Yuri Yokomizo

As a child, Yuri Yokomizo was a timid student and would often avoid standing out in school. She developed a love for art which had been largely inspired by her affinity for video games, anime, and character goods citing inspiration from popular franchises of her childhood such as Pokémon, Tamagotchi, Afro Ken, and others. As a result, she spent much of her formative years drawing in sketchbooks, making plush toys, designing original characters, and had joined art clubs throughout elementary, junior high, and high school.

During her time in elementary school, she had discovered the popular San-X character, Tarepanda and took interest in the unique design. She took note that the character was created by San-X and began to look further into the company and its other works when she reached junior high. She took up painting and had loved drawing cute animal characters more than she enjoyed drawing humans so she felt the best place for her art would be a character goods company like San-X which became her career aspiration. Yokomizo reached out to an illustrator who would give her advice on designing characters that go beyond their appearance and have strong character to them which is something that stuck with her from then on.[1]

Yokomizo enrolled in Tama Art University in Tokyo and continued working on character designs. After graduation, she began working at character stationary company, San-X in the spring of 2011 at the age of 23.[2]

In November 2011, Yokomizo would enter an in-house design competition at the company where she would take inspiration for her entry from notebook drawings she had created in the corners of her papers while in university.[2] The characters she had designed for the competition in 2011 were notably more "negative" than typical kawaii-themed characters. One of the designs had been a tapioca pearl that was left behind in a bubble tea cup for being too difficult to drink and the other characters designed for the project had similarly sad backgrounds as well as blank, emotionless expressions.[2] The emotionless expressions were made to allow viewers to project their own emotional connections onto characters. This style of design featuring more negative or apathetic characters, although popular in more recent years with other popular "kawaii" characters like Rilakkuma and Gudetama,[3] was not common during the time and made Yokomizo's designs stand out. Yokomizo had stated the intention was to create characters that would connect with audiences of all ages rather than just children. The characters from her competition entry would go on to become the foundation of Yokomizo's Sumikko Gurashi characters.[2]

In 2012, Sumikko Gurashi debuted and would go on to capture audiences with its themes of outcast and leftover characters who shyly reside in corners where they are most comfortable. The character lineup began with four main characters; Shirokuma, Penguin?, Neko, and Tonkatsu. Three years after the initial release of the line, a final main Sumikko was introduced named, Tokage. The collection of characters also included the Minikko which are smaller side characters who appear alongside the main sumikko from time to time.[4] The popularity of the series amongst children and adults alike has led to many pop-up merchandise shops[5] and themed pop-up restaurants[6] independently as well as alongside Rilakkuma in various locations within Japan and in some countries internationally including Singapore[7] and the United States.[8]

Though she is no longer an employee at San-X, she still works with the company on Sumikko Gurashi related projects.

• "すみっコぐらし原点は落書き かわいそうなかわいさ共感：朝日新聞デジタル". 朝日新聞デジタル (in Japanese). 31 July 2019.