http://www.metalgearsolid.net/features/yoji-shinkawa-interview

https://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-final-fantasist-a-conversation-with-yoshitaka-amano

This first interview is from a popular artist named Yoji Shinkawa. Shinkawa is mostly a concept artist for video games, and is namely known for his work on the Metal Gear Solid series.  His artwork is noteworthy for its ethereal nature, lack of color, use of lighting, and use of heavy shadows. In the article, he gets fanmail asking his inspiration. He says that he has imitated so many styles of artwork and that his style is the end result of that. I found this interesting because I am at a point where i am sampling many styles of artwork, trying to find a style that suits me.

The interviewer from Konami Computer Entertainment Japan asks if there was anything Shinkawa paid special attention to during his original artwork. He replied, noting that he wanted to appeal to people’s imaginations. With the limitations of the hardware for the early consoles like the PS1 or PS2, there was no way to get  the detail from the artwork to the actual in game models. This is such an interesting way to design, as it helps to bridge the gap between imagination and the actual in game experience.

The second interview focuses on another Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano. He is known mostly for his work on video games and anime, most notably Final Fantasy and Vampire Hunter D. His style is also very ethereal and experimental. However, according to Amano, 90% of his work is contemporary art while the remainder goes to his games. Both styles of art draw from each other, but his concept art is more traditional concept art, while with his contemporary art, you may find him experimenting with painting on sheets of metal.

This experimentation is very interesting to me, as i still tend to experiment a lot with my artwork and styles. It also interests my that Amano’s art is mostly unshown, as his most popular artworks are concepts and the final product is a 3d model or pixel artwork. It would be interesting to try and translate some flowy artwork into a pixel medium to get a feel for what that is like.

For the second part, i downloaded a program called Aesprite which can easily make images into sprites. I wanted to do this to some of my own artwork.

I thought this sort of deconstruction to artworks that i’ve made in the past was really interesting, partly because i worked so hard on these pieces and seeing them broken down into simple components is interesting. The last of the 6 even makes me see a different character and is inspiring me to to dry out drawing a new character. Another interesting point is the second of the 6, the neon pill looks even brighter than in the original. The art of pixels and spritemaking is very interesting in both deconstructing regular art and creating new art of its own.

Contract:

My project is a video game. It is a side-scrolling action game, with a focus on the story. There is a solid start, beginning and end, which will be solidly represented through the pixel style. The game will not be especially long, but I am aiming to make it have an effective message and theme to it. I believe it fits squarely both in interactive media and in animation. I am however, not doing most of the coding myself, it may fit better into the animation category.

The main concepts that drive this project are the concepts of friendship and of mental illness. The story follows two soldiers in an invading army occupying a snow-covered country. A mistake leads from occupation to an all out war, a concept which the player’s character does not handle well. The player’s character starts uneasy about the occupation and steadily declines as the war rages on. To cope with the nightmares of war, the player character’s mind visualizes actual nightmares. Where soldiers once were, they now fight demons. The farther down this rabbit hole he goes, the more savage, until he meets a demon as savage as he is. The player fights and is ultimately defeated by this demon. As he dies, the player character’s mind snaps back to reality, to find the demon that kills him is his friend who has been traveling along with him the whole time. As the player character lays dying, their friend holds them, staying with them at the end.

The aesthetic is first and foremost a pixel based game, something rather unexpected accompanying a story so emotional. For the color scheme, I was going to make more of a muted scheme, as it is set in a winter scheme. The environment will be mostly whites and light blues, there will be breaks of dark brown and dark green for the houses and trees. The main character and their army has a red uniform to stand out against the stark white. As the main character’s mind slowly delves into madness, the environment also changes. Instead of a white purgatory, the character moves more into a red hellscape. This change will accompany the change of tone and music.

The final format will be a program on a computer. I’m looking to display a computer and monitor on a pedestal in a gallery. Hopefully there will be a spot with an outlet to allow me this computer.

Diagram:

Materials: For hardware I will need a computer and monitor to play the game on, I will also bring in a controller for the player to use instead of a mouse and keyboard. Software I will need photoshop and unity.

