Artist/Character Designer for FE Switch

[Slumber]

On 2/13/2017 at 6:15 AM, Harvey said:

Meanwhile I think either Hiro Mashima

GOD NO

[Res]

On 1/27/2017 at 11:09 AM, Delfino said:

I'm surprised at how many people don't seem to like Kozaki's designs. Personally, I really love them. It's the art direction that's been kind of cruddy lately, in my opinion, with too much emphasis on fan service.

Compared to old FE designs, I really enjoy how Kozaki is good about making characters more proportionally realistic in the face, especially in regards to the eyes. I'm honestly not a fan of anime artstyles that make their characters' eyes way too big (it's especially a popular thing to do that with females).

Same. I really appreciate this about Kozaki's art. Overall I find his sense of proportion (with the torsos/legs/feet, too) make his art seem considerably less childish.

On 2/2/2017 at 3:37 AM, dap005 said:

And Tsubasa Masao also contributed to heroes! This is great haha: 

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And I'm really not a fan of that! The upper torso is out of proportion with the hips/thighs and the face I find rather generic.

On 2/10/2017 at 2:31 AM, Harvey said:

I said this before and I'll say it again, I really do think that the next artist should be Akira Toriyama.

Toriyama would probably be my very last choice, haha. I LOVE the Dragon Quest games, but the art, yeesh. I can barely stand to even look at the characters. 

[Azure Sen]

2 hours ago, Slumber said:

GOD NO

Seconded hard. Mashima is just as bad if not worse than Toriyama when it comes to Sameface Syndrome.

On 2/10/2017 at 2:52 PM, The Malign Knight said:

I dunno man. The lack of noises has pretty much become an important mark of Yoshida's style.

If you only know him from Bravely Default or FFT, sure. And even his character art for Bravely Default gave the characters noses.

On 1/27/2017 at 2:09 PM, Delfino said:

I'm surprised at how many people don't seem to like Kozaki's designs. Personally, I really love them. It's the art direction that's been kind of cruddy lately, in my opinion, with too much emphasis on fan service.

I mean, I love Kozaki's work on Half-Minute Hero and No More Heroes, I like his designs for Professor Willow and the team leaders from Pokemon Go, and I don't even think a lot of his Awakening and Fates designs are bad on an artistic level. But his style really clashes with the tone that both Awakening and Fates were going for.

[NekoKnight]

Tsubasa Masao and Sachiko Wada feel too gritty for me. I think Hidari has the best balance between anime and retro fantasy feeling.

If Hidari isn't brought back on for FE: Switch, then I'd be happy to have Minaba Hideo (Granblue Fantasy and TMS #FE) provided the art direction is a bit less fanservicy. For other past Fire Emblems, I could go for Senri Kita or the artist for the Elibe characters.

Edited February 15, 2017 by NekoKnight

[Slumber]

1 hour ago, AzureSen said:

Seconded hard. Mashima is just as bad if not worse than Toriyama when it comes to Sameface Syndrome.

He's got awful sameface going on, his artstyle has gotten highly reminiscent of other, less offensive artists, the guy is a massive horndog when it comes to drawing women(And unfortunately, little girls, and we'd likely a handful of Nowis. To make matters even worse, his method of drawing kids is to just give them tiny bodies and bigger heads than adults), he couldn't draw anything tasteful to save his life, and quite frankly, he can't touch anything of any sort of quality. Even if the FE he did art for was good, I wouldn't be able to see it, due to Fairy Tail being so awful. His most notable trait as an artist is that he draws fast, which is great when you draw manga, but it really doesn't matter in a project like a video game. His general artstyle is nothing to write home about, unless he's moving to your hometown and you want to warn the women and children.

