View Resume		About Yuka Yuka Nagate is a professional Manga artist, and a licensed teacher from the University of Ibaraki in Tokyo, Japan. She's specialized in Shonen-style Manga and has experience educating art illustration to students in the middle school age range. She was born on the 16th of July in a town near Nagoya, Japan.  And while she doesn't remember having any special artistic abilities during her early childhood, her mom still conserves a picture she drew of Snoopy at around the age of 3, which mom proudly speaks of as the first sign of talent.  While growing up she watched several Asian animations including the well-known Doraemon, which Yuka was very fond of and considers it to be one of her first influential animations.  But as she got older she was most captivated by realistic animated TV series where the characters and storylines were parallel to the human appearance and human drama.  Such were series by Leiji Matsumoto, like Galaxy Express 999, Uchu Senkan Yamato, and Starblazer, in which complex and detailed sketches of its characters were carefully sketched out. Yuka’s style of drawing made a drastic change between her junior high and high school years, where she shifted from the simple child-like illustration to the more detailed and complex ones.  Yuka began detailing the human form, with various poses to test her ability to capture its realism.  She attributes this change to her admiration of Mutsumi Inomata’s earlier works, particularly the Utsunomiko series, with its fascinating traditional illustrations, something Yuka is most interested in.  Other favorites include Cat’s Eyes, Hojo Tsukasa's City Hunter, Ghost in the Shell and others with more sophisticated artwork. There was a big difference between girls (Shojo) and boys (Shonen) Manga for Yuka and that was the complexity of each drawing.  The more complex the more interesting it became for her. In the girls’ comics (Shojo), the characters tend to have a simpler characteristic, which makes it more cartoon-like.  These kinds of illustration did not pose a challenge for Yuka as much as the male comics, where the beauty and sexuality of the human body was much more pronounced and expressed artistically in this medium. Not to mention the fact that when illustrating and writing for boys manga, there are less limitations to the subject you can write about, something that's not always the case for Shojo manga. And even though it is the male artists and authors that predominate the Shonen comic industry, there's no gender-barrier when it comes to showing off your skills and ability to create a good manga. Yuka learned this after getting her first professional job in Kodansha, Ltd. where it was predominantly men working in the Shonen manga division. She was not limited in the use of her imagination and skills just because she was one of the few women writing and illustrating the types of stories she worked on. In fact, one of the most interesting challenges for Yuka was to write from the male perspective. Many of her readers weren't aware that it was her, a female, writing about male characters, how they think and conducts their life in these stories. This was baffling for many of her readers, yet she enjoyed the controversy and so did her fans. Nonetheless, Yuka was able to capture the attention of many readers whom admired her choice is writing, which focused on Japanese history and real-life stories, where everything related to the expression of human emotions and mimicked real life situations. Due to this, many of her devout readers became interested in Japanese history and commented on what they learned. This made Yuka very proud being that she was able to provide more than a story, as an educator and an entertainer at the same time. After moving to New York City in 2003, Yuka became inspired by the ever-growing Manga market in the United States, which has helped her not only refining her skills for future projects, but also to educate the growing population of young readers, how to draw manga. She has since conducted several workshops at the New York Public Library to teach manga illustration. Here's where Yuka got to experience first hand what it is to educate young adults of different backgrounds, a form of illustration that's deeply rooted in the Japanese culture, while attending to their needs to improve their own skills and understanding of what Manga is really all about. Having had the opportunity to work with various groups of students Yuka was able to also learn from them about the various cultures in New York City, such as their taste in fashion, use of language, music, etc. Not to mention, practice how to draw characters other than Japanese people, which helped her incorporate some of these influences in her future projects. Please refer to the gallery section for samples of her new characters. Yuka enjoys teaching just about anyone interested in art, Manga or Japanese culture. She hopes to be able to reach a broad audience not just in Japan but also in the United States, whether is through art education or simply writing and illustrating really good manga. So please check out her programs and works in progress section to find out where Yuka will be teaching manga next or any other events where she'll be.