Is a Japanese artist and sculptor. He is also credited as mechanical designer, character designer in some Sci Fi animation movies in Japan. He was mostly known as an illustrator till 80's then he started a science fiction series SF3D which ran as monthly installments in the Japanese hobby magazine Hobby Japan. To develop the SF3D storyline, Kow collaborated with Hiroshi Ichimura (story editor) and Kunitaka Imai (graphic designer). The creators drew visual inspiration from their combined interest in WWI and WWII armor and aircraft. Kow built the original models from numerous kits including armor, aircraft, automobiles and real space. The designs were predominantly of powered armor suits, but Kow also created two lagged walking tanks, anti-gravity flying aircraft, and automated robot walkers. Hiroshi Ichimura and Kunitaka Imai added the graphic style and created the background story for the new models. Together they created a unique series with a very different visual style from the typical "Giant Robot" series in Japan at the time. A small but dedicated fan following soon developed. There was great interest amongst the readers of Hobby Japan to have kits of the designs they saw in the magazine. A small Japaneses model company, Nitto, aware of the growing interest, picked up the license and quickly released 21 injection molded kits from the series.
I remembered those kits and I still have some at home. If you had shown it to some WW II machine enthusiasts, they could tell what parts of what vehicle's model kits he took it from to build his creations. Some got into that more than actually building the model.
His sketchbook is available from HJ book store
He has his own home page somewhat like a web diary of his model building progress. And he is a big cat lover if you can't tell.
By the way, I could not find any bike design he did. There are knock offs, though...
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