Edited February 15, 2017 by Slumber

[Harvey]

4 hours ago, Slumber said:

He's got awful sameface going on, his artstyle has gotten highly reminiscent of other, less offensive artists, the guy is a massive horndog when it comes to drawing women(And unfortunately, little girls, and we'd likely a handful of Nowis. To make matters even worse, his method of drawing kids is to just give them tiny bodies and bigger heads than adults), he couldn't draw anything tasteful to save his life, and quite frankly, he can't touch anything of any sort of quality. Even if the FE he did art for was good, I wouldn't be able to see it, due to Fairy Tail being so awful. His most notable trait as an artist is that he draws fast, which is great when you draw manga, but it really doesn't matter in a project like a video game. His general artstyle is nothing to write home about, unless he's moving to your hometown and you want to warn the women and children.

Now that is just plain insulting. By that logic, then even Oda-san's art is lame because of how overly exaggerated his female designs are with extreme thin bodies and big apples.

Also, kids having bigger heads than their bodies...isn't that always the case for a lot of characters these days especially in the case of Dragon ball?

Whether Fairy tail is good or not is a matter of taste but the same goes for the art. As far as I can tell, every single artist that drew FE characters has exaggerated characters one way or another. So blaming Hiro Mashima that his art will make it worse isn't really defending the overall art for FE at all.

 

[Thane]

On 2017-02-02 at 0:37 PM, dap005 said:

And Tsubasa Masao also contributed to heroes! This is great haha: 

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Good lord! Where's the rest of her?! I mean I'm skinny but this poor girl doesn't have a waist, only, like, a spine with features.

Edited February 15, 2017 by Thane

[dap005]

3 hours ago, Thane said:

Good lord! Where's the rest of her?! I mean I'm skinny but this poor girl doesn't have a waist, only, like, a spine with features.

Admittedly Masao definitely drew Wendy in a hype-stylised way with non -existent waists. And it's even more noticeable than usual in his style. 

I think it would be echoing tactics ogre a bit too much if they went for Masao, so unlikely for him to be chosen as the artist.

Yamada Akihiro's style is absolutely amazing in fe heroes but it's very much retro. So I don't think he'll work on switch fe (but hey if he does more heroes art I'm happy).

That leaves the Suikoden and Baiten kaitos character designers, Ishikawa Fumi and Nakaba Higurashi on my predictions list. 

I would list more likely candidates but I'm running out of ideas here lol. Tatsuya Yoshikawa? Did a lot of work for Capcom and it's known for Breath of Fire character designs. He worked with Nintendo by doing concept art for Star Fox Zero before so....

Plus he did a kickass FLCL illustration @Slumber :P

Spoiler

 

[Slumber]

9 hours ago, Harvey said:

Now that is just plain insulting. By that logic, then even Oda-san's art is lame because of how overly exaggerated his female designs are with extreme thin bodies and big apples.

Also, kids having bigger heads than their bodies...isn't that always the case for a lot of characters these days especially in the case of Dragon ball?

Whether Fairy tail is good or not is a matter of taste but the same goes for the art. As far as I can tell, every single artist that drew FE characters has exaggerated characters one way or another. So blaming Hiro Mashima that his art will make it worse isn't really defending the overall art for FE at all.

 

Mashima deserves every insult that fits him. Which is a looooot. Oda's art, from what I can tell, also wouldn't fit, but he's one of the artists I was referring to when I said Mashima's art is highly derivative of other artists.

Dragon Ball child characters typically had adult sized heads and tiny bodies, and the overall artstyle of early Dragon Ball was very cartoon-y, exaggerated, and it didn't even try to be proportional. As the series went on, kids started having proportional bodies, and unless Toriyama is specifically doing art reminiscent of his Slump/Early DB days, his kids aren't wildly out of proportion. Mashima is still doing this melon-sized child head thing with super under-sized bodies. Unless he's sexualizing said child, in which case they'll be drawn in proportion.

FE art isn't that exaggerated. The most exaggerated they ever got was in the early days when they'd hire artists that had a style that was very in-line with the time. The most exaggerated we've gotten since the Elibe games has been Kozaki, who doesn't draw particularly exaggerated characters, he just draws very... "different" outfits. Mashima, all he can do is a handful of kinda acceptable faces and everything else is a bunch of deliberately ugly, super exaggerated characters. Mashima would be like Kozaki*100, and with a fraction of the actual talent. Again, Mashima's claim to fame as an artist is being fast, which is a worthless talent to have when you have the time of a character designer. Great for a manga artist, though.

