Dressed to impress: Guten Charakter Design in Japan
Let’s start with a question: How many people know what Mario looks like? Pretty, quite a few! Sure, the blue overall, the red hat, the mustache – we know that. Well, then continue to the next question: How many people know how Mario is playing? As the name suggests, video games are games. Logically, the conversations of the players often revolve around the gameplay and maybe the presentation, or the Framerates.
It is about freedom of players and about realizing yourself in a virtual sandbox. So it is interesting that in popular culture it is much more the characters that represent a game or a row. To become even more specific, it is the look that sticks. In the case of Japanese games, this means above all that we often associate design with JRPG fashion. The confusing collections of accessories have caught a certain reputation over the past few years, for which you should be joked, for which all the belts, rice closures and braces should be good.
Contents
- Page 1dressed to Impress: What good character design can make; Final Fantasy, Yoshitaka Amano and Tetsuya Nomura
- 1.1shibuya fashion
- 1.2von Fantasy Fashion for Final Fantasy Fashion
3. 1.3 gold and silver
2. Page 2dressed to Impress: Cloud Strife and Tetsuya Nomura
1. 2.1Cloud Strife: The original, the remake and the lonely wolf
3rd page 3dressed to Impress: Cloud Strife and Tetsuya Nomura, Persona 5 and Shigenori Soejima
1. 3.1Freeedom in style
2. 3.2 variety in unit…
4. Page 4dressed to Impress: Persona 5 and Shigenori Soejima
1. 4.1... and unity in diversity
2. 4.2 AB of the trends
- Page 5dressed to Impress: Takatoshi hijiyama and vanillaware
- 5.1 character portrait: Takatoshi hijiyama and 1985
- Page 6dressed to Impress: Takatoshi hijiyama, Tsukasa Okino and vanillaware
- 6.1 character portrait: Takatoshi hijiyama and tsukasa okino
- Page 7dressed to Impress: Conclusion
- 7.1The meaning of character design for characters and character
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Open up
After all, this has the effect that the designs are remembered. But that can’t be everything, right? We took a closer look at four Japanese titles from different decades and the responsible character designers and made our thoughts on how different designs, different aspects of a game can complement – even without an excessive appearance.
Shibuya fashion
Dresses are not only looking, you can also expand the gameplay, for example by improving the properties of the playable figure. This also applies in Neo: The World Ends with you. Here, special skills can also be activated with clothes and enough style points. But this is not the only effect that shopping has and not the one who is interested.
Japanese street fashion draws a lot of inspiration from outside, gives the western style, but traditionally Japanese elements its own touch. This often happens through a fluid silhouette, i.e. other pants, or oversized T-shirts. We recognize this, among other things, in Mihara Yasuhiros Designs, where there are also similarities to Rindos Outfit.
While various aspects of distressed style and asymmetry can be identified in Rindo’s jeans and coat, it is a relatively minimalist design with small accents such as its white earstickers. So a style that you could find in everyday life. However, Rindo Kanade was created by Tetsuya Nomura, who is actually more known to design outfits that nobody would simply wear on the street.
from Fantasy Fashion to Final Fantasy Fashion
If we today about the question “How many belts are too many belts?” Philosophizing, we do not owe this to small parts of Nomura. Originally a debugger for Square Enix and now known as a formative character designer for Final Fantasy and creator of the complex story confusion Kingdom Hearts, Tetsuya Nomura is one of the most important creative minds in the Japanese video game industry.
In addition to his service to gaming as a whole, he is now also renowned for his unconventional and also exaggerated character designs including Yugioh -Haaren, weapons, about which he later says that they were a strange idea – see Gunblade – and his very much Detailed clothes hung with accessories.
And it is true if we look at the cast of Final Fantasy 10, we immediately notice several design decisions as something very strange. But no matter how you stand by the character designs, we cannot deny that you will remember you. Earliest JRPGs such as Dragon Quest and Fire Emblem concentrated much more on traditional fantasy concepts and generic, medieval costumes.
Yoshitaka Amano brought a first change: The designs of Nomura’s predecessors are difficult to recognize in the first final fantasy parts due to the graphic limitations, but its artwork is impressive and still loved for their fantastic tone.
As an artist, Amano was inspired by European art movements such as Art Noveau, but also by Japanese Ukiyo-e, an art form that is mainly implemented with wood carving. The first signs of fashion in Final Fantasy appeared with elegant robes, artistic hairstyles and elaborate patterns.
However, these were inspired by traditional nature, inspired by Geishas and Kabuki actors, the stars and models of a past era that were immortalized in the pictures of the Ukiyo-e artists. Nomura was inspired by the richness of detail and the emotionality of Amanos Art, but also differed in his ideas and attempts from his predecessor.
In addition to his personal taste, he was interested in the dramatic camera work in music videos and high fashion magazines. In addition to Character Artwork, he also participated in other conceptual aspects of the games. He paid special attention to the 3D implementations and movements.
Because in addition to the change from Amano to Nomura, Final Fantasy went through a much greater change at that time-a change from Nintendo to PlayStation and from 2D pixel graphics to three-dimensional polygon models.
You probably guessed it, but Nomura’s first appearance as a designated character designer was not with any fantasy title.
He was part of the team that created the game that Square Enix should make worldwide and still stands for many for the genre JRPG as a whole: Final Fantasy 7. But not only Square Enix was known by FF7, Nomura also celebrated his first great success. Because he gave the characters a face that most people think of when they hear the name Final Fantasy.
Gold and silver
The cloud strife we know today is not the first version of this figure, but the fifth. Nomura has repeatedly revised designs from the start to perfect them. One of the most important changes affects Clouds hairstyle, which at the beginning was the complete opposite of what we would imagine for cloud.
Page 1 Dressed to Impress: What good character design can make; Final Fantasy, Yoshitaka Amano and Tetsuya Nomura
Page 2 Dressed to Impress: Cloud Strife and Tetsuya Nomura
Page 3 Dressed to Impress: Cloud Strife and Tetsuya Nomura, Persona 5 and Shigenori Soejima
Page 4 Dressed to Impress: Persona 5 and Shigenori Soejima
Page 5 Dressed to Impress: Takatoshi hijiyama and vanillaware
Page 6 Dressed to Impress: Takatoshi hijiyama, Tsukasa Okino and vanillaware
Page 7 Dressed to Impress: Conclusion
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