About
PROFILE
Mitsuhiro Arita Illustrator / Designer / Artist 
Mitsuhiro Arita was born in 1970 in Fukuoka Japan. He had been working as a freelance artist since 1986. The first project he worked on was Pokémon Trading Card Game, and continuously working on it for over twenty years.
He also worked on Final Fantasy XI for eleven years and did concept design for the theatrical animation film BERSERK: the golden ages I-III, books, and magazines.
Last five years, he started to be a guest for the events in Japan, America, China, and Italy.
You also can look into more detailed BIOGRAPHY from here.
BIOGRAPHY
HI, I’m Mitsuhiro Arita. I know I’m quite well known as an artist of Pokémon TCG, but I have been working on a lot of other projects that you may never know.
I was born in Fukuoka, Japan and now living in Tokyo, Japan. I started my career as a professional illustrator in 1996, and the first project for me was Pokémon TCG. Sounds like a dream? But that was even before the first GBA Pokémon has not released. I honestly worried about to find another project before the end of my contract. Anyway, I started work on Pokémon TCG since the prototype stage. I drew illustrations for prototype and designed first five energy mark as well.
While I’m working on first Pokémon TCG product, I got a connection with a small publisher, named SHINKIGENSHA. SHINKIGENSHA is the publisher mainly making books about mythology, history and fantasy subjects that is suitable for the reference material for artist, comic artist, authors, and game creators. I drew tons of cuts for their books and got knowledge about those subjects.
Meanwhile, I suddenly found out by KENICHI IWAO, who well known as a planner and the creator of the world of Final Fantasy XI, named “Vana’diel.” He said he saw my drawings on the book “ARMS & ARMOR”(SHINKIGENSHA, 2004) and want to ask me to draw the world of Vana’diel. That was the beginning of my work for SQUARE ENIX.
I worked on Final Fantasy XI over ten years. Mainly I draw cuts for the articles about worldview but also the announcements about season events. I also worked on the scenario “Seekers of Adoulin”(2013) as the in-game cutscenes artist. I think nobody knows but I designed Final Fantasy XIV’s “Guild Leave Card” as well. Unfortunately, I left from Final Fantasy XI because they decided shrink the operation of XI and pass the baton to XIV after 12 years continuously expand and that is the rare long life for ONLINE MMO RPG. They even made an exhibition in their official store “ARTNIA” at Shinjuku, Japan for one of their 11th anniversary event.
During I had been working on Final Fantasy XI, I also did almost one hundred card illustrations for computer card & board game “Culdcept” series (OMIYA-SOFT, 1997-2016),
Card design for “DICE-O“(BANDAI) that is based on the characters from “SENTAI TV series” well known as “Power Ranger” in western countries I think, key visuals for “GANBARIDE“(BANDAI) that is the card game based on the characters from the TV series “KAMEN-RIDER”(Masked rider), they are a sort of comic heroes in the western countries.
I also worked on some of animation film titles, unfortunately “BERSERK: The Dolden Age Arc“(Warner Bros.) part I (2012) part II(2013) part III(2014) was the only a title that released. You can see a bit of my work in another post. I’m looking forward another one, “Hirune Hime: Shiranai Watashi no Monogatari“(Warner Bros. 2017) will be released in safe that I worked on as a concept designer for a year.
Left from the story of my commission work. I don’t have any background to do art. I went a collage and studied about Electronic engineering and studied mainly about Software engineering. Then after I graduate, I become to be an illustrator in some reasons. Of course I didn’t have enough skill to do professional illustrator, So I have to teach myself to survive as an professional Illustrator. It was natural I started to do sketching in daily life. I learnt almost everything from sketching. I mainly used to use pen, brush pen or fountain pan for years to do that, but recently I started sketching with watercolor even in the train. Every time I have t go far from my hometown, I drew something during the trip. I’m very excited to do sketching in Europe this time. I’ll post my sketches time by time, so please keep following me on Facebook or Twitter if you like.
From the experience of self taught, I’m talking while live drawing a picture at the collages and companies. I did live demo in many places all over Japan in last seven years, from northernmost state HOKKAIDO to southernmost state OKINAWA. I also had a live demo tour in China in 2013 for a week, and did in public library in Jacksonville, Florida, U.S. in 2015.
From the experience of live demo, I started invited from the events sometimes. I did live demo at Collective Con(2015) and Tokyo Comic Con(2017). I painted a creepy old man on the big (3Mx1.5M) panel and took a picture with Lance Henriksen (great actor, greatly known as BISHOP in “Alien 2″1986)!
I was be a guest a couple of official signing event at Seattle (2000) and Orlando (2004) both in U.S. But on 2014, Ocala Comic Con was invited me as a special guest. After that, I started to be a guest at Comic Conventions as an artist. I was invited as a guest at Collective Con 2015 , and Ocala Comic Con 2016 again, then Tokyo Comic Con 2017.
I usually signing and take a picture with fans. I also do commissions if I have spare time. You can see Black and White and Colored in the pictures above.
Mitsuhiro,
CLIENTS LIST