Toshihiro Kawamoto

Toshihiro Kawamoto (川元 利浩, Kawamoto Toshihiro^?, born July 15, 1963 in Mie Prefecture) is a Japanese animator. He is co-founder and director of the anime studio Bones. He was character designer and animation director of Cowboy Bebop.

Upon graduating from high school, Kawamoto was first employed in the making and designing of precision machinery. During this early period, he became interested in becoming an animator due to the ongoing Macross series, Yoshiyuki Tomino's Mobile Suit Gundam and Gainax's amateur Daikon films. In particular, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's character designs were a major influence. Within a year, Kawamoto left his previous profession and enrolled in the Nagoya branch of Tokyo Designer Gakuin College (currently known as Nagoya Designer Gakuin), which he later attended for two years.

After graduating, he applied for a job at Group Donguri and was accepted. In 1986, he made his debut in Yasuhiko's 1986 film Arion, where he was supervised by Yoshinobu Inano and mentored by lead character designer Sachiko Kamimura, with whom he later collaborated on numerous productions, including being her assistant in Venus Wars, which was also directed and written by Yasuhiko. Soon after, he began working in numerous other Sunrise series, being the lead character designer in the Gundam OVA series Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory and Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Last Blitz of Zeon, Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team and Cowboy Bebop. While designing the characters for Bebop, Kawamoto modeled the character of Ed on composer Yoko Kanno, Spike Spiegel on Arsène Lupin III and City Hunter, and Ein on a friend's dog, from a suggestion by writer Keiko Nobumoto.

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