toi8 on his new challenge with Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem, a bit on character designs
toi8 is busy helping out with Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem’s character designs. On his official blog, toi8 spoke about what the project means to him, and touched on how it’s a new challenge for him.
Hello. I’m toi8, and I’ll be in charge of the main character designs for Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem. As for when we began talking about this title, it was around the time I finished working on a piece of light novel cover art. It was around the time that I was handling one-shot work, and asked myself “what should I do next?”
As part of the generation that grew up on Nintendo consoles such as the Famicom and Super Famicom, the name “Nintendo” has a very special meaning to me. I remember being very excited upon hearing about the [Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem] collaboration.
Years later, I’ve finally been able to see it take form right before my eyes, and I find myself filled with deep emotion.
Now, let’s quickly talk a little bit about the character designs. The stage of the game is set in Shibuya, and the background shows a gorgeous world, so the character design’s direction will go with a highly saturated, gorgeous look.
Everything I’ve drawn up until now has been low saturation, so this will be a challenge of colors!
toi8 next mentions that illustrators often have opportunities to do “single-sheet” work, which is basically just a single piece of concept art or a cover. That’s in contrast to designers who have additional responsibilities. toi8 likes the role os “single-sheet” work, but has accepted this new role as a personal challenge.
I’ve received help from all kinds of people, and as a result we’ve achieved the characters and the backgrounds shown in trailer, which is something I haven’t been able to do up until now, and I’m proud of it.
As far as characters go, we have discussions such as “what we should do in terms of bust size?” with suggestions like “they could be large and have glasses to go with them,” and “no, glasses are no good,” and so on.