Edited February 15, 2017 by Slumber

[Slumber]

8 minutes ago, dap005 said:

I would list more likely candidates but I'm running out of ideas here lol. Tatsuya Yoshikawa? Did a lot of work for Capcom and it's known for Breath of Fire character designs. He worked with Nintendo by doing concept art for Star Fox Zero before so....

Plus he did a kickass FLCL illustration @Slumber :P

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Well now he's at the top of my list for artists who are both possible and could probably do a decent job. Plus, he's got a very versatile style.

Dangit, I didn't mean to double post, thought I had this in the edit for my other post.

Edited February 15, 2017 by Slumber

[The Malign Knight]

16 hours ago, AzureSen said:

If you only know him from Bravely Default or FFT, sure. And even his character art for Bravely Default gave the characters noses.

I actually know of other arts he did, but his FFT art without the nose is always the first that comes on my mind everytime I think of him, even if he does give the characters noses(something that can be seen in his recent artwork for FFXII: TZA). I feel really dumb right now.

15 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

Tsubasa Masao and Sachiko Wada feel too gritty for me. I think Hidari has the best balance between anime and retro fantasy feeling.

If Hidari isn't brought back on for FE: Switch, then I'd be happy to have Minaba Hideo (Granblue Fantasy and TMS #FE) provided the art direction is a bit less fanservicy. For other past Fire Emblems, I could go for Senri Kita or the artist for the Elibe characters.

So....Sachiko Wada? Because she is the artist for the Elibe characters and even Sacred Stones.

[NekoKnight]

40 minutes ago, The Malign Knight said:

So....Sachiko Wada? Because she is the artist for the Elibe characters and even Sacred Stones.

Really? Sacred Stones looks a lot different than the Elibe characters. Eiji Kaneda is another artist who worked on the Elibe games, maybe it's his style that I like.

Edited February 15, 2017 by NekoKnight

[AlexArtsHere]

EDIT: Whoops, wrong thread, can someone please delete this?

Edited February 15, 2017 by InfinityAlex

[SavageVolug]

On 1/20/2017 at 8:15 AM, Anacybele said:

I wouldn't mind Kozaki staying in, so long as the art direction is changed. I'm tired of the overdone fanservice. I'm aware that fanservice is nothing new to FE, but Awakening and Fates go way too far with it.

That being said, I've always stated that I'd love for Senri Kita to return, as her Tellius art is my favorite to look at in the series no question.

Thank you Anacybele, I agree completely. If you take a wyvern rider from Fates and compare it to the Tellius games, or the GBA titles there is a strong difference in design. I'm talking about the rider exclusively not the mount. For one thing the rider has actual armor, look at Jill from PoR or RD again talking about the armor SHE wears not her dragon.  The mages have comfortable looking robes instead of swimsuits. Not only am I tired of the excessive fanservice, but the art style of Fates and Awakening stands out like a sore thumb. The consistency of the art style has been broken. When I look at knights from the GBA games or Shadow Dragon there is a resemblence in overall design even when compared to the incredible Marshall design in Radiant Dawn. I honestly would prefer if the art style went more In Radiant Dawn's direction than where it is currently going where there is a consistency once again. One final note I am hoping very strongly that we get the four legged dragon design that we had for the Tellius games and the GBA games as that looked like a powerful mount that could carry a person. I do like the touch Fates has though where after a battle the rider pets, his/her dragon and the dragon obviously enjoys it.

