Masaya Inaba, a CGI artist who began his career at Studio 4°C in Tokyo and now lives in London, gives a Kreative Talk at art’otel London Hoxton on Saturday 7 November 2026. The afternoon runs from 12pm to 2pm, with a question and answer session and an informal reception in the hotel’s gallery once he has finished speaking.
His subject is how computer graphics meet hand-drawn animation and painted backgrounds in Japanese films, told through sequences he worked on himself.
Masaya Inaba at art'otel Hoxton
Studio 4°C’s CGI craft explained at art’otel London Hoxton, with a Q&A and reception- Address
- art’otel London Hoxton, 1-3 Rivington Street, London EC2A 3DT
- Admission
- £15 plus booking fee, student concessions available
- Starts
- November 7, 2026, 12:00 PM
- Ends
- November 7, 2026 2:00 PM
More about the event
- First Studio 4°C credit
- 3D CGI on the 2011 ThunderCats series, which Studio 4°C animated for Warner Bros.
- Before animation
- He graduated from Sophia University in Tokyo in 2010, the year before he joined the studio.
- Masaaki Yuasa’s Inu-Oh
- He is credited for visual effects on Inu-Oh (2021), Yuasa’s musical set in fourteenth century Japan.
- A Google Doodle
- His filmography includes the Champion Island Games Doodle that Studio 4°C animated for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
- Earlier anime guest
- Kreative Talks hosted Eric Wong, a concept designer on Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle, in April 2026.
Masaya Inaba's Studio 4°C Career and His Hoxton Talk
Masaya Inaba, From Shizuoka to Studio 4°C and London
Inaba was born in Shizuoka, Japan. The talk traces his route from the manga that caught his imagination in Brazil to Studio 4°C, the independent Tokyo studio founded in 1986 by the producer Eiko Tanaka and the animator Koji Morimoto.
He joined the studio in 2011. His own filmography lists Harmony (2015), the Project Itoh adaptation co-directed by Takashi Nakamura and Michael Arias, and Ayumu Watanabe’s Children of the Sea (2019), where he is credited as a CGI artist. Studio 4°C’s work for American studios appears there too, including compositing on the DC animated film Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (2013).
Today he works freelance from London as a CGI artist and supervisor, still partnering with Studio 4°C. He is also part of Sankaku, a collective that produces art direction for short and feature-length films built around visual expression in animation.
In the event announcement he describes the job as being about people as much as software:
It is about understanding how different people work, connecting their skills, and helping their work shine.
Berserk, ChaO and the Studio 4°C Films in Inaba’s Talk
Artificial Kreativity, which runs the series, says Inaba will draw on four productions: ChaO, Berserk: The Golden Age Arc III, All You Need Is Kill and MUTAFUKAZ. He will take the audience behind some of their more complex animated sequences, including how he works with traditional anime painters.
Berserk: The Golden Age Arc III (2013), subtitled The Advent, closed Toshiyuki Kubooka’s trilogy of films adapting Kentaro Miura’s Berserk manga, and Inaba is credited for CGI on it. The film was a Jury Selection in the animation division of the 17th Japan Media Arts Festival.
ChaO (2025) is Yasuhiro Aoki’s romantic comedy about a young man and a mermaid princess, and it won the Jury Prize at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in 2025. All You Need Is Kill (2026), directed by Kenichiro Akimoto, is Studio 4°C’s animated take on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s time loop novel, the book that also inspired the Hollywood film Edge of Tomorrow.
MUTAFUKAZ, released in English as MFKZ, was made by Studio 4°C with the French company Ankama and adapts the comic by Guillaume Renard, who works as Run.
Another of his films reaches a London cinema eight days later. Poupelle of Chimney Town, on which Inaba worked as a CGI designer, screens at Picturehouse Central on Sunday 15 November as part of Scotland Loves Anime’s London weekend.
How CGI and Hand-Drawn Animation Share a Frame in Anime
Much of Japanese anime is still drawn by hand, with characters painted onto layers that sit over separately painted backgrounds. CGI teams tend to build the things that are hard to draw consistently from frame to frame, such as vehicles and crowds, or a camera move through a detailed set, then render them so they sit comfortably beside the drawn characters.
Inaba is also a compositor. Japanese studios call this stage satsuei, which means photography, a name left over from the days when painted cels were laid over backgrounds and filmed with a camera. The compositor now combines the drawn layers, backgrounds and digital effects into the finished frame, which is why one of his credits on Harmony reads photography.
Kreative Talks and Artificial Kreativity at art’otel London Hoxton
Kreative Talks is a speaker series produced by Artificial Kreativity, a London creative company run by its founder and director, Rafael Portillo. It began in 2025, and earlier guests include the architect Sir Peter Cook and the East London mural artist Mr Cenz.
The talks are held at art’otel London Hoxton, the Rivington Street hotel with its own gallery space on site. The hotel supports the series alongside RIBA London, the Polish Cultural Institute in London and the percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie.
Masaya Inaba at art’otel London Hoxton: Questions and Answers
A Japanese CGI artist, compositor and animation director who joined Studio 4°C in Tokyo in 2011. He now lives in London, works freelance and is a member of the collective Sankaku.
The event runs from 12pm to 2pm on Saturday 7 November 2026. That covers the talk, a question and answer session and an informal networking reception.
Yes. Artificial Kreativity says it is aimed at animators, illustrators, filmmakers, designers and students, and student concession tickets cost £12.
Tickets From £15 and Getting to art’otel London Hoxton
General admission costs £15 and student concessions cost £12, with a booking fee added at checkout. The talk is also listed on art’otel’s own events page.
art’otel London Hoxton is at 1-3 Rivington Street, London EC2A 3DT. Old Street station (Northern line and National Rail) is a short walk away, and Shoreditch High Street on the London Overground is about seven minutes on foot.
art'otel London Hoxton
Book a place on Artificial Kreativity’s ticket page for the talk, and aim to arrive a few minutes before 12pm, as Inaba starts speaking on the hour.