Calendar:

December 7^th – finished/polished

November 20^th – Base finish/levels done, enemies done, sprites done

November 8^th – Levels designed

October 20^th – base sprites finished

October 11^th – Tech demo done

October 4^th – base mechanics done

The first piece of art i ever made was a drawing of my dad. It didn’t particularly look like my dad and was not wearing any piece of clothing my father ever owned. To describe it more accurately, it was a crayon drawing of a man with brown hair only on top of his head, a red bow tie, and a tuxedo. It was not anything to write home about, but at the tender age of three years old, I was so proud.

From that age, my tastes in art began to develop, and my influences shaped my art style heavily. A year earlier than I began my artistic journey, I began a journey toward my true passion; video games. I was playing The Legend of Zelda, Mario 64, and Castlevania: Dracula X when I was two years old.  Soon thereafter, my siblings showed me the show Dragonball Z and I was hooked. I sought out any and all forms of anime from that point and developed my artistic voice and find more of the things that influenced me.

Through my adolescence and high school, I continued to develop in a similar fashion. More anime and more video games streamed through my life faster than anyone could count. My parents viewed it as a problem but I viewed it as a solution to my own problem. These silly medias began to be less of a casual hobby and transitioned to more of an emotional reprieve. Then, something during high school clicked in me. These emotional journeys I was feeling through video games and anime could be something I create. I could create my own emotional reprieve. Since then I’ve been trying to make my art be something I could communicate emotionally through. The characters I make are largely very personal, even to the point of being aspects of myself personified.

Character art is one of my most passionate points of creation. Creating a story, leading an emotional journey, creating actions and reactions, all those things became the most effective way for me to communicate my meanings and understandings to someone else. Working traditionally was all well and good, but once I began working in digital everything felt so much more important. Through the early days of working with a stolen copy of Photoshop CS2 to now working with the Creative Cloud, Maya,  and Medibang Paint pro, my skills have developed in quite a steady incline.

Much of the work I do begins as a sketch with pencil and paper. From then, depending on my intention of the piece, I will try to recreate the character or idea in a drawing program. If i’m looking to draw a character sheet or a scene I’ll usually do a simple drawing with simple cell shading. From then, when I feel I have achieved a sizable handle on the idea, I will move it to the program I intend to finish the project in. Most of the time I will use Medibang Paint pro to do the sketch and painting, then move to Photoshop to work with color, levels, contrast, and any filters i might want to add.

While I don’t believe I have a distinguishable style, I have received testimonials to the contrary. I have always wanted my own style, so I hope them to be true. I’ve always found it very easy to adopt someone else’s style and play around in it, and through that I’ve hoped to take pieces from everyone else’s style and form it into an amalgamation I can call my own style. The themes I tend to work in, however, usually follow a similar vein. Since my work comes from an emotional place, it is usually art of emotion. Much of the time, my stories and characters have terrible or heartbreaking things happen to them, and I try to capture that feeling or even those moments in my art. My ideal is that if I can make someone feel something, I have succeeded as an artist.

My biggest influence as an artist comes from the visuals of the artist Ayami Kojima. She has worked as a concept and character artist on many video games and her style is superlative. Her most famous works come from the Castlevania series, a series I have always held close to my heart. Her work on this series greatly shapes the aesthetic and feeling the series gives off.

These pieces always give me a nostalgia for a time long past, a time I have never experienced in my lifetime. There is a feeling of unease, a very tangible sense of uncomfortableness  that comes from the macabre nature of much of her art. But that unease is immediately combated by the sheer beauty of the figures and lighting of her art. The lighting in particular is very evocative of Baroque artists such as Rembrandt or Caravaggio. This weird, standing on the edge feeling of her art is something that I find very unique and hard to replicate. Not many things give me the same sort of butterfly feeling that i get from the elegance and horror of her art. Not much information is known about Kojima other than her work. She is seemingly reclusive or very private, to the point of her birthday not being publicly known. She has no art collections or bodies of work showcased in anything other than the video games she has worked on. These factors work to form a kind ethereal feeling around her work. Kojima  is still working today and I look forward to see her every new work and watch as her style develops.