Case Study On Concept ArtThe company I chose to look at for this task was Atlus. Atlus are a Japanese video game development company that specialise in anime styled video games. The games they make are very unique and feature strange gameplay mechanics, along with fantastic artwork and soundtracks and, of course, the gripping and extremely satisfying story lines. Their artist/concept artist is “Shigenori Soejima”, and he is responsible for the art and concept art of the persona series, the Catherine game and Shin Megami Tensei series. Which have all become well known for their story, gameplay, soundtrack and art style.

The role of “Shigenori Soejima” or any concept artist for that matter is to create detailed drawings (or rough ideas) of what a character or location should look like. Sometimes it takes one or two different designs before settling with a final design. Or, it could take them as many as ten designs before they settle on a final design. A concept artist like “Shigenori Soejima” is to work from a given brief and create characters that are as close too, if not exactly, the same as the brief instructed. So, for example if a concept artist was handed a brief that said the development team wanted the character of “Dave” to look like a tough guy. The concept artist would have to think about what makes someone a tough guy? The clothes they wear? The way they stand and move around? The way they look, so like scars and a cigarette? When it comes to creating landscapes the artist must take into consideration the type of game he’s going to be creating this for as well as the characters. For example, if the development team wanted a place where all the characters meet up on a regular basis then he must think about what the characters look like and what their personalities are like. By this I mean that if a character was supposed to have a social anxiety disorder then they wouldn’t hang out in a heavily populated area like a town centre.

This is a picture of “Shigenori Soejima” himself:

This picture was taken while he was at work in P studios making some persona 4 concept art (as can be seen in the background).

Below are some examples of “Shigenori Soejima’s” work:

This one of the last pieces of concept art created for the persona 3 game as it includes the female protagonist exclusive to the persona 3 portable game. This drawing has the whole persona 3 cast besides the Persona 3 FES character from “The Answer” Metis and the people from strega.

This piece was design as something fun for “Shigenori Soejima” to make. It shows the Persona 4 Golden character Maire modelling on a modified FD3S RX-7.

This piece was designed as an idea image for one of the games cut-scenes where Aigis the robot fights Ryoji.

“Shigenori Soejima” uses the anime art style is every piece of work he does. He does this mostly because of his work brief and because he’s Japanese and since this kind of art style is Japanese it is fitting for him to use such a style. One other reason behind this would be how popular the anime art style is, if you can make good anime characters your work will be well respected in Japanese culture. “Shigenori Soejima” typically draws high school students (typical of the anime art style) although, in comparison to most other artists of this particular style he makes his characters easily recognisable when compared to other artists work. When trying to identify typical use of colour for “Shigenori Soejima” it’s hard to pin point anything in particular like a most used colour or any type of pattern. “Shigenori Soejima” uses a variety of different colours for every piece of work he

produces, for example: In the game persona 3 (including 3FES and 3 portable) the colour theme could be associated with the colour blue; since it fits well with the theme of the game and works well on every character he put this on (picture above and first picture are a good example of the blue colour scheme). But, in persona 4 (including 4Goledn) the theme is yellow, example below:

This piece was designed to show case the Persona 4 characters. Despite one missing (Teddie) who was added later on in the production.

And, in all of the Shin Megami Tensei series the associated colour is black, along with many other dark colours. With this series there is only one thing that can be said about the use of colour, its dark. An example is shown below:

These pieces are concepts of some of the bosses within the game. And, as you can see the colour scheme is very dark like I mentioned above.