Chinatsu Kurahana is Three Houses New Artist

[Alastor15243]

I like this. However different the style is for FE, I feel that this hard-to-describe quality to the portraits that was lost in awakening and Fates has returned here. Like I feel they convey a more serious and less cartoonish tone, and that’s very encouraging.

[Guest Ziegenpeter]

Well, I already posted my thoughts regarding the character designs here:

https://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?/topic/86443-every-character-organized-by-housewith-images/&page=3&tab=comments#comment-5401761

So all I'm going to say here is that while Kuruhana's style is not my favorite, I still prefer it vastly over Kozaki's style.

On 17.2.2019 at 9:34 AM, Slumber said:

I like this art much more than Kozaki's for the series... barring the girl with the stupid hat.

Chinatsu's fits a lot more with what we've gotten previously out of the series, whereas Kozaki seemed to be making art for a different franchise entirely.

Basically this. Well said.

[ZeManaphy]

Interesting. I like how she makes the boys feel a lot more natural- much less fan service-ey than I felt from Kozaki. Can't say I feel the same about the girls though. The orange one is perfect example: She's wearing casual clothes, yet the whole leg is exposed. None of the guys have that sex-appeal. Regardless, none of the Three Houses characters give the fan service vibe other than female Byleth, so I'm a chill.

[PrincessAlyson]

18 hours ago, ZeManaphy said:

Interesting. I like how she makes the boys feel a lot more natural- much less fan service-ey than I felt from Kozaki. Can't say I feel the same about the girls though. The orange one is perfect example: She's wearing casual clothes, yet the whole leg is exposed. None of the guys have that sex-appeal. Regardless, none of the Three Houses characters give the fan service vibe other than female Byleth, so I'm a chill.

Yes, overall I am pleased with the lack of blatant fanservice characters besides F!Avatar (hate her outfit, but at least she's wearing pants). As long as we don't get any more Camillas, Charlottes or Nyxs, I will be a happy girl. As for the art style itself, I do like the way the boys are drawn. Girls are hit and miss for me so far, but I actually like the eyes. Some people say they look doll-like or lifeless, and I do see that, but they're so vibrantly colored.

Edited February 28, 2019 by PrincessAlyson

[Ayra]

My initial reaction was that I really didn't like the art style (and by extension the artist's work), but thinking further on it, I'm actually fine with the portraits after all. In the first trailer there's some portraits I didn't like (Hilda's eyes in particular), but in the newest one there's no portrait I've seen that I genuinely dislike and there's a few I like quite a bit. So as far as the artist work itself is concerned, I'm actually pretty satisfied now.

My real issue lies with this:

Spoiler

And the issue lies in the color palette and the uniforms, which is probably outside the realm of the artist herself. These characters are very visually indistinct from each other.

Take Radiant Dawn for example since it's the closest game visually. At a glance, you immediately knew if that unit was Oscar or Titania. Each character had their own color and class type to identify them. Here, look at Lindhart and Surly man. Yes, there are some differences if you look closely: Lindhart has a more "dress-like" clothes, has no gloves and has blue shoes... But at a glance? They look extremely similar with all that black, which is an issue for strategy games where you spend most of your time "zoomed out" looking at the battlefield in general, not at small details on their clothes. 

The 3ds games have little face portraits on their characters themselves so you can identify them easily at a glance. Older games don't have that, but you can still at least immediately see that this character is a mage, this one is a healer, etc. 

Here, looking at the characters you have no idea what they are. One is a healer, one is an offensive mage, but both have the exact same pose. Bernadette's bow is barely visible.

Yes, you can identify characters and weapon types easily through the "floating" information panels, but that's more of a band-aid on the art style selected here. It's not expressive or obvious in the least, so additional interface elements had to be added to compensate.

So I'm revising my opinion: the artist is just fine, but the uniforms and flat black color palette are the actual reason why I'm not so keen on this game visual style.

[tapwater]

4 hours ago, Ayra said:

But at a glance? They look extremely similar with all that black, which is an issue for strategy games where you spend most of your time "zoomed out" looking at the battlefield in general, not at small details on their clothes. 

This is a really good point! Makes me wonder if that's the reason why we have so many vibrant hair colours. There seems to be less natural-coloured hair in this game, but I could be wrong.

[Jingle Jangle]

4 hours ago, Ayra said:

My initial reaction was that I really didn't like the art style (and by extension the artist's work), but thinking further on it, I'm actually fine with the portraits after all. In the first trailer there's some portraits I didn't like (Hilda's eyes in particular), but in the newest one there's no portrait I've seen that I genuinely dislike and there's a few I like quite a bit. So as far as the artist work itself is concerned, I'm actually pretty satisfied now.

