However, he did not read manga until he found a copy of Weekly Shōnen Jump in a parking lot and saw Fist of the North Star and then Kinnikuman.
[5] The artist said that as a novel, the original work uses metaphors to create imagery, and he decided to show these in his manga adaptation.
[5] When Naoki Urasawa suggested that his work is known for the characters' lips, the artist explained that he draws them as if they are interior organs.
[5] He draws using an LCD tablet and has multiple layers to an image that he can add or remove at will; a background created by an assistant, a pre-made outline of the character, a photo of his assistant posing that is cropped and resized to fit the character outline, and a draft he draws on top.
Sakamoto can not only immediately undo a line he does not like, but can select a specific part of the image, such as an eye, and reposition it.
Sakamoto meticulously traces the details of clothing from the photos he takes, and has a digital library of over 2,000 hairstyles he created that he picks pieces from.