Akihiko Yoshida

Creator Profile (Pixiv)

Introduction:
Akihiko Yoshida is a Japanese designer, illustrator and game creator, who worked at Square Enix and does CG and character design for video games. In the game industry he is well-known for his work on the Final Fantasy series and for his frequent collaboration with game designer Yasumi Matsuno, while in the anime industry he has had some involvement in doing character designs for certain shows.

He started working for Square Co. in 1995, before the company eventually merged with Enix and became Square Enix. He then left company Square Enix in September of 2013, and became a freelance creator. On October of 2014, he became the company director of CyDesignation, which is a subsidiary of Cygames.

Biography:
In 1995, Akihiko joined then named Square Co, and with each project he took on, he experimented with different styles of graphic design. He has compared his use of color to that of character designer Tetsuya Nomura, who has worked on the game series Kingdom Hearts. In addition he is alike in the way that they similarily try to keep the color consistent between the characters and game world.

For the game Tactics Ogre, the pencil etchings and CG coloration were used together for the first time. Akihiko considers the tone and style of the game to be the "ideal" art style and is thus within his comfort zone. The original tarot card illustrattions for the game were done with dot graphics, and reflected a limited color index. When remade for the PlayStation Portable (PSP), some staff wanted to use the original illustrations, but Akihiko requested to redraw the illustrattions in more detail and color than was possible or required previously.

When designing the character of Vaan for Final Fantasy XII, initially the character had the characteristics of a "rugged" and "tough" persona, but after considering the demographics of the games audience, the character was made younger and thinner. Once the actors motion captured and voice actor Kohei Takeda did his part, the character became slightly less effeminate than was originally designed. Akihiko set out to create a cast of characters who looked unlike any previous Final Fantasy cast. he also stated that the character reflected what Japanese audiences wanted, but that they did try to design characters everyone likes.

(Source: Wikipedia (Akihiko Yoshida), edited)