Acky Bright live drawing on glass at the opening of his show at the Japan Scoiety. Photo by Lisa Freeman
By J. SCOTT ORR October 13, 2024
Japanese manga artist Acky Bright is at it again, weaving together line after line, thousands of them, into an intricate tableau that will eventually invest three walls, one of them glass, with a monumental work of art that seamlessly melds Japanese tradition with modern western influences.
The thing about this work, created live in front of an eager audience of onlookers at the Japan Society in Manhattan, is that it is so alive, so organic, that Bright himself has no idea what the final product will look like even as he adds line after post-meditated line.
Bright, part of a new generation of Japanese boundary-busting Japanese manga artists and illustrators, has crafted a global reputation for a style he calls “kawakakkoii,” which means cute and cool and draws on Golden Age manga and anime, but also hews to myriad western cultural and artistic influences. His exhibition, which will be on display until early next year at the Japan Society, includes manga, commercial art, and introspective fine-art pieces created just for the event.
When Bright draws live, as he will be doing on-and-off through the show’s run, there’s no plan, no sketches, just Bright, his black marker, the wall and, most importantly, the lines. During the opening of his show, Bright’s creation was dominated by a monumental dragon, with bulging eyes, flaring nostrils and fearsome teeth protruding from a mass of hair and scales. While the piece expressed the dragon’s ferocity, strength and anger, it also portrayed a being possessed by levels of fear, insecurity and self-possession.
As he committed the giant mural to the giant glass window and surrounding walls, Bright was flanked on either side by a pair of works he created specially for the Japan Society show, a diptych called Ah-Un, after the first and last letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. The works are contemporary interpretations of the guardian lion-dogs that watch the gates of Shinto shrines and the warrior kings that defend Buddhist temples.
Together, the pieces offer a glimpse into Bright’s practice and the work he produces. They draw on ancient Asian traditions and thoroughly modern global pop aesthetics. Like Bright, the two works ably reconcile their seemingly dichotomous existence; they are strikingly similar, yet one is on a silver background, one is on gold; one faces right, the other left; one wears her helmet wide open, the other locks hers shut. Still, they are clearly of a piece.
Bright commonly works in a studio, creating manga style fine-art and commercial work for global giants like BMW, McDonald’s, Netflix and DC Comics. But it’s during these live drawing sessions that Bright’s inner artist shines through.
Acky Bright black and white drawings at the Japan Society. Photo by Lisa Freeman
“The big difference between being in the studio and live drawing is that when I’m live drawing I don’t do any sketching first so I have to pay more attention to each line. I create it as I go along,” Bright said, speaking through a translator during an interview with Whitehot Magazine just before the opening of his first solo show in the U.S.
“There are mistakes, yes, but that’s why I don’t do sketches. If you have a sketch and you make a mistake, it’s a mistake. But in live drawing there is no plan, so there are no mistakes,” he said.
Bright expressed frustration that in some corners his work, and that of other manga artists, is thought of exclusively as the stuff of comics and cartoons. Still, he said, that is changing.
“In Japan, manga is separate from the art world, but in some other countries, like France, manga is considered more like fine art. From my perspective, manga and fine art are at the same level. Many people think manga is fine art, but there are some in the art world who tend to look down on manga,” he said.
Bright hopes that as attitudes change, he will achieve fine art success to go along with the success he has achieved with his commercial work. While it has been brief, Bright’s career has had some remarkable moments.
“One turning point was when COVID happened. That’s when I started taking on a lot of projects from the U.S. and European countries. So working in those areas had a lot of influence on my art,” he said.
One of his biggest commercial successes came earlier this year, when he created multimedia designs and a stable of characters for McDonald’s “WcDonald’s” campaign. In Japan, McDonald’s was being represented in anime as “WcDonald’s” to avoid copyright issues. But rather than fight the reinterpretation of its brand products, McDonald’s embraced it, issuing WcDonald’s packaging and even turning its iconic double-arches M into a W at some locations.
In 2020, Bright began an association with American comic giant DC, which included creating covers for several books like Joker #8 in 2021, Deathstroke Inc #7 in 2022 and Static Shadows of Dakota #7, in 2023. Last year, he did all of the art for DC’s Knight Terrors: Angel Breaker #1 and #2.
Packaging created by Acky Bright for McDonald’s when the fast food giant embraced the amime alternative brand WcDonald’s. Photo by Lisa Freeman
“There are many differences between drawing manga and drawing for graphic novels, like DC comics. In manga, for example, the speech bubble is very important, so I put that in first. In graphic novels, it’s more about the artwork, so I draw each panel then the words are added,” Bright said.
One of his 2022 covers, an alternate for Harley Quinn #11, features the Joker’s sometimes love interest amply tattooed, smiling broadly, a baseball bat in her right hand, seated atop a giant rat, which is wearing a spiked collar. Bright’s rendering looks a bit like the Margot Robbie version from the 2016 movie Suicide Squad, but little like the Lady Gaga version in the new Joker picture, Joker: Folie à Deux.
“I like Lady Gaga a lot and I think her character is a good fit. I’m looking forward to it,” Bright said of the coming movie.
Bright’s first book, B/W appeared in 2023 and, as the name implies, it is largely free of the bright colors and overall vibrance commonly associated with manga illustration. What it does have is black lines, and plenty of them. Yes, the book is loaded with cute and cool characters, but you can add to that list of adjectives strong, tough and fierce.
Like many of his female characters, the book’s protagonists bow to his kawakakkoii style; they are cute to be sure, with their pageboy haircuts, saucer eyes and retroussé noses. At the same time, though, they are fearsome warriors, all strong, sinewy and self-assured, whether sporting armor and wielding weapons, or playfully embracing an expressionless skeleton.
In his book, Bright expressed his love for drawing, his reliance on imperfection as a creative technique and his faithful relationship with the line, his enduring mistress.
“I can’t really draw lines well at all. Sometimes, two seconds after thinking I’d drawn a good line for a moment, I realize that the line is off. It’s a delicate process, and I believe that the only way to get better at it is to keep drawing.
“The best way to describe myself is as a kid who liked to draw and grew up unchanged,” he said. WM