Great fighting games are remembered for many reasons. Their control was dialed-in, their animation was silky smooth and their balance was perfect. The graphics, the visual impact of the fighting game could be the most important thing remembered. The evolution of fighting game graphics and animation is not always the easiest to understand. Being able to see where the graphics have been and where they are going are not obvious. The purpose of this series is to dissect the graphics and animation of fighting games and to make a prediction, or at the very least a plea, for the future of Street Fighter.

In the 23 years that Street Fighter has been around we have seen scores of fighting games come and go. From a visual standpoint just about every artistic and creative medium has been used. Sprites, polygons, CGI and lumps of clay have served as models, to be moved and controlled with joysticks and foam pads to keyboards and mouses. Dynasties have been build with nothing more than petty rivalries and old grudges. The mystique of the characters and their designs adding to the lore of the universe. They went on to inspire everything from fashion and toys to animation and live action movies. These fighting avatars went on to change pop culture. How did we get here and what did we learn along the way? More important, how can these lessons be used to make following Street Fighter games better?

Character design is and always will be the most important place to start. Some fighting games have gotten by on looks alone, Street Fighter is one that managed to create iconic characters out of the most simplistic designs. The question that gamers ask themselves today is the same challenge that faces designers at Capcom. Are the classic designs dated or are they still viable? Is using a Japanese aesthetic appropriate or do concessions have to be made for the global market? That depends on who you ask, when you ask and what market they are aiming for. Thank goodness for evolution in the character design department. If not for changing tastes and aesthetics then characters would still be sporting afro's with sideburns and wearing bellbottoms... then again haven't Japanese studios stuck with this gimmick well into the 90's and beyond?

I've been tough on Ikeno and his designs for Street Fighter IV. They lacked the Japanese style that most were used to seeing in fighting games. I blame part of this change on perceptions of what Western culture thinks is great character design. Ikeno might have created his characters to reflect these perceptions.

The early concept sketches of the Street Fighter IV cast was, for the lack of a better word, swollen. Muscles were ballooned to enormous proportions. Shoulders placed high on the torso while the head and neck seemed to be swallowed up by the frame. They were plainly ugly when compared to the previous SF character art. Why were these revisions applied to the characters? Was it because the team was going 3D and needed to figure out how much depth and weight the characters needed in order to appear in a proper scale? Or was this because they wanted the game to appeal heavily to the west, and in order to do just that had to concede the designs to a more physical aesthetic? But where would Japanese designers get the idea that we enjoy looking at swollen characters?

It turned out that designers didn't have to go very far at all. Super-buff characters have been en vogue for some time in American media. They are in our comic books, animated shows and videogames. We are taught to associate the heroic ideals; strength, courage, valor and bravery, proportionally to muscle mass. Characters that are supposed to be light and fast (and old) like DC's Max Mercury, or quick and agile like Marvel's Daredevil are presented with obscenely large muscles. These characters that have no use, or could never support, massive upper body mass would also find it difficult to be limber and quick if they had that much mass. Still, plenty of characters are given these Mr. Olympia-like muscles in comic books. This isn't true of all the artists working in comics but rather occasionally by the more popular ones.

Japanese artists like Ikeno might turn to media like this to try and anticipate and recreate our aesthetics. His observations and interpretations would be validated by placing his designs side-by-side with heroes from our popular genres.

I believe that the reason the designs of the characters featured grotesque and disproportionate muscles were due to assumptions. Primarily because the Japanese were attempting to capture an American, comic book, ideal figure. Unfortunately the Japanese are not known for illustrating characters with muscle definition in mind. Going all the way back to the early days of anime and manga art, the emphasis was on characters designed with story, style and ability as the selling points. Realism, rather than reality, seemed to be the most important tradition carried over to popular and current manga. The figures featured in these series' did not typically have the large muscles or skin-tight fitting clothes. Asking a Japanese artist to beef up a character model might lead to strange proportions that are unnatural and inflated, rather than based on anatomical possibilities.

