The new artstyle

[Dandy Druid]

I like how it's darker, simpler, and grainier (is that the right word?) Mainly because it takes place in a Medieval/Dark Ages setting, so it just makes sense. Fates and Awakening, are more saturated, which I guess goes with the time period (post Renaissance) feel of those games.

I still prefer Hidari's work though. The armor looks more practical and simpler. Although the Kozaki made some cool, flashy armor, Hidari's approach is refreshing, and it's a nice way of staying true to the original. Plus it's gorgeous.

[RobbieRotten]

1 hour ago, The Geek said:

Rather than calling Kozaki's art "anime hot topic" I think a more proper distinction is to say that the designs in FE Echoes look more fantasy while the designs in Awakening and Fates look more JRPG.  Less Lord of the Rings, more Final Fantasy.  Less Berserk, more SAO.

I like the new art, it's very pretty.  Everyone in this game is so pretty.

I thought his designs were amazing in awakening, for what it's worth.

[The Geek]

40 minutes ago, RobbieRotten said:

I thought his designs were amazing in awakening, for what it's worth.

I'm of the opinion that the Awakening and Fates designs are pretty hit or miss.  There are some great highs with really great designs (Fates!Hero, War Cleric, Adventurer) and some terrible lows with really bad designs (Fates!Fighters, Awakening!Knights, Awakening!Cavaliers, the female versions of armored classes in general)

[Kyne]

12 minutes ago, The Geek said:

I'm of the opinion that the Awakening and Fates designs are pretty hit or miss.  There are some great highs with really great designs (Fates!Hero, War Cleric, Adventurer) and some terrible lows with really bad designs (Fates!Fighters, Awakening!Knights, Awakening!Cavaliers, the female versions of armored classes in general)

Aaahh, of course. The good-old-reliable-and-totally-not-dangerous-to-wear boobplates. As a sidenote, the dark mages wearing fishnets and veils and stuff always bothered me quite a bit. Like what't the point of that? Especially on Nyx. That was the weirdest one.

[Ryo]

Out of the character arts that we've seen so far, my most favorite ones are Celica's and Savor's. The others look great too, even though I'm not a fan of that weird thingi on the black-haired guy's head.

[JasonMendez]

I like it. So far nothing makes me dislike the character design. I didn't like Odin's Clothing as he looked like a jester imo. Emphasis on the boobs like Charlotte, Camilla and Kagero is just weird and same goes for battle panties. for any female fighter. However, I was fine with Charlotte's after I learned about her flirtatious nature.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of the character artwork in the future.

[AsherCrane]

As far as Kagero goes, apparently female ninja would actually use that exposure to distract their opponent to some degree. 

[JasonMendez]

Just now, AsherCrane said:

As far as Kagero goes, apparently female ninja would actually use that exposure to distract their opponent to some degree. 

But does she have to distract her opponent if she's supposed to be hidden like a good ninja?

[goodperson707]

There's more than one way to inhume a Nohrian. Being hidden won't always be an option. (Heck the ninjas join a FE protagonist's army, on average they aren't that big employers of stealth. Plus the whole mechanic of counterattacks) 

Edited January 20, 2017 by goodperson707

[AsherCrane]

4 minutes ago, JasonMendez said:

But does she have to distract her opponent if she's supposed to be hidden like a good ninja?

According to a book called the Bansenshukai, Female Ninja also worked by finding legitimate positions in an enemy's household in order to overhear enemy conversations to gain intel. In that situation, seduction could be fairly valuable. This is slightly heresay though, because the only proof I could find was someone saying they'd found it in there. 

 

I'm not finding it myself, the thing is 10 volumes long. 

[sforzur]

I love Hidari's works for Atelier, so I'm incredibly satisfied with the graphics that we've seen thus far. Definitely going to hold off on commenting on character designs until we see more of them, but I do think that Celica looks fantastic. I'm also pretty pleased that the portraits aren't so zoomed in anymore, especially since the newer 3DS systems have larger screens.

[Thor Odinson]

I'm very impressed with art so far.

I'm not easily impressed by art. 

This is a good direction I like to see FE's art go. 

[sirmola]

It's just nice to have a break from fanservice. Sometimes it feels that fenservice is everywhere in the sorts genres that i like (like jrpgs and manga), so something with no fansiervice just counts as refreshing.

[Tryhard]

Can't wait to see some redesigns, especially for characters like Dyute and Matilda. Hopefully the design is somewhat close to agahari's art of her in this style.

Edited January 20, 2017 by Tryhard

[Hasnbaakoajsbakaiaja]

Echoes is very much superior to that of its predecessors.

