Born in 1971 in Oita Prefecture.
After graduating from Midorigaoka High School (attached to the Oita Prefectural College of Arts and Culture) with a focus on oil painting, he moved to Tokyo to chase his art career. Those early years involved a lot of juggling—part-time work mixed with serious artistic ambition. By his late twenties, he'd landed enough commercial gigs (store design, model-making, mural work) to make a living at it. He even designed and ran his own dining bar for about a year and a half.
Beyond painting, Hori's picked up skills across all kinds of crafts: marionettes, dolls, netsuke, accessories. He's won various small awards for his painting work too.
The big project came at 38 when he started the stop-motion animation film "Junk Head 1." It was entirely independent and took him about four years to finish. At 41, it was complete. On November 16th, 2013, the film screened for one night at Shibuya Uplink—and the turnout was massive, packed to capacity.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
