The Evolution of Fire Emblem's Insanely Random Art Direction. (FE1 - Engage)

I don't think it would be wrong to claim the franchise's visual identity has remained consistent as far as character designs go fire emblem's general setting is heavily inspired by a medieval fantasy which is always reflected in how everyone's dressed one aspect which has been in a state of complete unpredictability the art style and I say this because unlike other Nintendo franchises Fire Emblem has historically had many many illustrators on board each with their own unique take on the same idea so if anyone watching this video became a fire emblem fan thanks to three houses and is shocked or surprised over how colorful and striking Fire Emblem Gage's characters are then let me tell you that this is just par for the course for the most part today's video is a history lesson on every lead artist from dark dragon in the sword of light to engage who these artists are what they've done in the past and what they're doing in Fire Emblem now and if possible why they were hired for Fire Emblem in the first place but before we start a message from my patreon if you want access to behind the scenes videos gaming sessions Community Q and A's or just be a part of a small community that's been around for years please check out my patreon you can support me and the channel for as little as four dollars a month now for the video the NES era Fire Emblem one and two this may or may not be shocking to hear but for the first two Fire Emblem games for the NES slash famicom intelligent systems did not have character illustrators on their ranks or at least no one was ever credited for the job when it came to crafting the game's box art and promotional artwork as a matter of fact both fe1 and guidance staff credits list now taka onishi sauchi Machida toshitaka muramatsu and in fe1 only toru osawa as graphic designers so for all we know it's possible character work during this era was a collaborative effort between intelligence systems as staff it's clear that someone with a unique art style designed this Marth but whoever they are they're not credited in the game at least official character illustrations are also often inconsistent with how characters appear in the actual games like volvar for example and this is without considering how both games due to size limitations heavily reused portraits ended color swaps to make new characters Maybe this was in fact due to an unclear direction from a lack of an art director overall fe3 and fe4 starting with the Super Nintendo era is brought katsuyoshi Koya as character designer for mystery of the emblem who for all intents and purposes debuted to the art and video game industry with this game and given mystery of the emblem contained both an Abridged retelling of fe1 and its proper sequel their first task was redesigning nearly every Arcane character in their style memory limitations aside koya's work was a clear improvement over the NES portraits when you compare them side by side Koya later provided both character and class concept art for the next game genealogy of the holy war and to contrast his previous work characters were given cleaner black outlines and a slightly higher color variety after this Koya was unable to continue his role for 3cs776 due to creative differences with shozokaga by then Effie's director as the latter believed koya's art style no longer matched the image he had for the series and while what I'm about to say hasn't been confirmed officially AKA I'm speculating the timeline line of events points out kaga could have made this decision because he already had sights on a new artist whose work did match his vision whom I will introduce soon regardless of the circumstances of how Koya stopped working for Fire Emblem their influence in the franchise just can't be overstated for one they provided a good chunk of art used in the first Fire Emblem trading card game which was at the time the only source for full body artwork for many characters from fe1 to fe5 and second their work was used as the basis for a set of special figurines featuring the fe4 cast besides it's not like he was unable to keep working on Fire Emblem forever anyway after kaga's departure Koya is listed in fe6's credits under special thanks worked on Sacred Stones as a graphic designer and even contributed artwork to Fire Emblem 100 songs of Heroes a promotional anniversary card game from 2015. Fire Emblem arcanea Saga I did a video on fire emblems to teleview game a while ago which you can check here but for the sake of this video you only need to know it was a streamed episodic game that used the satella view add-on and featured Arcanine characters such as Michaelis and Nina and though fe3's engine was reused for this entry the unit's portraits used were all brand new thanks to the efforts of Rika Suzuki an illustrator and manga Artist as for later contributions to Fire Emblem she made illustrations for five novel adaptations of genealogy of the holy war and two for Sacred Stones and for awakening she Illustrated for the sell-off portrait used in his DLC einhardt and lastly she has drawn five heroes in Fire Emblem Heroes so far thracia 776 the late mayumi hirota was brought on board she worked in animation for 10 years before retiring having been involved in studio ghibli's ocean waves from 1990 and Fushigi Yugi's 1995 anime adaptation as the Director and by her admission got into Fire Emblem after playing Gaiden by the way just play Gaiden bro but even before working on thracia she's listed in the credits for Fire Emblem one's OVA from 1996 as part of the original staff and provided artwork for not only fire emblem's first card game but also assisted with Fire Emblem 4's promotional artwork including yoggirl's lore and guidebook Fire Emblem treasure the last one reportedly caught shozokaga's attention and it's cited as the main reason she became fe5's character designer this also marks the start of sachiko wada's contributions to the franchise and known career overall whom not only implemented mayumi's work into 3cs776 but has also worked on various Fe related tasks at is like face designer level designer and even character illustrator for the later games and lastly she's drawn a whopping 28 characters for Faye the GBA games after both kaga and mayumi left is together to work on their own projects is started looking for new artists who could Supply character artwork for future games in the case of binding blade and Blazing Sword IG Kaneda was recruited to serve as the character designer for both though he was only credited in the former for unknown reasons he's a freelancer specialized in doing illustrations for the fantasy genre and has provided a ton of artwork for visual novels including the binding blade and blazing swords novel adaptations and even Fire Emblem Cipher the franchise's second card game fe7 introduced Daisuke isuka to the franchise as well similar to Canada he's a Fantasy artist who has done work for visual novels and card