Geared toward garage kits, character figures, subculture figures, limited editions, and extreme figures by master creators, this book satisfies the appetite of the figure aficionado with a continuous stream of figures and vast and comprehensive selection. Full Vinyl covers mass–produced popular favorites (such as Homies), sub–culture figures, Anime–inspired figures (such as Bome), category–defining "thingies", Hong Kong luminaries (such as Eric So and Michael Lau), figures based on the work of hugely popular artists (such as Gary Baseman or Yoshitomo Nara), and artists that take figure making to the next level (such as Shinichi Yamashita).
 This volume includes interviews with selected creators, and discussions on topics including aesthetics and the significance of the work for an older audience of collectors. 
 The catalog will include captioning for each figure, including licensing and distribution information.

Full Vinyl

Arts & Photography

Ivan Vartanian

History & Criticism

HarperCollins, Publishers

Drop Dead Cute showcases the work of 10 cutting-edge female Japanese artists whose art combines the pop charge of Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara with a thrilling personal mixture of sweetness and power. This next wave of painters and illustrators from the red-hot Japanese art scene blend aspects of manga, anime, and traditional art with their own idiosyncratic visions to create work that is international in appeal yet uniquely Japanese. This gorgeous book features profiles of the artists based on fresh interviews, along with a generous survey of their art. Also including new work by pioneering art world superstar Yayoi Kusama that salutes these extraordinary young artists, Drop Dead Cute is a must-have for fans of Nara and Murakami, as well as anyone interested in contemporary art and pop culture.interior image: Chiho Aoshima, Japanese Apricot 2, 2000. Inkjet printer on paper. 104.9 x 74.9 cm. Copyright 2005 Chiho Aoshima/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd.

Drop Dead Cute

Individual Artists

Chronicle Books+

This extraordinary book is your guide to the graphic blood that flows in the visual arteries of New York. Graffiti, posters, neon lighting, street art, colour schemes, perspectives and forms are just some of the graphic elements collated as inspiration in this hip sourcebook for graphic designers and visual creatives. 
The book is organized around structure, communication, problem solving and originality - all problems that drive design itself - but with the raw edge of organic development. Design is site specific; the flavour of the city is tasted through the vast variety of its visual elements that can be called graphic design in its widest sense. 
With its partner volume on Tokyo (ISBN 2880467683), this title emphasizes the site-specific nature of design as a city's lifeblood, contrasting east and west.

Graphiscape - New York City

Lesley A. Martin

Graphic Design

Rotovision

Graphiscape: Tokyo is a guide to the graphic blood that flows in the visual arteries of Tokyo. Graffiti, posters, neon lighting, street art, color schemes, perspectives and forms are just some of the graphic elements collated as inspiration in these hip sourcebooks for graphic designers and visual creatives. The book is organized around structure, communication, problem solving and originality - all problems that drive design itself - but with the raw edge of organic development. Design is site specific; the flavor of each city is tasted through the vast variety of its visual elements that can be called graphic design in its widest sense. With its partner volume on New York (ISBN 2880467675), this fascinating book emphasizes the site-specific nature of design as a city's lifeblood, contrasting east and west.

Graphiscape: Tokyo

With over 1,300 illustrations, this heavily illustrated book shows how photography magazines continually served as a genre-defining platform for photography in Japan. This book also features an extensive amount of photographers’ writings that first appeared in these magazines. Such writings include texts by Araki Nobuyoshi, Fukase Masahisa, Hosoe Eikoh, Kawada Kikuji, Kimura Ihei, Moriyama Daido, Narahara Ikko, Sako Kōichi, Yasui Nakaji, as well as writings by Tanikawa Shuntarō, Terayama Shūji, among many others. Japanese Photography 1880s to 1980s shows Japan’s unique photography magazine culture and how it became genre-defining. Starting with the earliest camera-related publications in the 19th century through to the end of the magazine's golden era in the 1980s, this book immerses the reader into the work of well-established as well as overlooked photographers, representing a broad range of imagery and approaches. Each of the featured magazine stories are accompanied with authoritative historical information, which, as a whole, provides the reader with a balanced and nuanced survey of this history of Japanese photography. This gives the reader a grounding into the core concepts and vocabulary for understanding the definitive characteristic of photography from Japan. Nearly all of the stories that are featured in this volume are reproduced in their entirety, making this volume an invaluable resource for researchers, collectors, general readers, and photography fans.

Japanese Photography Magazines, 1880s to 1980s

Kaneko, Ryuichi

Toda, Masako

Goliga