In the early 19th century, Yamato Nadeshiko (大和撫子) is referred to by Japanese as a ideal Japanese woman with loyalty, domestic ability, and wisdom in the male dominated society. Rin Nadeshico 撫子凛 (*Nadeshico spelled with “c”, not “k”) is an up-and-coming Japanese female graphic artist who illustrates a new definition of “Yamato Nadeshiko” in the 20th century. Those girls she draws are independent, with strong personality, and sometimes aggressive.

Born on 15th Dec 1984 in Chiba prefecture, Japan, Rin Nadeshico's computer graphic illustrations are montages of Mt. Fuji and other traditional japanese sceneries, with high school girls lounging around with various other oversized creatures. School girls and tentacles are two common elements in many modern Japanese art, but Nadeshico doesn’t just limit herself to giant beasts with tentacles, but giant beasts of all sorts, mingling with the iconic Japanese schoolgirl like lions to lambs.

Created from photo prints of real-world scenes, cut and assembled into 3D collages, Fotomo are the work of Kimio Itozaki, a Japanese photographer with a unique perspective on life and art.

Fotomo (a word standing for "Photograph" and "Model") aims at capturing the different angles and slice of life in cities by photography. Although photograph is 2-dimensional, Kimio Itozaki can still make a 3-dimensional photography model by different shots and cut & paste process. The final result is 3-dimensional micro models featuring different city scenes.

See more of Kimio Itozaki's works through the following sources:
- The Woald of FOTOMO Photo Book
- FOTOMO X City Exhibtion
- Interview via Olympus

Edwin Ushiro, transplanted from Maui to California, attended the Art Center College of Design and attained a BFA in Illustration with Honors. Since then, he has worked in the amazing world of entertainment as a Cinematographer, Production Designer, Visual Consultant, Art Director, Storyboard Artist, Concept Designer and Fashion Designer.

Recently, Edwin has also been hitting the gallery scene and gaining some real recongnition for his personal work. With a dark, mysterious and always-innovative style of painting, he is among the forefront of painters who are seamlessly combining traditional and digital media. Be sure to check his blog, where he updates quite frequently with sketches or work-in-progress.

Edwin will be having a solo show this July at project: gallery in Los Angeles.

Shin Tanaka is a 28 year old graffitti artist from Fukuoka who has given a new life to paper toys. He's made them go and play in the street with new spanking looks reflecting hip hop, urban street culture, and pop art. His origami experiences has helped him to create blank template paper toys in which other artists can also draw into.

His paper toy project have now over 200 artists which some of them have been exhibited in the Kami Zoo exhibition. He is also one of the  designers of the toy company giant Play Imaginative.

Aside from paper toys, his illustrations and graffitti can be found also on Nike and Feiyue shoes.

Born in Yokohama City, 1973, Tadaomi Shibuya (澁谷忠臣) is an artist / illustrator / designer from Japan.

Shibuya graduated from the Product Design department at Tama Art University. He has since developed his unique style using acrylic gouache. Besides paintings, Shibuya has also designed CD cover images, textiles, fliers for events and logo.

Tadaomi Shibuya is represented by digmeout in Japan.

Read his interview with Compound Gallery, and also an article on his exhibition by PingMag.