The Keeper of the Dragon Balls

Akira Toriyama is a widely known and acclaimed "mangaka" (Japanese word for a comic artist. Outside of Japan, manga usually refers to a Japanese comic book and mangaka refers to the author of the manga, who is usually Japanese .) known mostly for his work in the Dragon Ball metaseries .

He debuted in 1979 with the story Wonder Island, published in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, and first gained popularity for the anime and manga series Dr. Slump, originally serialized weekly in Shonen Jump from 1980 to 1984. In 1984, Toriyama was responsible for developing Dragon Ball which was initially serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump. It became an instant accomplishment — primarily selling over 35,000,000 copies in Japan. The series was equally successful worldwide as well, including in the US and Latin America.

Toriyama is mostly acknowledged for his hit series Dragon Ball. Its success "forced" Toriyama to work on Dragon Ball from 1984 to 1995. During that eleven-year period, he produced 519 chapters, collected into 42 volumes.

Each volume has an average of 200 pages and the entire Dragon Ball storyline extends to almost 9,000 pages. Moreover, the benefit of the manga led to an animated television series; it brought forth the famed Dragon Ball Z, numerous feature-length animated movies, several video games, and mega-merchandising.

His works after Dragon Ball tend to be short (100-200 page) stories, including ' Kajika', and 'Sand Land', as well as one-shots, like the self-parody 'Neko Majin'. Most recently, he has been the character designer for 'Dragon Quest Swords' for Nintendo .

The name of Toriyama's studio is Bird Studio, which is a play on his name, meaning "Bird Mountain". 鳥 tori means "bird" and 山 yama means "mountain". 明 akira means "intelligent" or "brightness".

The Man with the Blue Guitar

The Old Guitarist is a picture by Pablo Picasso, painted in 1903, just after the suicide death of Picasso's close friend, Casagemas. Picasso's “Blue Period” spanned the years of 1901–1904, and was followed by his “Rose Period”. These periods were both precursors to Cubism, which defined much of Picasso's career.
The Old Guitarist depicts a blind man, clad in tattered rags, huddled about his guitar. The figure is reportedly modeled after Senor Sebastian Mazzarella, the blind artist who mentored Picasso in his earlier days in Madrid.
This work made in the distorted style (note that the upper torso of the guitarist seems to be reclining, while the bottom half appears to be sitting cross-legged) is reminiscent of the works of El Greco.
The painting is also notable for the ghostly presence of a mysterious image painted underneath it. It is very likely that Picasso originally started painting a portrait of a woman, who appears to possibly be seated, and then changed his mind and painted the guitarist over her to save canvas.

The Man with the Blue Guitar

Wallace Stevens penned the poem “The Man With the Blue Guitar” after viewing this piece, though in the poem the guitar, rather than the man, becomes blue. The blueness here becomes an image of the transformative power of art, as expressed in the opening lines,

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, “You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.”
The man replied, “Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.”
And they said then, “But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are.”

A Beatle's Version

Viewing this painting in the hospital after the birth of his daughter, Paul McCartney was inspired to write his 2 finger song. McCartney observes that the old man in the picture was infact using just two fingers while playing . Finding this strange McCartney,a multi instrumentalist himself, tries to copy the old man's fingering and play what he believed the old man was playing, using his own guitar.Having struck on a note he then tunes a song using just two basic notes.
You may listen to the song by clicking the link.