Mai Yoneyama (born July 12, 1988) is a Japanese artist, animator, and illustrator. She is from Nagano Prefecture and received a degree in Illustration from Tokyo Design Academy. Yoneyama currently works as an in-house illustrator and animator for Gainax, Ltd.
Early Life
Mai Yoneyama was born on July 12, 1988 in Nagano Prefecture to a Japanese architect father and Taiwanese mother. She lived in Taiwan for one year when she was in kindergarten and two more years in elementary school. Influenced by her father, an architect, she enrolled in a high school majoring in architecture. She chose it because there were no high schools with an art department in her hometown. At some point, she bought an illustration book titled "Edge" and was inspired by the illustrations of animators such as Hiroyuki Imaishi, Yo Yoshinari, Tatsuyuki Tanaka , and Sushio, and decided to pivot the animation department at her school.
Career
After graduating from Tokyo Design Academy, she met Daizen Komatsuda, the director of "Bubuki Buranki", and was invited to work at Gainax in 2009. Her first work was for Mahoromatic as an animator. After about a year as an animator, she was promoted to lead animator for "Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt".
She then left Gainax after working there for about five years, and started working as a freelancer at Studio Trigger, an anime production company founded by Masahiko Otsuka, Hiroyuki Imaishi, and Kazuya Masumoto. She was an animation director for the first time in "Black Rock Shooter" (2012), and a character designer for "HILL CLIMB GIRL" (2014), "Kiznaiver" (2016), and "Darling in the Franxx" (2018).
Yoneyama currently works as in-house illustrator and animator for Gainax, Ltd., alongside her personal work as an independent artist. Her most recent solo exhibition, "EYE", was held both domestically in Tokyo and at international venues in the U.S. and Europe.