As you may recall, we made an announcement on April 22nd that revealed all sorts of new information on Mega Man Legends 3. Along with that was an illustration that gave an exciting taste of the world inside this game, and which received much attention.
Today, we're gonna tell you about how we produced that art! To help do this, we've recruited the wisdom of Art Director Ishihara-san.
Ishihara here. Illustrations used in advertisements, on game packaging, or in other important ways are known as "Official Illustrations". Allow me to tell you about how we create these official illustrations. Today's illustration was drawn by freelance illustrator Hideki Ishikawa. Ishikawa-san used to be affiliated with Capcom, and worked on Legends 1 and 2 as an illustrator, designer, and storyboard artist.
This is the official illustration Ishikawa-san created for Mega Man Legends 2. I love this illustration, and had seen some of Ishikawa-san's more recent work and thought it looked great, so when it came time to prepare an official illustration for Legends 3, I dropped him a line after consulting with the Producer and Director about it.
In the beginning, I sent over some design illustrations and details on the characters we needed to be in the illustration, along with a list of basic criteria, such as the presence of a blue sky. We asked Ishikawa-san to first send us some sketch concepts. For this first round of drafting, I asked him to create a bright, exciting image that featured MegaMan and Barrett in the spotlight.
He came back to us with the following two drafts.
Draft A shows the characters very big, and emphasizes the unique charm of each of them. Meanwhile, Draft B features a more expansive sky and scenery of the town, and the characters are shown in very dynamic, kinetic poses.
After mulling it over for awhile, we decided that Draft B was probably a better way to show off the setting of the game and get new players excited, so we proceeded with B. We requested that Ishikawa-san apply pretty heavy touch-ups in your typical anime style.
This is a rough sketch our team's designers produced to convey the general impression of Volnutt's face. Since this illustration was to be the first time many people would see the character, it was very important to ensure a good first impression. And yet, this sketch is pretty darn rough. Sorry.
Bright, sincere, and energetic, but also not too much of a goody-goody and not too mischievous--MegaMan is actually a very difficult character to capture. Incidentally, the design used for this illustration was Design B from our Mega Man Suit Design Vote.
So from here we repeated a cycle of touch-ups and adjustments to MegaMan's facial expression. Below, you can see what the illustration looked like after the general lines had been sorted out and the background had been colored in.
Ishikawa-san continued his minute revisions of the piece, until we came up with this (click to enlarge).
On the left, we have the illustration Ishikawa-san provided. From here, we examined the overall balance of the picture and requested adjustments as seen in the picture on the right. Once the illustration is near completion, the adjustments you want to make become fairly difficult to express in words, so we use visuals to help make our requests. For example, for Barrett's hairdo, we used Barrett's actual in-game polygon render to help explain what we wanted.
Just out of curiosity, we also tried adding a giant ruin to the background, but it took away from the depth and openness that the horizon had helped achieved, so we eventually scrapped the idea, a decision which Ishikawa-san also agreed with.
Before we did all that, though, we had Ishikawa-san provide some study illustrations for the various characters. We gave him the characters' concept art, explained about their personalities and their roles in the game, and their signature poses and characteristics. As Ishikawa-san notes in his comments, the slightest change in the positioning of a shoulder can change the entire impression given by a character. Illustrators create this kind of study art to help them grasp the essence of the character.
After much trial and repetition. . .
Voila! We have our official illustration! Now here's a comment from Hideki Ishikawa-san himself.
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As I created this art, I worked very hard trying to grasp the overall feel of this game and had the team show me all sorts of concept designs and screenshots. There were many things I was unable to grasp on my own, but the team was happy to correspond with me on many things and provide many materials for my reference. It was a true learning experience, and a fun one at that.
I really hope that this art at least somewhat conveys the thrill of free-roaming through the Mega Man Legends world, both to all the fans as well as to newcomers to the series.
-Hideki Ishikawa
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So there you have it. What'd you think? Be sure to comment!
