Yoshiaki Itō

is a Japanese animator and character designer best known for designing the characters to Hidamari Sketch (2007–2013).

Career Itou joined Shaft in 1987 as an in-between animator, and by 1989 he was promoted to key animator. In 1995, the studio produced its first original televised work, Juuni Senshi Bakuretsu Eto Ranger, which featured Itou's promotion to animation director. Shaft received numerous outsourcing jobs throughout the 90s of varying genres and styles, some of which had cute characters and comedy-oriented stories, and others which were more serious and had less-than-cute characters. Itou was particularly involved with the mecha series Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure (1998), which may have led to his other mecha work on Dai-Guard (1999) and Sakura Wars (2000), in which he was also given the responsibility of for a few episodes alongside general key animation and animation direction roles. Itou's first role as a character designer wasn't in-house on a Shaft work, but rather at Group TAC to whom he was lent to. Shaft had developed a relationship with Atsuhiro Iwakami, at the time a producer from SME Visual Works (now called Aniplex) after Shaft was outsourced to for a few episodes of Android Kikaider: The Animation (2001); and Group TAC, needing a character designer for Gakuen Alice (2004), received Itou's help as both character designer and chief animation director due to Iwakami's connection to Shaft.

Three years later, Itou took on the job of character designer for both Hidamari Sketch and a short film adaptation of Kino's Journey,

Works This is an incomplete list.

Teleivison series

OVAs/ONAs

Films