Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: George Kamitani is awesome.

[quote name="Jerry Whorebach"]George Kamitani is a Japanese artist, games designer, and founder of Vanillaware, a 23-person studio dedicated to producing modern games with 2D graphics. Vanillaware has so far released four games, all four of which have included playable female characters. Let me repeat that, since it's so uncommon in the games industry as to be virtually unheard of: <i>all four of their games have included playable female characters.</i> Vanillaware's forthcoming fifth game, Dragon's Crown, has a very distinct exaggerated swords-and-sorcery art style (courtesy of Kamitani himself) which makes Frank Frazetta look like Norman Rockwell. The playable characters (both female AND male this time) posess the sort of ridiculously hypermasculine/hyperfeminine proportions that could only reasonably be interpreted as a loving tribute to / scathing indictment of the entire genre of Western fantasy art, and by extension the art direction of every Western RPG since the fantasy supplement to Chainmail. Predictably, this deviation from the safe, dark-haired, thirtysomething, Caucasian male norm raised the ire of Kotaku's Jason Schrier, a dark-haired thirtysomething Caucasian male newsblogger who has never created anything of worth in his life. He responded by writing a click-baiting article for Kotaku calling Kamitani's character designs the product of a fourteen-year-old boy. Basically, the entire thing was an excuse to plaster Kamitani's sexiest artwork all over Kotaku's front page, examining it under the guise of outraged feminism with a degree of scrutiny typically reserved by Kotaku for Comic-Con's Hottest Female Cosplayers. In response, Kamitani posted the following to his Facebook: "It seems that Mr. JASON SCHREIER of kotaku is pleased also with neither sorceress nor amazon. The art of the direction he likes was prepared." It was accompanied by this image: <img src="https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/59637_429947370434109_277578159_n.jpg"> Kamitani has since <a href="http://kotaku.com/the-artist-behind-dragons-crown-explains-his-exaggerat-482450927">apologized</a> for bringing shame upon his publishing partners at Atlus, but has yet to apologize for his huge, bouncing balls.[/quote]