Yoji Shinkawa

Yoji Shinkawa (新川洋司?)
Shinkawa in 2008
Born	(1971-12-25) December 25, 1971 (age 45) Hiroshima, Japan
Occupation	Illustrator

Yoji Shinkawa (Japanese: 新川洋司, Hepburn: Shinkawa Yōji^?, born December 25, 1971) is a Japanese artist. He is most famous for his character, environment and mechanical designs for the Metal Gear and Zone of the Enders series.

Born in Hiroshima, Shinkawa began working for game developer Konami in 1994 after graduating from Kyoto Seika University. He first worked as a debugger for the PC-98 version of Policenauts. He moved on to serve as art director for the later console ports of the game, then as the lead character and mecha designer for the Metal Gear Solid series. He served as the art director for all the Kojima-directed Metal Gear Solid games, while also providing character designs for Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. He is now the lead artist and character, mechanical and environment designer on Kojima Productions.

Shinkawa's illustration style is generally praised as original and artistic, yet technically accurate. According to himself 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 and is also a big fan of French artists such as Mœbius. Shinkawa uses ink pens with a brush-like felt-tip preferring the Pentel Brush Pen and both Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter for his creations. He is a fan of heavy metal and artists such as Megadeth, Rage, Killswitch Engage and Yngwie Malmsteen.