games such as Fire Emblem Cipher and later would go on to provide assistance to fire emblem's Graphics like radiant Dawn's 2D art director as an example and would even draw awakening's DLC Erica portrait for the alib games however he merely provided the design for for the fire dragons thus far he has contributed 18 characters for Faye one more thing worth mentioning related to this subject is that starting from fe6 every game has had a dedicated position for an art director this is a big deal as it means that whoever assumes the position is the person calling the shots on the game's art and character design and anything you ever get to see in the games had to have been approved by them first for Sacred Stones the final game for the Game Boy Advance sachikawada took the role of character designer as well as director scenario support and Main design the telius duology once again is hired a new character designer for The telius duology Path of Radiance and radiant Dawn which would spice things up further senri Kita she's a freelancer known for her work on various SNK games such as Samurai Showdown and for many many Cipher cards while Kita and Ko's style is on par with various Fe entries it's interesting to note how it slightly evolved between both teles games Brady and Dawn forewent the thick black outlines in straightforward shading from Path of Radiance in favor of having more varied lighting and textures on the character's clothes and finally she has drawn 17 heroes in Phase so far shadow dragon and new mystery when it came for tackling the DS remakes on the first and third games in the series the role of character illustrator fell mainly into Daisuke izuka's hands who both redrew arcanea's cast and provided the designs for the remake's new units like norn altena and Nagi masamune Shiro a manga artist and author of the Sci-Fi manga Ghost in the Shell also contributed with some character artwork only for the first remake though and while not directly involved with the game katsuyoshi Koya briefly returned to provide shadow dragon promotional artwork of Elena and barst while sachikawada also came back to draw Paula and Julian's bonus art foreign Awakening and Fates due to the franchise's decline in sales intelligence systems contacted yusuke kazaki to provide character artwork for Fire Emblem Awakening believing his style would appear to a general audience rather than just Fire Emblem fans looking at his portfolio kozaki was likely chosen because of his varied experience drawing manga mainly one shots as well as his experience in character design and due to the game's success it's no surprise kozaki years later resumed his job for Fire Emblem Fates and later Fire Emblem Heroes all while contributing with artwork of his own for Fire Emblem Cipher to boot as a bit of quick trivia kozaki even expressed interest in doing a manga adaptation of Fire Emblem Fates back in 2015 which unfortunately never came due to various reasons Shadows of Valencia for yet another change of pace hidari was given the reins for the character designer spot in Fire Emblem guidance remake Shadows of valentia his past experience by then stemmed from various game franchises Atelier and the tokiden games to name a few anime like roommate and Santa company as for Faye he's Illustrated both Brave Alm and brave Celica hidari joined Echoes thanks to toshuki kasakahara's efforts the series is current art director he had been a fan of his work for a while and even tried hiring him for both Awakenings DLC and Cipher but in both cases was unable to due to scheduling issues so when it finally came time to work on gaiden's remake he made sure to secure his involvement far in advance three houses now when it came to finding the right character illustrator for three houses and by association three hopes later on intelligent systems reached out to tanatsu kurohana a freelancer whose previous work had to do with video game visual novels and she overall specializes in drawing handsome and pretty characters we know which Nazi was the go-to choice for the photo link games because according to kasakehara the team sought out to depict a glamorous aristocratic society and given the social dating features present in this iteration of Fire Emblem as well as how most of fodlin's playable cast are nobles they believed to Natsu would be a good fit for the game as for later contributions to Fire Emblem shinatsu went to make a few cards for Fire Emblem Cipher was the concept artist for female violets good smile figurine and even created full body illustrations for three houses's spirits that appear in Smash Bros ultimates DLC interestingly she only did artwork for one character in Fire Emblem Heroes so far legendary Dimitri foreign engage finally we arrive at the latest and as of this video upcoming Fire Emblem entry and its character designer Mika Picasso she's an illustrator character designer dojinji author and co-founder of a short-lived vtuber company the moon Studio her work catalog overall has consisted of manga and visual novels like live dungeon and apocalypse which respectively though nowadays she's mostly known for providing the artwork for hollow life english's YouTuber Talent hakos Bales don't even know if I'm pronouncing that right evidently Picasso's designs commonly feature a huge color spectrum and are full of liveliness and because of that I would wager that's why is sought out Picasso's talent in the first place given how gorgeous Fire Emblem and Gage is shaping up to be so far this is Off Script gas turret and I just want to say this has been quite an interesting video Fire Emblem artists have always been this nebulous topic for me I've always known that the art styles were always different but I never actually knew who to pinned the name on for which game so producing this video was a very educational experience for me and it was quite interesting to finally make these connections that I never had before like the DLC Ike from Awakening actually being the artist from fe6 and fe7 and it's absolutely incredible and something that I would put my entire life savings on that nobody could have predicted that in 1990 and 33 years later we'd go from a collective group of intelligence systems artists to a vtuber artist having the reins in the art direction for the series it's a crazy journey and honestly with the track record that fire emblem has after engage who the hell knows that all being said hope you learned something if you did please leave a like and comment and if you haven't subscribed yet but you like my Fire Emblem scripted content please do so and if you want to help me and the channel outside of just liking and commenting and subscribing please seriously consider checking out the patreon link down below it would really mean a lot thanks for watching deuces [Music] [Music]

Channel: Faerghast

Views: 209,456

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Id: T0DVwcB2bb4

Length: 14min 28sec (868 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 06 2022