When we talk about animation that breathes, stretches, and bounces as if it had a life of its own, the name Yoh Yoshinari appears before you finish the sentence. Nicknamed The Wizard by his colleagues, this animator is one of the founders of Studio Trigger, and his visual signature is unmistakable: organic liquids, squash and stretch taken to the extreme, and an expressiveness that turns any scene into a torrent of energy.
The physics of fluids and the art of stretching 🎨
Yoshinari doesn't just draw; he constructs movement based on principles of classic animation. His mastery of squash and stretch allows characters and objects to deform like hot chewing gum without losing volume or weight. In works like Little Witch Academia or BNA, every gesture flows with an organic logic reminiscent of the great Disney masters, but with a wilder DNA. In Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, his animation direction took violence and speed to a new level, where every punch feels like a lash of metallic jelly.
The day Yoshinari animated a piece of gum and nobody complained 🎈
Legend has it that at a Trigger meeting, someone asked how he made a character look like a balloon about to burst. Yoshinari, unfazed, drew a guy stretching like raw spaghetti and then bouncing off the floor. The team applauded. Since then, no one dares to ask him to draw something rigid. Even doors in his animations seem to have rubber joints. The wizard doesn't do tricks: he makes everything elastic, even your patience.