Yoji Shinkawa (新川洋司 Shinkawa Yōji?, born December 25, 1971) is a Japanese artist who was the primary character and mechanical designer of the Metal Gear series. He held this position from 1998-2015. Shinkawa also worked as a mecha designer for the Zone of the Enders games, and produced artwork for Call of Duty: Black Ops 3's Zombie Chronicles.
Born in Hiroshima, Shinkawa began working for Konami in 1994. He first worked as a debugger for the PC-98 version of Policenauts. He then worked as a graphic designer for the console versions of Policenauts. An early artwork of Solid Snake and Meryl Silverburgh from Metal Gear Solid is featured in the Policenauts: Pilot Disk for the 3DO. He was the lead artist on many of Kojima Productions' titles.
Style[]
Shinkawa's illustration is generally praised as original and stylistic, yet technically accurate. According to Shinkawa, he is inspired by anime-related artists like Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and Yoshitaka Amano, but also more Western-related and less contemporary artists such as Frank Miller, Aubrey Beardsley, and Willy Pogany. He is also a big fan of French artists such as Mœbius.
Metal Gear games worked on[]
- Metal Gear Solid
- Metal Gear: Ghost Babel (promotional illustrations)
- Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
- Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (revised character designs)
- Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
- Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
- Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
- Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
- Metal Gear Solid: Rising (character & mech design)
- Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (character/concept artist)
- Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Publications[]
- The Art of Metal Gear Solid
- The Art of Metal Gear Solid 2
- The Art of Metal Gear Solid 1.5
- The Master Artworks of Metal Gear Solid 4
- Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker Official Art Works
- The Art of Yoji Shinkawa Volumes 1-3
- The Art of Metal Gear Solid V
- The Art of Death Stranding