Hideaki Sorachi

According to his reply to a manga reader (Gintama Volume 11), he was quite interested in manga during childhood days. However at grade 4 in school he showed his work to his father who promptly laughed at it, after which Sorachi temporarily abandoned his aims of being a manga artist. After graduation, he could not find a job, thus he turned to drawing manga (which he had already learned in university). He was able to gain some recognition through his first work Dandylion and subsequently progressed in his career (the comic is shown in the first volume of Gintama, with a foreword by Hideaki stating that it was his first work).

In 2003, Sorachi's editor attempted to coax him to create a new series due to a new television program on the Shinsengumi airing on Japanese TV the next year. Yet Sorachi's original idea was to ride on the coattails of the Harry Potter franchise with a series about a school for demon dispellers. After several arguments and an attempt to write the Shinsengumi series, Sorachi gave up, took what he had of the script and twisted it to become the pseudo-historical science fiction series Gintama. (stated in Gintama Volume 1)

Hideaki Sorachi holds a degree in commercial advertising (again, stated in volume 11).

(Source: Wikipedia)