[Shengar]

I'm just going to put this here on the art direction :p

====

Old fans in modern times might get sceptical over IS choice of lead artist for their considering what we got in FE Awakening and Fates. I could understand that, especially with FE Fates being overtly obnoxious with sexual appeal on its design (though I personally blame the art director than Kozaki since his design by default is realistic). Will Hidari be the same? Isn't she the artist who handle Atelier Dusk Trilogy where the series presumably sold only to otakus? Worry not because she's probably THE BEST artist for Fire Emblem in our day.

Let me show her design for the main characters in Dusk Trilogy:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

The most striking aspect to her artstyle is her water-ink like washed out color. It gaves her artwork a special vibe where everything feels kinda dark or depressing, but with a certain beauty outside of it. So it's no wonder that she was chosen as the lead artist for Atelier Dusk trilogy. Because that game is about a dying world and how the main characters try their best to prevent the inevitable.

But her art isn't just about the color and the bleak beauty its represent. Hidari's drawing of character could be extremely detail. But in doing so, her artwork never become too busy with detail as her style of color greatly blend those details into the character. So they might look simple at a glance, but if you look them closely you will see how she put so many details into her character. Honestly, she's like Kozaki in that way but with her art style lean more to painting like as opposed to Kozaki whom by default is fairly more realistic.

  Reveal hidden contents

What makes her ultimately different from Kozaki and have me mumbling to myself "she's going to be PERFECT for FE" everytime I see her artwork on the Dusk Trilogy is her practicality. Her characters are all beautiful in their fashion but in doing so she makes them looks plausible. Her details on their clothing is not something frivolous or gratuitous that we are usually seen in many ridiculous design of JRPGs. There's always sense to behind why this character wear that particular clothing, or having some small pack strapped to their waist. When she have absolutely to make her character sexually appealing, she'll make sure that they look beautiful and feels like it's indeed the character themselves who choose to wear their clothes instead of being forced upon by the artist.

So far I've only show her designs in the Dusk Trilogy. While the Atelier series is still a JRPG where fight monsters in it, the central theme and gameplay of the series itself is revolved around alchemy so as you can see most of the designs I posted here looks fairly "domestic". They are not exactly what we would see in a SRPG about war and epic battle against dragon isn't it? We've seen her absolutely gorgeous drawing and design with Fe Echoes, but can she fares good when she had to design for a completely new FE game? Worry not about that because Hidari's portfolio in character design isn't limited to Atelier series, but also Toukiden and it's subsquent expansion, Toukiden Kiwami, a hunting action game (or Monster Hunter clone, if you prefer it that way). 

You couldn't be more battle ready than being within a game where it's all about slaying demon on regular basis. As you can see below, her design in Toukiden Kiwami is practical too, and of course looking beautiful and stylistic at the same time:

• Ouka
• Nagi
• Fugaku
• Hatsuho
• Hayatori
• Ibuki
• Reki
• Souma
• Horo

Sorry for just giving out list of link, but I wasn't allowed to post the pictures here without them being horribly compressed, but this makes me easier to point out specific character design so this perhaps a better choice. As you can see, Hidari design in Toukiden Kiwami is pretty much battle ready. While most her character leans heavily on the stylish side, we could see her attention to detail to make them not overtly stylish and have some practical to it. Nagi for example, is your usual big breasted character complete with a cleavage. She used bow and arrows in battle, and as you can see from her outift, she wears what it looks like metal plate on her left chest. I don't know what it is called, but I know that female archer usually wear something like that so their breast are not in the way when they notched and pulled their arrow. This shows Hidari's attention to detail by making sure that Nagi's big rack wouldn't hinder her job at shooting arrow.

On stylish and practical design, Reki and Souma have the best vouch for it. Reki have special mention though because while she's having a plate armor on her chest that too conveniently shaped like that, the rest of her clothes are pretty much covering her body. But at the same time though, she doesn't look boring and still elegant in her own way. It shows Hidari design expertise on incorporating practicality and beauty.

One last thing that I need to mention is that Hidari's character by default, male or female, isn't sameface. I know Kozaki can draw and design character with huge diversity, look to no other than the No More Heroes character rooster. But if he wasn't specifically asked to make his design diverse, his characters tend to be sameface or to be exact, templated. You can see differences between his character but most definitely you will see repeating pattern of similarity between some characters. To my observation, this mostly happened because Kozaki didn't varied the default expression of his character just enough to make them different to each other (which is why the reason why Maribelle feels so stand out in Awakening, since her "haughty" and "prideful" default expression is no one else have in the game).

