Hajime Sorayama

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CD Cover of Aerosmith's Just Push Play, illustration by Sorayama

Hajime Sorayama is a Japanese illustrator, famous for his vivid hyper illustrated style. He does ASFR drawings of female pin ups and erotic art that are super realistic and also draws robot women, cyborgs and other illustrations of humans and animals.

The abstract originality and futurist vision of Sorayama surpass the erotic form and maintains a growing number of mainstream admirers. Sorayama is also often described as an imaginative modern day Vargas.

Soryama has been working independently as a freelance illustrator since 1972 and after graduating from art school in 1969, he has been perfecting his own superrealistic illustration techniques while simultaneously raising the level of skill and craftsmanship in the field to new heights. He is also described as one of the most significant erotic artists of the 20th century.

The pinup art of Sorayama is delicious and erotic, blending the soft contours of the female form with the industrialized shiny metal "skin" of the humanoid "android" that is bound to both arouse and shock the viewer. Sorayama's "real women" pinups are sexy, intriguing, and seem "real to the touch". The robots, and combinations of the two, are shiny, glistening, and sleekly attractive.

The "Sexy robot" released at the end of 70's, were born by combining the existing pinup art and robots with chrome body. The ideas that combined bondage, fetish, modern-primitive, biotechnology, and genetic manipulation were presented in the Gynoids released in the late 80's and in 90's, which reached the peak of his pinup art.

Sorayama’s brush painting technique is done with a tiny brush and airbrushes are used as finishing aspects. To create the sensual, innovative functions and a future manmade beauty, odds materials such as animals, insects, materials for industrial use, mechanical parts, bizarre costumes and other equipment, were taken in ruthlessly and worked on. He claims that the process of creating such a collage in itself was a discovery trip of the radical and new exotism for him.

His highly painstaking and detailed art is featured in movies, books and monthly issues of Penthouse Magazine.

[edit] Trivia

He created the initial design for the Sony AIBO.

His book "Sexy Robot" (ISBN 4768300014) was a smash underground hit when it was released.

The term Sexy Robot was coined to describe Sorayama’s renditions of the female robot forms first created in 1979.

He designed the cover for Aerosmith's album Just Push Play.

In The Venture Bros. episode "Past Tense", a character named Mike Sorayama builds robots nearly identical to those depicted by Hajime. Upon seeing the robots, Dr. Venture sarcastically comments: "Yeah, I had that issue of Heavy Metal too." Sorayama is thanked in the episode's credits.

His published books include: Hajime Sorajama, Sorayama Hyper Illustrations, Sorayama Hyper Illustrations Part 2, The Gynoids, Naga, Torquere, and The Complete Works 1964-99.