[Slumber]

2 hours ago, SavageVolug said:

Thank you Anacybele, I agree completely. If you take a wyvern rider from Fates and compare it to the Tellius games, or the GBA titles there is a strong difference in design. I'm talking about the rider exclusively not the mount. For one thing the rider has actual armor, look at Jill from PoR or RD again talking about the armor SHE wears not her dragon.  The mages have comfortable looking robes instead of swimsuits. Not only am I tired of the excessive fanservice, but the art style of Fates and Awakening stands out like a sore thumb. The consistency of the art style has been broken. When I look at knights from the GBA games or Shadow Dragon there is a resemblence in overall design even when compared to the incredible Marshall design in Radiant Dawn. I honestly would prefer if the art style went more In Radiant Dawn's direction than where it is currently going where there is a consistency once again. One final note I am hoping very strongly that we get the four legged dragon design that we had for the Tellius games and the GBA games as that looked like a powerful mount that could carry a person. I do like the touch Fates has though where after a battle the rider pets, his/her dragon and the dragon obviously enjoys it.

Yeah, replaying Radiant Dawn has me appreciating those unit designs a lot more after playing with Fates/Awakening. What a bunch of awful designs in Fates/Awakening. Units all have very unique battle models. Gatrie is a muscular armor knight with well fitting armor and clothes. Brom, being much hardier, is a lot bigger in the midsection, and his clothes don't fit quite as well. Then you get Meg, who is a clear few heads smaller than every other armor knight, while also being round like her father. They're not a bunch of hunched over, bouncy people wearing ridiculous palette swap armor with different heads.

So yeah. Character artist aside, hopefully whoever designed the battle models for PoR/RD comes back, and not whoever did Fates/Awakening. Echoes looks like a step in the right direction, but I think it needs to go a step further.

Edited February 15, 2017 by Slumber

[AlexArtsHere]

59 minutes ago, Slumber said:

Yeah, replaying Radiant Dawn has me appreciating those unit designs a lot more after playing with Fates/Awakening. What a bunch of awful designs in Fates/Awakening. Units all have very unique battle models. Gatrie is a muscular armor knight with well fitting armor and clothes. Brom, being much hardier, is a lot bigger in the midsection, and his clothes don't fit quite as well. Then you get Meg, who is a clear few heads smaller than every other armor knight, while also being round like her father. They're not a bunch of hunched over, bouncy people wearing ridiculous palette swap armor with different heads.

So yeah. Character artist aside, hopefully whoever designed the battle models for PoR/RD comes back, and not whoever did Fates/Awakening. Echoes looks like a step in the right direction, but I think it needs to go a step further.

Oh, be fair now, the 3DS surely is limited when it comes to stuff like this. While I agree that knights look way too goofy in Awakening and Fates, I think the head swapping method is just how they keep things within the limitations of the 3DS, which certainly doesn't have the kind of capacity the GameCube and Wii do.

[maybe]

14 minutes ago, InfinityAlex said:

Oh, be fair now, the 3DS surely is limited when it comes to stuff like this. While I agree that knights look way too goofy in Awakening and Fates, I think the head swapping method is just how they keep things within the limitations of the 3DS, which certainly doesn't have the kind of capacity the GameCube and Wii do.

it definitely does have the capacity for at least a few unique models, the head swapping is for the sake of reclassing

while I understand that characters can't have unique models for every class, it'd be much better if they just had unique ones for characters' starting classes and generic ones for any reclassed characters to that class

[Harvey]

On 2/15/2017 at 8:33 PM, Slumber said:

Mashima deserves every insult that fits him. Which is a looooot. Oda's art, from what I can tell, also wouldn't fit, but he's one of the artists I was referring to when I said Mashima's art is highly derivative of other artists.

Dragon Ball child characters typically had adult sized heads and tiny bodies, and the overall artstyle of early Dragon Ball was very cartoon-y, exaggerated, and it didn't even try to be proportional. As the series went on, kids started having proportional bodies, and unless Toriyama is specifically doing art reminiscent of his Slump/Early DB days, his kids aren't wildly out of proportion. Mashima is still doing this melon-sized child head thing with super under-sized bodies. Unless he's sexualizing said child, in which case they'll be drawn in proportion.

FE art isn't that exaggerated. The most exaggerated they ever got was in the early days when they'd hire artists that had a style that was very in-line with the time. The most exaggerated we've gotten since the Elibe games has been Kozaki, who doesn't draw particularly exaggerated characters, he just draws very... "different" outfits. Mashima, all he can do is a handful of kinda acceptable faces and everything else is a bunch of deliberately ugly, super exaggerated characters. Mashima would be like Kozaki*100, and with a fraction of the actual talent. Again, Mashima's claim to fame as an artist is being fast, which is a worthless talent to have when you have the time of a character designer. Great for a manga artist, though.