Hidari on the other hand always make her character default expression to be different. While the face shape of her character isn't that varied, but the expression that each character make is different enough to not make the viewer confused them from one another. And it's not like she isn't able to draw characters with vastly different shape face AND default expression though. Toukiden Kiwami's characters are exactly that, with Reki being the most stand out since her face is oval shaped, something that very rare from Japanese animanga aesthetic this day.

I'm going to end this lecture. In short, Hidari is great and there could be no more perfect artist for FE beside her. If IS not going to make her the lead artist in FE Switch, I'm going to fly to Japan and set their office on fire.

EDIT: Oh damn, I forgot to include her artwork that being used as cover for Civilization Revolution 2 PS Vita release to show her ability in drawing different characters:

[eclipse]

New art is nice to look at.  I like how the poses are varied, and there's some very interesting asymmetry (really noticeable in Mage Boy).  The colors aren't ridiculously bright, but they cover the entire palette.

Alas, Celica's art bugs me, and I think the issue is the art direction (she's a priestess, why is she in a dress short enough to be a cocktail dress?).

[Loki Laufeyson]

On 1/19/2017 at 1:37 PM, CappnRob said:

The real question is if Deen's crewmullet will survive the new and improved artwork :V

Y E S

Deen's mullet needs to survive. For art's sake. 

Honestly though, the art is nice and i like Celica's design. Reminds me of Eirika whos design is my absolute favorite for the lady lords. The colors remind me of Sacred Stones art and the poses remind me of Tellius a bit. I like it. It has the older spirit of FE. 

[Shengar]

Now in defense on Kozaki since it seems he got a lot of flak already in this thread: as some have pointed out already, he wasn't responsible for the quirk design we have seen in Awakening and Fates. He does the designing but only after he got the direction from Art Director Kusakihara. He said himself in an interview where usually the process of designing character have him draw a bunch of different design on that particular concept, gave it to art team, and then it really depend on the art director which one that going to be used in the game. 

The thing is, Kozaki's realistic and western influence had him difficulties on designing armor, character, and outfit that overtly feels like fantasy. I suspect in Awakening he have more involvement in deciding the art direction since FE13 have that many designs with realistic touch into it. However in FE Fates, it's clear that Kusakihara become more prominent on making the art direction as the game feels more fantasy than before. As the result, there's something glaring when you looked at Kozaki's art when moving from Awakening to Fates.

If Kozaki were allowed to both design and direct the art department, this is something that we would get:

Spoiler

Those are indeed Kozaki's art by default. He can go either very old school with realistic touch into it or more contemporary without being too overtly JRPG or anime. There's a reason why Lucina, who we know is fully dressed with no skin visible, is his most favorite character and design as shown by his many random doodles of her compared to other character.

[RedRob]

35 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Alas, Celica's art bugs me, and I think the issue is the art direction (she's a priestess, why is she in a dress short enough to be a cocktail dress?).

Eh, maybe her religion doesn't view nudity the way the Christian-influenced countries do. That, or it's battle attire, and it's like that since a longer skirt might get in the way of battle.

 

[falcoknights]

1 hour ago, Shengar said:

If Kozaki were allowed to both design and direct the art department, this is something that we would get:

  Hide contents

Those are indeed Kozaki's art by default. He can go either very old school with realistic touch into it or more contemporary without being too overtly JRPG or anime. There's a reason why Lucina, who we know is fully dressed with no skin visible, is his most favorite character and design as shown by his many random doodles of her compared to other character.

jesus. the lady holding the lance's design is absolutely gorgeous. if kozaki ever comes back in some capacity and starts whipping out designs like that, i'm immediately sold on anything that's churned out. it can be the worst fe game ever, i'd buy three copies. 

[CrimeanRoyalKnight]

13 hours ago, Shengar said:

Now in defense on Kozaki since it seems he got a lot of flak already in this thread: as some have pointed out already, he wasn't responsible for the quirk design we have seen in Awakening and Fates. He does the designing but only after he got the direction from Art Director Kusakihara. He said himself in an interview where usually the process of designing character have him draw a bunch of different design on that particular concept, gave it to art team, and then it really depend on the art director which one that going to be used in the game. 

The thing is, Kozaki's realistic and western influence had him difficulties on designing armor, character, and outfit that overtly feels like fantasy. I suspect in Awakening he have more involvement in deciding the art direction since FE13 have that many designs with realistic touch into it. However in FE Fates, it's clear that Kusakihara become more prominent on making the art direction as the game feels more fantasy than before. As the result, there's something glaring when you looked at Kozaki's art when moving from Awakening to Fates.

