hayashi

 

Well there I was, rooting around on Archive.org, as I am wont to do, and I came across a collection of Japanese gamer mags put out by NAMCO in the 1990s. I can't read a word of it, but am immediately seized by awe at the covers. 

At first I was, "How?" Was it an early use of computer graphics? Seemed too smooth. Are they amazingly deceptive trompe-l'oeil paintings? Is it done with paper cut outs? Then my mind begged, "Who?"

After some internet sleuthing, utilizing the only clue I had – the signature "Kyozo" under the little umbrella mark on the lower righthand corner of a few of the covers – the only hint I was able to glean that pointed to an answer was a couple of copies of the above-pictured book for sale on eBay. Kyozo Hayashi is an artist and designer who seemingly specializes in working with clay figures for his work. 

I absolutely love the meshing of Art Deco and Pop Art in Kyozo's aesthetic. At some point the art direction seems to have been revised to fit a more "normal" newsstand gamer mag aesthetic, with Manga-style art or pictures of the characters from the games the magazine was reviewing that month. It makes sense from a marketing standpoint, but man, these covers are works of art!

If you want to go spelunking in the cave of NOURS digital back issues, the gateway to your cavern is here.

As for Kyozo Hayashi himself, he was born in 1939 and graduated from the Industrial Art department of the Nagoya Municipal Polytechnic High School. He began his clay illustration career around 1967, and received multiple awards for his design work and had a number of traveling art shows in the late 1980s. He appears to have an Instagram account, where he primarily showcases digital illustration these days. 

Haunted House

Late last night I was flipping through the August 1983 issue of Computer & Video Games magazine, a British video game enthusiast publication, and came across this great illustration for the game Haunted House. Apparently the magazine was initially aimed more at coders than your casual arcade enthusiast, as most game spotlight articles feature pictures of long blocks of code rather than any in depth look at the games themselves.

The illustration is signed Gulbis. I have no idea if this is some early work by the self-proclaimed "Football Artist" Stephen Gulbis, or not. When you Google his name a lot of early home console video game packaging comes up, none of it explicitly linked to that same Steve Gulbis. Gulbis is British, and though he touts having built a career on solely drawing soccer players and American football players for various markets, I have to imagine he'd had to diversify somewhat at some point. You wouldn't know it to look at his website, though. 

The subject matter, obviously, made the piece stick out for me, but ghosts and skeletons aside, I really like the limited cool color palette with the high contrast of the black shadows. I also really like the Dutch angle perspective, it really adds a sense of high drama to the image that a straight-on version of the image would lack.