Rising Star Blog

Welcome to the second part of our Little King's Story developer feature:

Hideo Minaba

1. Please tell us how you became a member of the Little King's Story team and what you have contributed to the game so far.

One day I was called on by Yoshiro Kimura, and he talked with me about doing the art for this new game, and I gradually came around to drawing it. It's like I fell straight into his trap.

2. Please tell us about the character design process. When designing a character, what do you start with and where do you go from there? How do you evolve a basic design to its final form?

I kept in mind the display size and other characteristics of this game and came up with a design that could be easily viewable on the screen. Kimura, Kurashima, and I had a meeting and came up with a design that incorporated ideas from all three of us. I feel that each character has a single idea that comes to the forefront.

3. What is the most important part of designing LKS's characters? Is there a shared style you have to stick to for all of them?

The most difficult thing was getting the right visibility. The game uses a perspective system that can make it easy to confuse things, so distributing everything so that they won't disrupt the colors and shapes is very difficult. Also, I wanted the characteristics of each character to be distinguishable with the overhead camera angle, so I have to be careful of the size and design of things like hats.

4. How does the experience of working on LKS compare to your time on Final Fantasy XII?

It's so unique that there's really no where to compare them. Also, this is the first time I've designed for the Wii, so there were some things I could do here that I couldn't do on FFXII, and vice versa. When the media and environment of the work changes, your methods also have to change, but by striving to make use of my experiences, I strongly feel I was able to realize those changes.

5. Were you inspired by any other games/anime/manga when creating LKS's characters?

I'm not aware of it from currently popular images. Rather, I think images that have become formulas in their own right, for example the image of someone slipping on a banana peel, probably influence me more.
I think games, anime, and manga each have their own marvelous culture, but I felt the danger that if I were to simply copy those things, Little King's Story would just become another byproduct of them. It's something that I am always careful of when making original games, as opposed to sequels

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