The Origin of BB-8

That is the question. I have always found Wookiepedia a very reliable source of information regarding anything (obviously) Star Wars related question I may have had, but this time I was left scratching my head. It seems that I can't find a straight answer for who was responsible for the design of BB-8, design, not the actual building of the droid. Who drew the first preliminary sketch of BB-8? J.J. Abrams? Neal Scanlan? All different names pop up regarding this fact, but I'm still at a loss for a definite answer for my question.

So what exactly made me even question this? Well, coincidentally I purchased a Star Wars manga in December 2015, the same month Episode VII was released. The album I own is the Finnish edition of 2007, published by Pauna Media Group, but the original English version was published by TOKYOPOP in 2006 and the earliest date associated with this particular story of my interest, is 22 December of 2005. Star Wars Manga: Silver, as it was called, consist of five varying short stories. There was something that caught my attention in the second story of the album, Oh!! Jawajawa drawn by Hitoshi Ariga, known for his work on Mega Man and Pokémon series.

What caught my interest in this comic without any dialog was a background droid that appears in three panels in total. The resemblance between it and a certain BB unit is undeniable.

The comic droid does absolutely nothing, besides getting wrecked.

When there are thousands upon thousand pages worth of information within the Star Wars universe, I can't say, because I don't know, if anything like BB-8 has made an appearance in the Expanded Universe (or Legends now....) before this comic was even published. Or maybe something resembling BB-8 has been seen in the Mega Man universe? (I know absolutely nothing about  Mega Man so I can't tell)

Not that I'm accusing anybody of anything, I was just really surprised by finding something like this when I didn't expect it. Ashamed, I'll admit it took me over a month to find the time to sit down a read the whole thing. By the time I first read the comic, I had already seen the Force Awakens.

So I guess my real question would be, that whoever came up with the design of BB-8, were they even aware of this 24 pages long comic from Japan? Or perhaps I should ask if Hitoshi Ariga knows of his further contribution to the SW universe?