Yoji Shinkawa – The Art Director of Metal Gear Solid
Yoji Shinkawa, born on December 25th, 1971, is a Japanese artist most notably known for designing the household favourite elite soldier, Solid Snake. Shinkawa, the legendary designer, has worked closely with Master Mind Game Designer Hideo Kojima on many projects, bringing to life Kojima's never-ending stream of whacky imagination.
Shinkawa has worked on many projects with Kojima, and started working with Konami in 1994. Initially a debugger for the PC-98 version of Policenauts, he would then become a graphic designer for the console version. An early iteration of Solid Snake is actually featured in Policenauts: Pilot Disk for the 3DO. Shinkawa would then move on to create the previously mentioned Metal Gear series with Kojima, working closely with him as the art director for many Kojima Production projects also.
Using a range of mediums, Shinkawa’s masterpieces are formed using felt tips pens, especially the pentel brush pen, as well using Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. Shinkawa’s work has a certain fluidity to each drawing, showing movement and action in his drawings that is hard to master. But when done so, it creates a piece of work that is impactful, beautiful, and dynamic. His use of different weights of brush strokes creates a sense of balance and weight distribution to his images, allowing the illustrations to be brought to life even further.
Shinkawa’s work is praised for both its originality and stylistic nature, but also its technical accuracy. According to Shinkawa, he is very much inspired by anime-related artists such as Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and Yoshitaka Amano, although also does take much inspiration from more western artists such as Frank Miller, Aubrey Beardsley. Not only this, but it has been said that he draws inspiration from French artists such as Mœbius, and looking at each other’s work there is a clear connection albeit very different.
Other notable games Shinkawa has worked on include Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Death Stranding, and Zone of the Enders.
Swipe through some of our favourite illustrations of the master illustrator.
