Video Game Artists!

[ie]

Yoshitaka Amano



I just love the official art this guy has done for the Final Fantasy series.

Wikipedia
Bulk of pictures

Hiten is a great example of some of the higher quality works he's done, since the main complaint I've heard concerning Amano is that he does a lot of sketchy works. I love them, but people want to see complete and professional works. When he does complete and professional works, though, he kicks your ass five ways to Sunday.


Of course, he's done work outside of Final Fantasy and anime and stuff, but that's where I learned about him, as well as probably most people.


edit: Of course, I forgot to mention that he's collaborated with Neil Gaiman. The end result was Sandman: the Dream Hunters, which I unfortunately have not check out yet. Which could be another place where people may have heard of Yoshitaka Amano.

[ie]

Actually, I'd rather this be the Yoshitaka Amano thread, and you make another thread for general video game art. But whatever, there's not going to be a whole lot of talk about this great artist alone.

[PTAhole]

Sandman is one of my favorite things ever. The Dream Hunters is great, and has some amazing artwork. Gaiman is a master of everything. I really reccomend you read all of the Sandman stuff, as well as his books, Neverwhere, American Gods, Stardust, Anansi Boys (the last one isn't essential.) He's one of my heroes.

[ie]

edit: I've decided to adopt the adapted theme of this thread. Either I, or other people, might be able to bring up some video game art or artists for video games to discuss.


Well, when we talk about video game artists, one name will eventually come up:

Akira Toriyama


With a grin that matches Uwe Boll, you'd think he'd be equally foolish. However, he isn't... if we put Dragon Ball Z aside. His main contribution to the video game industry has been being the primary character artist of the Dragon Quest/Warrior games, which could be seen as a competetor to Final Fantasy.

Like Yoshitaka Amano, Toriyama's work is very distinctive. In that he's deadset on making all of his characters look exactly the same.


edit: Toriyama's work is less interesting to me, so I didn't even think to post any links to any of his artwork. As I mentioned above, a lot of it tends to look alike, in terms of being somewhat plain and simple. But you could probably find some here, and that's about the extent of my interest.

[PTAhole]

Well, I gotta say that, even though I know that I will be ridiculed for it, I LOVE the original series of Dragon Ball. Chrono Trigger is an awesome game, and has some amazing character designs.

[ie]

I think as a series, the main problem with Dragon Ball was that it just got too over-the-top. We all like sweet fight scenes, they're great, but when you have all this unrealistic shit about POWER LEVELS and these ultra powerful energy balls that can destroy half of a planet, it's not so great.


I know of a couple more video game artists, such as the guy who did the art for some of the Metal Gear games (slapshot reminded me of him), the guy who did some character designs for the Final Fantasy series besides Yoshitaka Amano, and I wanted to bring up some like the artists behind Secret of Evermore.

I just don't feel like doing any research right now.



edit:


To keep things interesting, I'll include artists who do video game fan art. That way I can eventually talk about myself.


Andy Helms (/dump/ is where most of his art is)

This guy doesn't always do video game fanart, but I really enjoy his art style, so I figured I'd feature him:


three Metal Gear characters
another three Metal Gear characters

Chun Li
Dhalsim and Blanka

Final Fantasy Tactics Monk
Ramza from Final Fantasy Tactics with a black mage

Not video game art, but hey, it's my favorite picture by him, so:

[PTAhole]

Well, that's why I said 'original' Dragon Ball. All the stuff before Goku found out he was a 'Sayain' was cool in my book.
Back on topic, I like some Video Game artists, but I generally prefer comic book art (or sequential art for those pretentious fanboys) I think I'll start a thread.

[ie]

andruini said:

Man, how dare you insult Dragon Ball and all its derivates. That series was the shit, and no one can deny it!

I read that as "This series was shit, and no one can deny it!" And then "the shit" my second time, and then "was shit" the third time. I eventually imposed my reality upon your text.

I'd have to agree with the ptahole on this one.


I'll try to do something like he did with comic book art soon enough. Don't feel like it at the moment.