Summary
- Designs in Eiyuden Chronicle stand out with unique color pallets, in part due to past pixel limitations.
- Junko Kawano strives to give an equal amount of attention to each design.
- Collaboration is key, every character was checked by Murayama-san to help maintain overall coherence.
"Iღn the past, the number of pixels you could use was quite small, so I always designed the characters to be expressive within those limitations. So, in that way, those designs were kind of simple♈, but I tried to make characters stand out by assigning them unique color pallets that would make each character feel distinct.”
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hun🌠dred Heroes Laughs In The Face Of Nostalgia
Don't Call It A Comeback.
This is Junko Kawano - 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Eiyuden Chro🐬nicle: Hundred Heroes’s character designer - explaining her approach to character design, an approach that has always brilliantly threaded the needle between the simplistic and the evocative. In a genre full of character designs that often could be charitably described as “busy,” Kawano's work has always felt elegant. It was a style born from limitations, but clearly not defined by them. “These days, with a game like Hundred Heroes, the resolution is considerably higher, so I'm able to implement more details, but the underlying thinking is still the same."
Creating one memorable character design is difficult, but designing well over a hundred? That seems like an impossible feat. Yet so much of Eiyuden’s development seemed to be about defying the odds. "Since character designs have to be converted into sprites, my work was tied to quite the upstream. So, if I didn't meet my deadline, then it would cause a delay for the entire game's schedule. There was initially a lot of concern from the team, and some people wondered if I needed assistance, but I was actually able to design every character on schedule all by myself."
There is an enviable pragmatism to Kawano and her approach to character design. Wi🐻th video games being so intensely collaborative, she’s still able to maintain some level of neutrality when others are choosing which designs ultimately make the cut.
"I work hard equally and evenly on each design✅ so that I would be happy with any of the characters being chos🔯en,” she says.
“In the past, when I've created multiple designs for characters, and other people chose which one they liked the most, I felt that they didn't necessarily always choose the design I thought was the best. I expected it would be the same when backers were given the opportunity to choose the design. So, I actually worked really hard to give each character an equal amount of attention."
I was stunned by Kawano’s poise and her unflappable detachment from these designs that she had clearly poured her blood, sweat, and tears into. So I tried to throw her a curveball. If there was a fire, and she could only save a single design, which one would it be? Kawano-san laughed, but she also paused for a beat or two to consider the question. "If I could only save one, I wouldn't necessarily choose to save my favorite design. Maybe I would save Seign, as his design has so many little details and I wouldn't be able to remember each one. But the other characters I could reproduce from my memory.”
While I may have been incapable of breaching Kawano’s impenetrable wall of pragmatism, her work speaks for itself. Each and eꦰvery character in Eiyuden is bursting with personality, and every last design can be traced back to Kawano’s approach which has been developed over the course of decades. That said, ༒she was always quick to credit others and acknowledge the collaborative nature of her work. “I had the freedom to design all the characters, but at the end of the day, every character was checked by Murayama-san.” Ever the pragmatist, ever the collaborator.
The Best Easter Eggs And Hidden Details In Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred 🐲Heroes
While scouring the world of Eiyuden Chronic🦂le: Hundred Heroes looking for more recruits, you may end up finding an Easter egg or two instead.