Except the big issue here is that a lot of the character designers that Nintendo hired in respective FE games are solely Manga artists as well. And Nintendo  puts well known artists for every FE game out there.

If you're gonna insult him, then you might as well insult the 70% of manga artists who over exaggerate the character designs and even then, are bound to have massive fan-services. Again, Oda-San, Akira Toriyama, heck, the artist behind Blazing Sword (don't tell me that Lyn's design isn't exaggerated

 

 Hidari will be the one to draw echoes and looking at his work..yeah, looks a lot of exaggeration especially in the case of females in toukiden( I'll admit, they have a very creative designs compared to the ones in Birthright)

Heck, the artist that I just mentioned...the one behind Magi is also exaggerating characters. 

You can't blame the artist still because the art director is also involved. Can you honestly blame Kozaki-San's recent fates art when the art director is to be blamed mainly since well the artist draws based on the director and not by himself. With the exception of Camilla(I love her design though) Charolette and Takumi and along some others, a lot of the character designs are impressive even the ones from Awakening.

 

Edited February 16, 2017 by Harvey

[Sarki Soliloquy]

Like a couple commenters above, I don't think Kozaki-san's artstyle is tonally-inappropriate, immersion-breaking, or childish at all. On the contrary, it maintains a fantastical sense of seriousness & elegance fitting to Awakening & Fates w/o being overbearing with it. The way he draws bodies & faces is much closer to actual anatomy, his textures & details really breath life into armor & clothing, his colors & shades convey a lot about their characters & environments with a certain 'dullness' to them that feels humble, yet serene (even as Fates went for a more washed-out, crosshatch-y look reminiscent of comics). You could describe his style as rather adaptive - he can go between drabber fare like Spped Grapher to something more child-like with BRNK.

 

That being said, a lot of blame could be put on the art directors above his stead for why certain designs of his end up in the final product. IMO, Fates introduced some tropey campiness to certain character designs that really breaks the immersion of a Fire Emblem setting (I'm looking at you, Peri & Charlotte). I really don't see what's the big deal with the fanservice though. It's not Senran Kagura levels of big-floppy-tig-ol-biddies-in-yo-face invasive or fetishistic. If it starts to overscope the components of the narrative or it takes me out through excess or tastelessness, that's when it becomes a problem to me. (Though I suppose it's a real hike from the demure character designs of yore. I understand wanting something more reserved.)

 

Whilst he's one of my favorites, artist stagnation can make a series really dull. Hidari's work in Echoes looks really fresh from palette to costume. What if we got a TYPE-MOON artist like Otosugu Konoe or Takashi Takeuchi? The Nasuverse has a really elegant, dreadful tone to a lot of its works that would suit Fire Emblem really well.

[The Geek]

On 2/18/2017 at 0:37 PM, Sarki said:

Hidari's work in Echoes looks really fresh from palette to costume. What if we got a TYPE-MOON artist like Otosugu Konoe or Takashi Takeuchi? The Nasuverse has a really elegant, dreadful tone to a lot of its works that would suit Fire Emblem really well.

Takeuchi designing all of the characters for a FE game?  I don't think I'd be able to handle that many Saber clones.

Konoe would be good to see, I like their style.

[smash-brethren]

On 2/13/2017 at 7:15 AM, Harvey said:

If he draws FE characters that don't have noses and end up almost looking like chibi's(if not done right), I will get very VERY mad

Meanwhile I think either Hiro Mashima or the artists behind Valkyria Chronicles should be the ones for the next FE game...after all, its fits considering the amount of fan service FE has as of now.

 

What's wrong with the armor? I think the ones designed in fates are great alongside Awakening. 

