Shining Force Feather: Design Works

by Sega, Noizi Ito (Illustrator)

"Shining Force Feather "is the first Nintendo DS entry in the popular" Shining RPG "series. This official "Design Works" art book includes character profiles, rough designs, storyboards, interviews, and plenty of creator commentary.

168 pages, Paperback

First published June 12, 2012

About the author

Sega Games Co., Ltd., originally short for Service Games and officially styled as SEGA, is a Japanese multinational video game developer and publisher headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, with multiple offices around the world.

Reviews

[Parka]

(More pictures on my blog)

The book was first available in Japanese in 2009 as シャイニング・フォース フェザー ビジュアル設定資料集. This is the English translated edition by Udon. The paper is mostly non-glossy except for the splash pages in front.

This is the video game art book for Shining Force Feather, which is the first Nintendo DS title for the Shining RPG series, and number 18th in the series.

It features mainly character designs. The first half of the book features the coloured character art and the latter half the sketches. The character designs are great looking, in typical Japanese style of course. I like the costumes and art. What's missing are the enemy designs.

There are character profiles and design commentary. The commentary are from character designers Noizi Ito and pako. It's unusual to have two character designers for a game and in the interview they talk about why and the design process.

In between there's a small section of art for the world consisting of airships and environment paintings, and also the cutscenes. The environment paintings are very beautiful but it's a pity they are printed only about a quarter page size each.

The second interview is with SEGA producer Yoichi Shimosato, Flight-Plan (developer) director Tomoyuki Murai, Noizi Ito and pako. They talk about the game design in general and how it fits in the Shining series.

It's a nice companion art book to the game. Recommended to those who like the game and Japanese character art.