Yoji Shinkawa, a Japanese artist who is famed for his mechanical, character, and environment designs in Zone of the Enders and Metal Gear, has been showcased by Konami by streaming to their Reddit page a handful of ultra-high definition images of his great work. This has wowed a lot of Redditors and comments are filled with praises.
After each post, fans would reply with something like, 'can you post a UHD version of this?' then posting a low resolution clip of their favorite Shinkawa art taken from the internet. Other replies tend to guess what style Shinkawa is doing from zen watercolor art to anime styles, among sorts of proactive replies from Redditors.
A bit of background
Born in Hiroshima, Shinkawa began his journey with Konami back in 1994, he was a fresh graduate from Kyoto Seika University. His first job was not an artist but as a debugger for Policenauts, a game released for the PC+-98. After sometime, he stepped up as art director for the later console versions of the game. Then after that, he became the lead mech and character designer for the Metal Gear Solid series. He also worked as art director for all Kojima-directed MGS games. Both Shinkawa and Hideo Kojima left Konami to form Kojima Productions where Shinkawa is now the lead artist.
Style
Shinkawa's visual style is praised, by most if not all, as artistic and authentic, yet when checked with technicalities, it is very accurate. According to Shinkawa himself, anime artists like Yoshitaka Amano and Yosikazu Yasuhiko inspire him a lot. On top of anime artists, he also favors less contemporary western-related artists like Aubrey Beardsley, Frank Miller, and Willy Pogany. He is also a huge fan of French artists like Mœbius.
Shinkawa uses ink pens that has felt for its tip and are brush-like. He prefers Pentel Brush Pen and incorporates his hand drawings with Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop for his creations. Heavy metal music also influences him, favoring bands such as Killswitch Engage, Rage, Megadeth, and Yngwie Malmsteen. Here's one of Shinkaway's work in the form of Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops for the PSP.
