Silhouette and contrast were key considerations. So, Kawamoto began to sketch, getting input from Watanabe, Minami and Nobumoto along the way. They’d spent years working together on Gundam - Minami said that Kawamoto excelled when following his own ideas, and always delivered drawings that have “a strong sense of presence and are very eye-catching.” That producer, Masahiko Minami, had faith in Kawamoto’s ability to improvise. “ ‘Just draw something to start off with,’ I was told by the producer,” Kawamoto recalled, laughing. The early meetings were inconclusive, but Kawamoto got the general idea that the characters should feel hardboiled. Keiko Nobumoto, we solidified the characters. From the world setting in the planning document written by the chief scriptwriter of the show, Ms. Director “Nabeshin” (Shinichirō Watanabe) had provided some rough direction as well as the concept of the title: to focus on characters mixed with stylish music. So we had action in space with spaceships in our mind. At that time, the production of Star Wars Episode I had been announced. The working title of the project was Shooting Star Bebop. Kawamoto was hired by the producer to flesh out the project by designing the three main characters - the first step away from the rough outline and toward a real show. In 1996, Cowboy Bebop started pre-production as the thinnest sketch of an idea.
Early design sketches by Toshihiro Kawamoto for Spike, Jet and Faye (courtesy of Cowboy Bebop: Illustrations ~The Wind~ )
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