The characters in SF IV did not have to turn out so grotesque and disproportionate even if they were designed with 3D in mind. While Capcom and DIMPS were working out the look of the SF IV models, there was another 3D fighting game in development. It too was looking to use a few of the iconic SF characters, licensed from Capcom. The concept art for Korea's Perfect KO showed a completely different approach. One that we were expecting in the new character designs but didn't see. Perhaps because they were uncertain whether we would like the traditional, anime, influence or not. I showed my brothers and friends the concept art and asked them which style they would have preferred, the swollen characters or the more stylized designs? They unanimously agreed that the Perfect K.O. art was what they always envisioned that SF characters should look like, especially in 3D.

It turned out that the 3D models themselves for both games weren't that far removed from the concept art. While SF IV designs got brutish and thick, the Perfect K.O. models seemed far more appropriate. They looked more consistent with the established characters and yet still provided a unique presentation. The Perfect K.O. models did not concede a thing to the west. They stayed true to their roots and I believe would have been embraced by audiences here as well.

The concessions made for SF IV, specifically the overly muscular characters might be deemed odd by Japan. The country has a "unique" take on muscle culture. They equate mass muscle, especially guys in posing shorts, with a certain level of silliness, if not overt homosexuality. They don't have a tradition of muscular heroes in pop culture. The idea of super buff guys showing off their muscles is not seen as narcissistic behavior as much as gay behavior. Muscular guys had been lampooned on popular media but first got exposure in he parody shooter Cho Aniki. How Japan feels about the swollen SF IV characters, especially the massive Gouken, I have no idea.

What if these concessions were made by Ikeno without realizing that he was plagiarizing himself? I've mentioned before that Bengus influenced the evolution of the SF characters as well as artists working at Capcom and even artists working abroad. The exaggerated proportions, huge muscles and and scale used by comic artists like Joe Maduera, Ed McGuinness and Humberto Ramos have their roots with Bengus. If Ikeno was basing his designs on comic book art he might have failed to recognize that our popular art and character design was inspired by Bengus and the Capcom staff. What our artists did was an interpretation of it, lacking the manga influence and history, these artists focused more on the proportions. Ikeno should have stayed true to his own style rather than having guessed the style that American audiences identified with. Like a copy of a copy the new character illustrations were akin to a manga artist drawing western comic book proportions inspired by Japanese videogame design. We lost a lot in translation.

The problem for many developers had been in trying to bring the 2D world into 3D without losing the artistic style that made many of these games memorable. The challenge for the designers was in trying to create characters that have as broad appeal an appeal as possible no matter what format they were presented in. This was an uphill battle because tastes in Japan and the US were so vastly different. Even with the internet making media accessible and influencing artists and designers around the world, there were still many elements that each nation preferred to see. Things that mainstream culture from one country finds cool and inspired another would find laughable. Physically strong characters look great to Americans yet they seem silly to Japanese. Conversely, stylish men, with feathery hair and androgynous features were the epitome of cool in Japan. These aesthetics were a reflection of different cultures.

It was up to designers to determine the look of the characters for a specific game and make them appealing on multiple levels. These artists were responsible for not only coming up with the art and styling, but also trying to invent an "impossible" universal aesthetic. Making things harder was a dip in the appeal of fighting games after the late 90's. 2D technology was becoming dated and the process of creating sprites was deemed inefficient by publishers. Artists had to approach the creation of a new character with many things in mind. How the character looked from multiple angles, how muscular they were. How their clothing fit and flowed, what their color pallet would be. Just about everything that an animation director would provide a team of animators in order to build a sprite that was consistent with the artists' original vision.

These things slowed down the development process. A character had to fit the scale with rivals, work well with the engine and allow room to work around. The tiniest design change meant that dozens, if not hundreds of sprites had to be recreated by hand. Further confounding the issue were questions of a sprite's life-span. Sprites created for one game did not always carry over onto subsequent games. Their lack of frames compared to newer games made the sprites feel dated. Due to the cost associated with sprite development many publishers closed down their sprite-based wings, including Capcom. Only independent studios (seemingly) could still pursue new sprite-based fighting games. 3D was faster, easier and more cost effective to program in so publishers that hadn't already begin making fighting games in that format began making the switch.

Artists that had were highly influential in 2D did not seem to have the same impact with 3D models. All of the nuances that each designer had brought to 2D seemed homogenized in polygon form. But what exactly was it that made some 3D fighters succeed where others failed? Which format was the preferred one for Street Fighter and what did the future hold for the franchise. These questions will be explored in the following blog.