CCC17 welcomes manga artist Orpheus Ganitis to its Artists’ Alley!

Orpheus Ganitis, aka Gun-it-is internationally and Doujima Gyro (銅島ジャイロ) in Japan, is a rookie manga artist, illustrator and story teller. Since April of 2017 he became a university student in one of the most historical art schools in Japan, the Seika University in Kyoto, the same university that created the International Manga Museum. His interest towards manga started with Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し) and since then, Orpheus became obsessed with Studio Ghibli films and anime.

From 5th grade, he has been drawing illustrations and character designs, as well as making his own stories.  In 2013, he move to Japan, following his dream. Studied Japanese for 2 years, passed the N2 level of JLPT (the second most difficult Japanese exam for foreigners) which was his ticket to continue his studies. He then studied manga from April of 2015 to March of 2017 in Osaka Communication Art college (OCA 大阪コミュニケーションアート専門学校). After joining a real manga drawing environment, he realised that his works were still a premature attempt at drawing manga and committed to work hard and improve!

In terms of traditional media, he prefers to draw with pens, water colours, copic-markers and brush pens, while on PC, he uses a Wacom pen tablet. His software of choice, is Clip Studio Paint Pro and some times Photoshop. In order to improve his artwork, he has been taking classic art lessons and more recently, he stared researching other famous manga artists such as Murata Yusuke (村田雄介), Morita Masanori (森田まさのり) and Asano Iono (浅野いにお) from Japanese programs like Manben (漫勉) and Jump Ryu (ジャンプ流).

More recently, he presented his work in various magazines such as Jump +, Jump SQ, Young Jump, Weekly Magazine, Weekly Sunday (etc). He was praised by all editors, especially for his latest work, who found his passion and knowledge towards bird and insects very appealing. It was pointed out as unique and promising for future work. Leaving the good feedback aside, he believes that working at his university under manga artists such as Ouhinata Gou and Tanaka Keiichi, made him more modest, grounded and helped him realise how hard the road to success is. “A dream to live by, a dream to count on“.