Influences: Yoji Shinkawa

It's time for another 'Influence' article because I have nothing much to report on the FWTBT side of things, so here's a little write up on another of my favourite illustrators/designers Yoji Shinkawa.

The first time I was introduced to Yoji's work was with Metal Gear Solid on the original Playstation and when Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty came out it blew my mind and I needed mooore! Yoji has done all the character designs and a lot of the environmental designs in most of the games in the Metal Gear series and his approach is very interesting. He is more concerned with the mood and feel of the characters rather than just what they look like, drawing on real world references of people and places to give his characters a strong plausibility, despite some of their comic book like attributes. He has a few books out, based on illustrations for games such as MGS, MGS2 and Zone of the Enders 2. There's a cool interview here. Check him out.

Cheers
Roh