Started his career creating special effect props such as unbreakable plates and vases; fake knifes and bats; puppets, dolls and magic wands for children's programs; costumes (armor and masks); lifelike animals, imaginary creatures, and realistic dummy heads made of silicone, rubber, and plastic with animatronics so the eyes and mouth move, all for movies, television commercials, theme parks, and displays.

In 1995 Sawada decided to go independent, working in a wide variety of areas such as displays for special events and 3D artwork for the cover of the weekly magazine Shukan ASCII (週間アスキー), published by ASCII MEDIA WORKS.

In 1996, Sawada started concentrating on figurine prototypes. Working in conjunction with art director Namie Manabe, Sawada developed, designed and sculpted the body and head and also painted the faces for the fully posable dolls of the momokoDOLL collection and the development, design and sculpting of other dolls by PetWORKs Doll Division. Other collections include those from Medicom Toys (RAH FEMALE Body, RAH301ネイキッド新規 ("RAH301改naked new")・MASSIVE・SkinnyBody・FEMALEbody・SC "stylish collection") along with sculpting and painting countless other heads, and the creation of specialized bodies for their various collections.

He has sculpted a spectrum of genres from Japanese manga and anime, video game characters both male and female, common pop icons, school girl, bishojo, voluptuous to extremely muscular and masculine such as military figures, and from extremely realistic to cute bobblehead type dolls. He has also created numerous American comic book, cartoon, movie icon characters and robots that can’t be made by CAD.

Sawada has also sculpted a wide range of sizes, from tiny miniature figures for ball point pen ends, 1-inch figurines for the “capsule toys”, eyeglass holders and diorama type tissue covers, 10-inch bishojo figures for crane games, to large 70cm dolls.

In 2006, Sawada started Sawada Kobo, a creative collaboration of new and young artists that represent the next generation of figurine prototype creators. Sawada Kobo continues to release numerous new items monthly and stays active in the world of figurines