Metal Gear Solid Artist Yoji Shinkawa Talks Art And Left Alive; Bonus Time-Lapse Video

Kojima Productions’ lead artist Yoji Shinkawa is best known for his work on the Metal Gear and Zone of the Enders series, but his latest project is Square Enix’s survival action shooter, Left Alive.

Shinkawa doesn’t often show much of his creative process, but you can check it out in a rare time-lapse video for a Left Alive piece in the above video.

Below are some highlights from Shinkawa-san’s interview with PlayStation.Blog:

Yoji Shinkawa says the way he approaches his projects varies as some have clearly defined requests while others gives him more freedom. His first step is to usually draw many doodle-like sketches to get an idea what kind of image he’s going for.

For Left Alive, Square Enix initially approached with the request of three main characters. Shinkawa received info on their gender and a simple profile. From there he submitted rough images of Leonid, who he considers the type of character he’s used to drawing. He then checked on its direction while maintaining balance with other characters.

A personal piece by Shinkawa-san.

As for his work in Left Alive, after designing the three main characters he created images for some of the other key characters. He also designed on of the Wanzer models. Work flow mostly consists of Shinkawa-san providing feedback regarding design and models while communicating back and forth with the team.

Check out the full interview where Yoji Shinkawa talks more about digital art, his creative toolkit, and process over at the PlayStation.Blog.

Left Alive releases for PlayStation 4 in Japan on February 28, 2019. It releases in North America and Europe on March 5, 2019 for PlayStation 4 and PC.