If Kozaki were allowed to both design and direct the art department, this is something that we would get:

  Reveal hidden contents

Those are indeed Kozaki's art by default. He can go either very old school with realistic touch into it or more contemporary without being too overtly JRPG or anime. There's a reason why Lucina, who we know is fully dressed with no skin visible, is his most favorite character and design as shown by his many random doodles of her compared to other character.

Those are not Kozaki's designs though. They're Akihiko Yoshida's, from Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, which is known for being dark and realistic. (Yes the drawings are Kozaki's)
The fact is, the FE designs Kozaki drew do have design quirks he uses, such as Lucina's gloves or Emmeryn's halo, so of course he had an influence on the outfit designs in a way or another. I believe most of Camilla is his work because her outfit differs greatly from Kusakihara's Malignknight design. I believe he also designed some of the more relevant characters, like Chrom, Elise, etc, that differ from the class design mold. He also drew Nowi's outfit as seen from an interview from a Reddit AMA where he, after being asked why he dressed her up like that, he said that he just drew an outfit fitting for her character.

Not to mention, look at this design by Kozaki for a mobage, completely unrelated to Fire Emblem:

Spoiler

It is filled with quirks and details featured in a lot of Fates and Awakening designs. It possibly can't be just Kusakihara's work (and the armor designer's work).

Edited January 21, 2017 by CrimeanRoyalKnight

[Shengar]

On 21/01/2017 at 11:35 PM, CrimeanRoyalKnight said:

Those are not Kozaki's designs though. They're Akihiko Yoshida's, from Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, which is known for being dark and realistic. (Yes the drawings are Kozaki's)
The fact is, the FE designs Kozaki drew do have design quirks he uses, such as Lucina's gloves or Emmeryn's halo, so of course he had an influence on the outfit designs in a way or another. I believe most of Camilla is his work because her outfit differs greatly from Kusakihara's Malignknight design. I believe he also designed some of the more relevant characters, like Chrom, Elise, etc, that differ from the class design mold. He also drew Nowi's outfit as seen from an interview from a Reddit AMA where he, after being asked why he dressed her up like that, he said that he just drew an outfit fitting for her character.

Not to mention, look at this design by Kozaki for a mobage, completely unrelated to Fire Emblem:

  Reveal hidden contents

It is filled with quirks and details featured in a lot of Fates and Awakening designs. It possibly can't be just Kusakihara's work (and the armor designer's work).

Good points. I posted that before I knew they were an art from Tactics Ogre. Regardless, while they might not be his design both still shows that Kozaki is more than proficient to provide IntSys with more realistic and diverse style than what we got now. The thing is, Kozaki drawn more inspiration from Western convention on his art than Japanese. He draw a lot of western character that might not be drawn by any other artist. His default style lean on realistic side which makes him having difficulties with unrealistic color hair made sense.

This inclination carries through to his design. As shown by example and picture provide, Kozaki have difficulties when he have to designs stuff that must've shown its fantasy-ness. That's why he relies on design quirk if he asked by his client to make designs that shows fantasy from the get go. Being a professional as he is, he can only comply unless his client asked otherwise. 

In the case of Camilla, she's suffered for being a main character and the game general direction rather than direct design. She's completely given that outfit to checklist every possible fetishized outfit that you can attached to her character archetype. But this problem not happened to just Camilla, but other as well (Ellise, and Hinoka comes to mind). It seems this time in FE Fates, they try to make the main characters to not just fetishized but look different from generic units outfit as well. In FEA, we've seen that anyone beside Chrome, Lucina, and Henry have outfit that looks or at least feel similar to their default class. This is the problem I had with FE Fates art direction in general since the first time I seen it.

As for Nowi, I inclined to believe that there's more to that story than just "I drew her because that's her character". Plus by default, Kusakihara could give him a no for that design if he wished for something less stupid and yet he (they) didn't, giving a nod to that stupid design.

All in all, the process of character designing and art director doesn't all come to Kozaki alone. There'll be a lot of affecting factor and meddling when the illustrator does not double as the art director (unlike the case of Senri Kita, which lets her to provide an excellent array of designs).

This is not my post as it was written by someone else, but it worth reading regardless.

Spoiler

To go back to character designs and artists for a second (yes, I know), I just want to address a couple things. To be as clear as possible on some stuff which I know some people have gone into a lot of detail over in this thread already.

Artists and art directors are not the same thing. Artists don't just walk into a studio one day and go 'hey guys, you know, I have an idea of what this game should look like' while developers go 'hmm, yeah' and invite them further in. What the game should look like is something the art director and art team (though yes, a character artist can be one or part of the other) decide separately. And then they will go with someone that they feel best represents that direction, and will, likely, give them some guidelines on how to do so.