My real issue lies with this:

  Hide contents

And the issue lies in the color palette and the uniforms, which is probably outside the realm of the artist herself. These characters are very visually indistinct from each other.

Take Radiant Dawn for example since it's the closest game visually. At a glance, you immediately knew if that unit was Oscar or Titania. Each character had their own color and class type to identify them. Here, look at Lindhart and Surly man. Yes, there are some differences if you look closely: Lindhart has a more "dress-like" clothes, has no gloves and has blue shoes... But at a glance? They look extremely similar with all that black, which is an issue for strategy games where you spend most of your time "zoomed out" looking at the battlefield in general, not at small details on their clothes. 

The 3ds games have little face portraits on their characters themselves so you can identify them easily at a glance. Older games don't have that, but you can still at least immediately see that this character is a mage, this one is a healer, etc. 

Here, looking at the characters you have no idea what they are. One is a healer, one is an offensive mage, but both have the exact same pose. Bernadette's bow is barely visible.

Yes, you can identify characters and weapon types easily through the "floating" information panels, but that's more of a band-aid on the art style selected here. It's not expressive or obvious in the least, so additional interface elements had to be added to compensate.

So I'm revising my opinion: the artist is just fine, but the uniforms and flat black color palette are the actual reason why I'm not so keen on this game visual style.

That reminds me of the Tellius games and dark clothes. Units like Soren, Harr, and Naesala sometimes give off the appearance that they completed their turn, where they didn't. So far, most of the 3 houses units blur together color wise.

[Bloom]

Oh wow! No wonder I liked this artist... 

Samurai Flamenco and Togainu no Chi.

She has a VERY recognizable style.

[spinarak]

As far as the character designs go for this game, I think they're pretty hit or miss. Chinatsu's artstyle is not really my cup of tea, but it's not awful either. A lot of the designs feel just a bit off to me though. The biggest example is F!Byleth whose proportions don't seem right and whose outfit is just plain ugly. In the end, I'm a bit disappointed, but that's mostly because I got used to Hidari's absolutely gorgeous art style and character designs. 

I also agree with Ayra above, the school setting and resulting uniforms makes for bad, same-y character design and combined with the slight case of sameface syndrome from the artist, it makes everyone blend together and feel indistinct and boring as a consequence.

[Dinar87]

My issue is the generic and boring character palettes they've shown us so far...there's literally no (good) reason for why the characters shouldn't look different from each other palette wise, a series staple up until now.

[HappyHawlucha.]

28 minutes ago, Dinar87 said:

My issue is the generic and boring character palettes they've shown us so far...there's literally no (good) reason for why the characters shouldn't look different from each other palette wise, a series staple up until now.

It makes sense that they all share a similar palette as they are in school uniform - reminder that they will all have their own colour palette upon promotion to a new class and units recruited outside of the academy will likely start with a unique colour palette.

We've only seen units from the academy and some NPCs, and those NPCs stand out palette wise already, so I doubt it's any fault of the artist.

Edited May 19, 2019 by HappyHawlucha.

[NeonZ]

34 minutes ago, HappyHawlucha. said:

It makes sense that they all share a similar palette as they are in school uniform - reminder that they will all have their own colour palette upon promotion to a new class and units recruited outside of the academy will likely start with a unique colour palette.

We've only seen units from the academy and some NPCs, and those NPCs stand out palette wise already, so I doubt it's any fault of the artist.

We don't actually know they'll have different class colors though. It seems like the class colors might just be tied to the kingdom, which still would leave them mostly uniform.

 

On 27/02/2019 at 6:09 PM, Leocanta said:

This is a really good point! Makes me wonder if that's the reason why we have so many vibrant hair colours. There seems to be less natural-coloured hair in this game, but I could be wrong.

Fire Emblem always had vibrant hair colors. Kozaki specifically didn't like it though, which is why specially Awakening really pared down on them and Fates although having some extra variety still was pretty limited.

[LSM]

5 hours ago, NeonZ said:

We don't actually know they'll have different class colors though. It seems like the class colors might just be tied to the kingdom, which still would leave them mostly uniform.

Lorenz as a Cavalier has some purple about him, Raphael's Brawler is golden hued, and Hilda's Brigand is noticeably pink (compared to the red we saw with Edelgard). So fingers crossed.