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[caffeware]

Taken from this thread 4chan.

"For decades Capcom's fighting games have been known for their casts of unique and colorful characters. Characters who despite often being based on standard archetypes, always had their own distinct twists, visual flair and personality. But when it comes to the people behind these characters, many misconceptions abound, with few players knowing what actually went on in the development process, and who made what. I myself only learned about this recently and felt like sharing in the hopes of spreading information that fellow Capcom fans would find interesting.

When it comes to Capcom fighting game artists, the names you'll hear people mention the most often are Kinu Nishimura, Bengus, Ikeno, Edayan and Akiman (more on him later,) with art like this often being touted as "concept art," and terms like "design" and "designer" being used. Overall people seem to get the impression that these artists are the ones who created the characters, and that the in-game graphics are based on this art. However, this is not true."
-4chan anon

Akima: The charamen would spend two years holed up in Capcom HQ, pouring their hearts and souls into these characters. But because of artbooks and such, the players would go "Oh, it's gotta have this illustrator, or it'll suck." Illustration and character design are two completely different skillsets.

Akima: Capcom had a group of spriters, and they were the ones who made everything. They had the skills of both an animator and an embroider, and they would draw pixel by pixel using a keyboard. They were the ones whose effort developed these characters' ideas, and it took several months to several years of work. But the customers cared more about some artwork that was drawn in a couple of days.

Akima: The director would be the one who comes up with the general idea for the dish, the charamen would be the ones who experiment with the recipe until they get it just right, and the illustrator would be the one who cooks the dish that gets photographed for the menu.

"A good example of how vital the role the charamen played was the character of Vega in Street Fighter 2. SF2 director Akira Nishitani has stated that when combining various nationalities and fighting styles for SF2 character concepts, two that were left unused late in the process were "Spain" and "Ninja," and he decided to combine those, thinking it was just crazy enough to work. From a concept as odd and vague as "Spanish Ninja" various concepts were drawn, most of which were more knight-like. But the beautiful and narcissistic masked, claw-wielding, snake-tattooed ninja matador we all know today was primarily the work of one relatively unknown charawoman."
-4chan anon

Akima: I might have contributed a little bit, but Vega was almost entirely the work of a designer named Kageyama.

Akima: A woman named Kageyama who would bounce up and down when she was happy designed and spirited SF2's Vega. She also drew in a more manga-esque style at first, but unlike Nakamura it was more of a shoujo manga type of style and that's reflected in her work. In Darkstalkers she sprinted Victor.

Akima: E. Honda was sprited by a woman named Nakamura, one of our earlier artists to draw in a more otaku-oriented style. She was involved with all the characters in Battle Circuit, Caption Commando's Ginzu, SF Alpha's Chun-Li, X-Men's Psylocke, Red Earth's Mai-Ling, and Vampire Savior's Red Riding Hood; a true genius.

Akima: A person by the name of "Mori" who had served as an assistant to Maki Koushi, the manga artist behind Mecha Battler Gilfer and Metal K came to us and sprited Sf2's Sagat, Darkstalkers' Morrigan, and SF3's Elena. His own personal evolution had quite an influence on our early and middle-era fighting games.

"In a column on the now defunct Darkstalkers Collection website, fellow charaman Takenori Kimoto recalls being impressed with Q/Mori's ingenious use of drills in Morrigan's attacks as a way to imbue her attacks with continuous movement without using up much ROM space."
-4chan anon

Akima: We had a woman named Kurihara, and she sprited Demitri, Captain Commando, Forgotten Worlds' Unknown Soldiers. She joined Capcom only a year after me, quite a veteran and made flawless sprites. She was important to use even before we got into fighting games.

Akima: There was a hot-blooded guy like Patlabor's Oota who was named Nishi, and he breathed life into SF2's Guile. he also sprited X-Men's Cyclops and SF3's Ibuki. He was a person with an incredible passion for making games, who was invaluable to Capcom.

Akima: I did his walk cycle, but the rest was all Nishio. He ended up making so many sprites that he was eating into Chun-Li's allotted memory, so I had to have him cut some. We had a general concept for the Flash Kick from the beginning, but even though Nishio's animation ended up being completely different from the concept drawing it was really cool.

Akima: The guy behind Hulk was also responsible for bulking up Bison in SF Alpha. He specialized in bulky characters. He works for Namco now.

Akima: Hayashi-kun was responsible for Dhalsim's sprites. I think his base design came from a drawing by Ouji-kun, but I can't remember for sure. Hayashi-kun was the first of my juniors to be a core otaku type, so we really saw eye to eye. He was another flawless spriter, and went on to sprite Darkstalkers' Bishamon.

"Ball Boy would return to Dhalsim for the Alpha series, as well as spriting SF3's Yun and Yang and Jojo's Joseph."
-4chan anon

 

[Hoya Destroyer]

Interesting. I always thought both Bison and Sagat looked better, when they were slimmer/SF2 versions of themselves.
I have heard of Akiman, but dont really follow who creates what, in any game. Akiman designed Chuns training outfit in SFV, IIRC. Thats the best outfit she has. Love it.

 

[sublimit]

That was interesting.To tell you the truth i hadn't even heard the name "Akiman" before i watched Toco Toco's documentary about him or any of the other Capcom artists. Maybe it's because i was never into Street Fighter or maybe it's because Japanese artists in general like to keep their profiles very low (which is the exact opposite of the Western "rock star artist" mentality who wants to have as much exposure as possible).

I wish we knew more about the pre-production stages of a lot of Japanese developed games.

 

[Jezan]

Wow this is cool, I mean now I wanna know what the first concept of the Flash kick was and also how many frames where removed from Guile to let Queen Li to have her memory space back.

Also will they ever give Soul Eraser to Morrigan? It was a very awesome move.

 

[Northeastmonk]

The concepts for the versus series have always been my personal favorite. Especially the X-Men characters.

Cyclops looked and played well. It's awesome to see how all these people came together and made the characters.

I wish Capcom would go back to that instead of sticking to the same exact Avenger cast each time.

Bison's muscles were a lot larger in Alpha. If you go back to SSF2 on SNES he was a lot smaller. It's almost funny seeing him now.