They went to Kozaki looking for something, that something rather explicitly being a newer audience and a more modern aesthetic. If you look at Kozaki's portfolio, it's not hard to understand why. His style is honestly more informed by western convention than Hidari's is comparatively. And also, they clearly succeeded? I'm not saying this to be snide, but a lot of the people Awakening brought into the fold fell in love with a lot of these characters because of Kozaki's designs and the 'trendier' (if yes, less practical) look a lot of the characters embody.

Fates ties into this somewhat, because I think the direction was pretty clear in establishing the contrast in Nohr and Hoshido specifically. I won't defend butt-windows and such (and it's explicitly Kusakihara credited for costume design), but there was clearly an aesthetic that they were looking for out of Kozaki. I understand complaints about characters like Camilla or Nyx or other characters in Conquest, but I can't help but be slightly frustrated to see designs like Hana or Oboro, both of whom have great looking and very practical designs (and are hardly an exception to a rule either) passed over entirely to make an argument about how. I'm not saying this invalidates butt-windows and cleavage, but there's clear intention in how the two factions visually distinguish themselves. Hoshidan designs are, typically, more restrained and reasonable (good guys), and Nohrian designs hew closer to with designs accentuating sexuality and 'darkness' (bad guys).

All of the above applies with Hidari. She was chosen to take on Echoes because her pre-existing qualities as an artist and body of work made her the best person for the job. This is all why I find it misguided to directly assume she will also be working on FE Switch out of this (and particularly that Shadows of Valentia indicates its' intended art direction), because the goals that a Fire Emblem game targeting a new (or less old, shall we say) audience is not the same thing as a Fire Emblem game retaining the spirit of its' predecessor. Hidari's designs look more practical because that's what they were looking for out of her. Kozaki is totally irrelevant to this. Whether or not you want to consider Shadows of Valentia a mainline title succeeding the previous game (it's not), nothing about this game should tell you anything about what IntSys intends for the next title.

If you really have a problem with the aesthetic of Fire Emblem now versus then, Kozaki is not and was never the dark voice in the back of IntSys's head whispering to them to make the series more 'anime'. Personally, I don't sympathize very much at all as I adore Kozaki's (and Hidari's, for the record) artwork and enjoy most of his FE designs regardless, but IntSys has always been responsible for their own choice of aesthetics in their games.

 

[CrimeanRoyalKnight]

Oh no, Kozaki is definitely more western than most artist. What I despise is that now people hold him as a paragon of modest outfit designs, when he designed and still designs outfits not that different from the ones by Kusakihara. He is still gonna drawn zettai ryouiki and panty shots. Maybe they won't be as stupidly creative as Kusakihara's, but they're still there. Nowi is still his work and fruit of his imagination.

I just want people to stop treating Kozaki as a poor sap who, if he could, would give every woman realistic armor. I also want people to stop treating Kusakihara as if he was living art direction AIDS when he still has given us good designs like Outlaws, Adventurers, Great Merchants, Basara, Diviners, Onmyoji... Et cetera.

[Leif]

On 1/20/2017 at 7:30 PM, Shengar said:

Now in defense on Kozaki since it seems he got a lot of flak already in this thread: as some have pointed out already, he wasn't responsible for the quirk design we have seen in Awakening and Fates. He does the designing but only after he got the direction from Art Director Kusakihara. He said himself in an interview where usually the process of designing character have him draw a bunch of different design on that particular concept, gave it to art team, and then it really depend on the art director which one that going to be used in the game. 

The thing is, Kozaki's realistic and western influence had him difficulties on designing armor, character, and outfit that overtly feels like fantasy. I suspect in Awakening he have more involvement in deciding the art direction since FE13 have that many designs with realistic touch into it. However in FE Fates, it's clear that Kusakihara become more prominent on making the art direction as the game feels more fantasy than before. As the result, there's something glaring when you looked at Kozaki's art when moving from Awakening to Fates.

If Kozaki were allowed to both design and direct the art department, this is something that we would get:

  Hide contents

Those are indeed Kozaki's art by default. He can go either very old school with realistic touch into it or more contemporary without being too overtly JRPG or anime. There's a reason why Lucina, who we know is fully dressed with no skin visible, is his most favorite character and design as shown by his many random doodles of her compared to other character.

Kozaki has earned my respect! Any decent human being who appreciates the artistry in Tactics Ogre is an awesome person. I can see bits of Lucina in his Dame Ravness artwork.

Now if future Fire Emblems can have this kind of artwork, I'd be thrilled. At least Hidari comes close to this style. 

Edited January 24, 2017 by Leif