Happy to say I did the promotional art/poster for 2024's Japan Impact convention in Switzerland! I'll be doing some other art for them that I'll show at a later date, too, but they revealed this a bit early so I get to share it now! :D
Their theme for next year is yōkai and I didn't want to make something especially scary or creepy and wanted to draw a bunch of weird little guys as friends so here's a bunch of friendly little guys!
I've taken in a lot of various media over the years that have very directly included yōkai or been influenced by them and it would have been lame to, like, lift those or try and be Accurate since, like, it's not my culture. I spent a good day and a half nose-down in research so I could interpret the ones I picked out with my own vision and I had so much fun doing that. It was really difficult--I'm not a creature designer and I'm terrible at drawing anything resembling an animal in general--but I'm so happy with how they all turned out.
The only one I sorta kept the same is the tanuki since, well, if you know, you know.
