Hisaharu Iijima
Hisaharu Iijima is a Japanese art director, background artist, and CEO of art studio Ryuubidou.
Early life
During high school, Iijima did watercolor and oil painting and decided to go to a vocational school where he found that he liked to paint landscapes and backgrounds. He became a fan of Rembrandt and wanted to paint with expressive light and shadows similar to him.Career
Iijima started to work in the anime industry as a background artist at art company around 1986. In 2003, he was promoted to the role of art director and given responsibilities for Gad Guard and Le Portrait de Petit Cossette alongside studio representative under the collective pseudonym "Easter Princess Group", as well as Uta Kata on his own. That year, Iijima left Studio Easter and formed his own company, Ryuubidou, in June. For the next few years, Iijima and his studio worked on a number of series until the director of Le Portrait de Petit Cossette, Akiyuki Shinbo, by then basing himself out of studio Shaft, heard that Iijima had formed his own studio and decided to ask him to be the art director for the studio's upcoming Hidamari Sketch series that was in pre-production. Shinbo considered Iijima to be a key artist responsible for the core foundations of Hidamari Sketch alongside art designer Tatsuya Oishi and chief director Ryouki Kamitsubo throughout its run, even as the latter two were no longer involved in its later seasons. From that point on, Iijima worked mainly with Shinbo and Shaft's productions while occasionally taking on jobs elsewhere. He took over the role of art director for Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei in its first OVA series and third season, and in 2009 was the art director for Oishi and Shinbo's Bakemonogatari, a work considered to have pushed Shaft "into fame."Regarding the style of Bakemonogatari, visual director Nobuyuki Takeuchi had interest in the photography works of Sadahiro Koizumi and had shown Shinbo and Oishi; as they liked the idea, Shinbo told Iijima to keep the photographs in mind while working on Monogatari, and Takeuchi asked Iijima to stick closely to the photos where possible. Iijima also found it interesting to paint both foreground objects and parts of the backgrounds with solid white colors and white gradients which became a staple of the series' art direction even through seasons he was not in charge of. He approached the background painting with a relatively 'ordinary' color scheme at first which changed when Oishi made certain corrections. Alongside his other Shaft works and occasional works to other production houses, Iijima continued as the art director for Hidamari Sketch until its final release in 2013 and Monogatari until 2014. By that time, with Hanamonogatari, Iijima was joined by art director Ken Naitou from Studio Tulip who would take over as art director for the succeeding television works of the series while Iijima focused his and Ryuubidou's efforts on the Kizumonogatari film trilogy. He thought that Naitou might have been intimated when he took over his responsibilities, but felt relieved seeing Naitou's work on Owarimonogatari and that he could continue to make interesting pictures that even he couldn't. Kizumonogatari had a very different approach to the rest of the Monogatari series, however, as director Oishi was adamant about using live-action photography for all of the shots of the sky and using 3DCG for most of the buildings and environmental shots besides the close-ups. Since the overall artistic direction heavily leaned on the 3D backgrounds, Iijima even joked about whether or not he'd lose his job on the film.
Following Kizumonogatari, Iijima was the art director for Stan Lee and Hiroshi Nagahama's The Reflection at Studio Deen, as well as Takeuchi and Shinbo's Fireworks at Shaft. He continued to contribute background art through Ryuubidou for the next several years, but did not take on another job as art director until 2021 with a promotional short for the Bakemonogatari manga adaptation. By then, much of the Ryuubidou staff had left and Shaft founded its own art department with Iijima taking on the role of technical advisor at the studio. In 2023, director Hiroshi Nishikiori, whom Iijima had worked with several times in the 2000s, made a direct request to Iijima for a screen background to be used in Idolish 7 the Movie. Although busy with other work, Iijima accepted the request and ultimately drew two and a half screen backgrounds. The next year, he returned as the art director for the Monogatari franchise with Off & Monster Season.