best known for his role in Street Fighter on CAPCOM design work) game, Akiman is a famous character designer who was asked to help create the Star Ocean 6’s World and Cast: Divine Power . We were lucky enough to sit down with the famous artist and ask him a few questions about his time working on the game.
ANN: Ok, first things first: what attracted you to the world of design Items and characters of Star Ocean 6: Divine Power ?
Akiman: I’m curious what will happen If I work with Square Enix, [it] is a fusion of science fiction and fantasy [sic]. It’s not very common, but wanted to see what that would look like. I was known for working on a lot of fighting games before working on those kinds of games, but I didn’t get into writing or writing a lot back then. Now I’m much more willing to work on these types of games, especially role-playing games.
Related to this is the idea that characters in science fiction are designed to oppose the setting in Something in a modern or contemporary setting like Street Fighter ?
Even if it is Star Ocean or games with sci-fi elements, I try to use familiar Structure in terms of design and character design. I believe that people are only interested in what they know, what they are familiar with. So, for example, the protagonist of this Xinghai game wears a polo shirt. What I want to do from there is add modern technology elements to it. The characters are wearing an extension of what we wear, [what] people wear in the modern day. In that sense, I don’t think there’s much difference between designing this type of character and modern day characters like Street Fighter.
The core of the whole thing is trying to find something that basically people will find relevant, just Like the family vibes of these characters. Will it be like this?
Yes, that’s correct.
interesting. This may be an overlap, but how do you decide on an actor’s character design? Like, do you get hints for individual characters, or do you have complete control over the character’s appearance?
thanks. So, first, a recap of the process: Everyone has a meeting, and I usually get messages from clients saying they want to work on a project in terms of character design. They usually discuss a lot of undecided factors. So, for example, is the character going to wear bunny ears or something? those things. From there, I’ll get a file of what has been decided on the character design. From there I’d create rough designs, submit those for approval, and if approved, I’d clean them up, make tweaks from there, and repeat the process. If not, I’d like to start over with the design, to answer your question. There’s a general framework of where I would start, where you would start, and you get a lot of comments and input to see where you can make adjustments. In that sense, it’s not even possible to have full control over my position, but especially with this project, I do feel that there is some freedom in that sense.
Throughout the design work process, whose design are you most satisfied with Overall completion of the work ?
To answer your question, my answer is cat style. She is like a Chinese female character. Other than that, the most challenging character design is actually the main character, Raymond. In that sense, it was also satisfying to be able to complete his designs.
Which element proved to be the most challenging to design? Either because [you] weren’t happy with the outcome, or because it simply wasn’t what the folks at Square Enix were looking for.
First of all, there is no character that I am not satisfied with. If I’m not satisfied, I won’t finish it. Again, Raymond was a struggle because of the many elements of his character that took him a lot of time to finish and get to that point — he’s wild, he’s a young man, things like that. Again, it took me a while to find his character design acceptable in a way, so it’s been quite a process.
How attached were you to the character designs during production?
I’m obsessed with all these characters; how much, it’s hard to put into words , but I won’t cry when submitting these illustrations. It becomes a problem when I get too attached. Like a parent bugging their kids for every little thing; it’s kind of a hassle and I don’t want to be that. With this in mind, I send my creations out to the world.
Do you have any concepts or ideas for the design in some way? Hoped to be accepted before submitting but didn’t end up being accepted?
So, in terms of unused designs, there are some rough designs that don’t apply The situation really took it, but these things happen. I try not to think too much about it. For example, Raymond’s first design – it gives a relatively weak impression. Raymond turned out to be a stronger, tougher, wilder man. I reflected this into the final design. Another example, Midas: I was told he would look like a cool old man, but I’m really not sure how to draw a cool old man. What I did was look up “cool old guys” on the internet. But when you do, the product can get a little boring. To remedy this, the character had a weird hat in the final product, and that’s how it turned out. Generally, I try not to be bothered by unused designs, but that could also be due to my age.
As a side note, have you seen the older What inspired the Star Ocean game? Or are you just trying to improvise with a concept Square showed you?
I did watch a lot of past videos to see what it was based on and bring that aesthetic into the character designs of Xinghai 6
. Also, I looked at the character designs to see what character designers have done for past games. For example, some characters in past games would fight in t-shirts, or there was a character with a dragon growing on either side [Note: Ashton, from ], like something like this. The looks of these characters are fairly good-looking, and there are many fans of female gamers. These are things to keep in mind.
What other signatures do you like to include when you create characters? In Star Ocean or any other game?
As mentioned earlier, my finishing touch was to combine two familiar elements Into new elements – I think this is the finishing touches. I wanted to see what happens when you combine two things that past designers didn’t or wouldn’t do. An example is JJ, a character from Star Ocean 6. He’s a samurai robot with some ninja elements incorporated into his design, and he has a round face. It’s kind of like a crystal. Usually a samurai character would have a traditional samurai mask, but that would be kind of boring.
Now you are on the other side of work Star Ocean 6, what do you think of this project?
I love sci-fi, so I consider myself lucky to be in a sci-fi game .
Finally, do you have anything to say to American fans?
Looking back Xinghai series, Star Ocean 5 revitalizes it a bit, and Star Ocean: Anamnesis to help the game progress. Now we have Star Ocean 6. All the crew involved are very strong and very passionate about the project and series. I hope American fans enjoy this game.
