How Gurihiru redesigned the legendary Osamu Tezuka's manga characters for a new audience

Unico Awakening; a blue small unicorn
(Image credit: Scholastic)

Artist Osamu Tezuka is often referred to as the 'father of manga' and one of the greatest comic artists of all time, so you can imagine the pressure on an art team asked to redesign characters by the creator of Astro Boy. That's just what Japanese creative team Gurihiru were tasked with doing for the new kid-friendly reworking of Unico, a manga by Osamu Tezuka first published in 1976.

"There was a lot of pressure for us to work on a manga by Tezuka-sensei," says Gurihiru. "We really thought a lot about being a part of this project and took a long time until we answered."

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Editor, Digital Arts & 3D

Ian Dean is Editor, Digital Arts & 3D at Creative Bloq, and the former editor of many leading magazines. These titles included ImagineFX, 3D World and video game titles Play and Official PlayStation Magazine. Ian launched Xbox magazine X360 and edited PlayStation World. For Creative Bloq, Ian combines his experiences to bring the latest news on digital art, VFX and video games and tech, and in his spare time he doodles in Procreate, ArtRage, and Rebelle while finding time to play Xbox and PS5.