Board Thread:Naruto News/@comment-945885-20151219065156/@comment-945885-20151219093658

Here's a gallery with some of Ikemoto's Naruto illustrations:

http://imgur.com/a/qVF2L

Mikio Ikemoto was the third staff member of Scott, Kishimoto's studio, and was an assistant on Naruto for fifteen years.

Prior to working on Naruto, he submitted two one-shots to Weekly Shonen Jump, both titled COSMOS, in 1997 and 1999. COSMOS was popular and won the magazine's Tenkaichi Manga Award for rookie mangaka. However, it was never picked up for serialization, presumably because Ikemoto had commited himself to working as an assistant on Naruto, which was quickly becoming a hit series.