 

A lot of people (myself included) have some issues regarding how fanservice-y the armors gotten in recent games, not to say that older armors were the height of practicality but the armor in fates and awakening is noticeably less so. And the designs for knights and cavaliers (in awakening) are just super weird looking. I'd prefer if they'd at least restrict the fanservicey clothes to like, mages and dancers, who aren't heavily armored anyways than have mounted units and generals go around in thongs......

[Pegasus Knight]

well if its going to be vampire emblem just bring Akihisa Ikeda he already proved he can do vampire waifus 

Anyway..  I dont want Kozaki back... his art was nice and all but with so many characters he made we need a fresh start...

 

Hidari's art for echoes was amazing! i love his art style it was mature and sophisticated, i would love to see him back!

 

 

 

 

[Alastor15243]

Whoever they are, I hope they're able/allowed to draw genuine human emotion.

One of the biggest problems I have with Fates' presentation (apart from the generally floaty and cartoonish models and physics that make battles generally uninteresting compared to the gba games, Tellius series or Echoes, and make any non-CG cutscenes that make any attempt at drama fall on their face) is that the portrait mugshots used for dialogue scenes are just so... stilted. Like, a few of them, like Elise and Keaton, do the more humorous emotions fairly well, but it eventually occurred to me that despite the tons of death and misery that surrounds the avatar, they don't even have expressions for "my mother is dead" sorrow or "you killed my mother" anger. All of the mugshots and emotions seemed to have been designed with nothing but support conversations in mind, and it's so difficult to care about what's happening when you can't even believe that the characters care.

Edited December 7, 2017 by Alastor15243

[Altrosa]

Akihiko Yoshida would be great, but he's a lead artist at Square Enix on multiple games. (I know he's been all over FFXIV).

I don't like Amano very much as a character designer. His art is stunning, and I think we could get great armor sets and monsters from him, but he has same face syndrome in his art and said faces aren't that expressive.

If the leak is true and Yamada Kotaro is the artist, I would be fine with that. I actually prefer Kozaki to Hidari for his bright and sharp art, and Kotaro is a decent mid point. I'd be okay with the return of Kozaki or Hidari, though, but I agree the art direction needs to turn towards what Hidari was doing verses that fanservice nonsense being forced upon Kozaki.

Pulling from Heroes' collection of artists, Kusugi Toku is my personal favorite (Setsuna and Serra), with Ebila (Spring Chrom) and bthx (F!Corrin) being close behind.

 

[saisymbolic]

On 12/5/2017 at 11:06 AM, Alastor15243 said:

Whoever they are, I hope they're able/allowed to draw genuine human emotion.

One of the biggest problems I have with Fates' presentation, apart from the generally floaty and cartoonish models and physics that make battles generally uninteresting compared to the gba games, Tellius series or Echoes and make any non-CG cutscenes that make any attempt at drama fall on their face, is that the portrait mugshots used for dialogue scenes are just so... stilted. Like, a few of them, like Elise and Keaton, do the more humorous emotions fairly well, but it eventually occurred to me that despite the tons of death and misery that surrounds the avatar, they don't even have expressions for "my mother is dead" sorrow or "you killed my mother" anger. All of the mugshots and emotions seemed to have been designed with nothing but support conversations in mind, and it's so difficult to care about what's happening when you can't even believe that the characters care.

I agree with this so much. To be honest, I can't really name a FE game that I've played that has portraits with a variety of emotions. The only one I can think of is one of Takumi's portraits, the one where he looks as if he is in deep pain. But, even then, it fails to stand out in a certain manner.

Personally, I want a brand new artist in general, though that may not happen. While I love Wada and Kita, I would like some new blood. Granted, if they were to make a return, I wouldn't necessarily complain about it. Also not a huge fan of Yamada Kotaro but if he were to be the next artist and he does a good job, then I have no grievances.

Most of the artists I enjoy have styles that are very distinct, I suppose is a word I could use, and probably wouldn't fit FE very well. Plus, most of them work for other game companies and the odds of them doing a FE game is slim to none at best. For example, if the leaks were true and we got FE: Vampires, I think the artist for Soul Calibur would do an incredible job for character designing.