[MM#02] From Advertising Design to the World of Game Design (Patreon)

I joined Capcom at the age of 19. Until then, I had been attending a vocational school for graphic design while working part-time designing commercial advertisements. Back then, computers had just started being introduced for creating layout work, but the company I worked for was still doing everything by hand.

I had always wanted to work in a field that involved drawing, and was interested in animation and related fields. However, the job I landed was at a design firm that mainly produced magazine ads. It was my first experience in the industry, but creating ads for well-known fashion magazines that I saw every day felt glamorous and stylish. The coworkers, clients, designers, photographers, and illustrators all wore fashionable clothes and seemed to work with great elegance.

As for me, I had spent all of my school years playing sports. Baseball in elementary school, basketball in junior high, and in high school, I played handball and even competed in the Inter-High School Championships (Japan’s national tournament).

Naturally, I felt completely out of place in the ad industry. It was a dazzling world I had never encountered before. I’d sit off to the side, listening awkwardly as people chatted using industry jargon. Not only their fashion sense, but also their way of speaking and thinking, felt like a different world altogether. And yet, I found something oddly compelling about the job. Watching how ordinary products were “wrapped” in design and turned into something more appealing moved me. It made me realize how many people are involved in bringing even the simplest item to the world.

When I joined Capcom as a graphic designer, one of the first things I learned was how to use a computer. This was before graphical user interfaces existed, so we had to use command inputs to copy and move data.

After that, I began practicing how to draw using the computer. Using a graphic tool developed in-house, I placed colors pixel by pixel inside 16x16 square grids. Rather than drawing, it felt more like assembling a puzzle made of light.

It was a far cry from my previous work, where I used karuko pens to draw dragonfly crop marks for print layouts. I was confused at first, but when the apples and bananas I created started to appear on the pitch-black monitor like tiny item icons from a video game, I found it incredibly fun.

As I got more comfortable with the graphic tool, I was finally assigned to a game project that was in progress. The first game I worked on was the arcade game Trojan. My first task was creating a red enemy character named “Slash” who throws knives in the opening demo scene.

I had to draw him based on descriptions of his costume and movements, but unlike drawing fruit, illustrating a human in pixel art was tough. On top of that, he needed to be animated, so I remember struggling quite a bit. Still, seeing the character I had made get programmed into the game, crouching, swinging his arms, and attacking with vivid motion—it was incredibly moving.

I kept working on enemy characters, but alongside that, I was also asked to create the title logo. Because I had done lettering and simple illustrations at my previous design job, they entrusted me with it. I hand-lettered the logo in brush script on paper, then converted it into pixel art. I also drew the poster illustration for the previously released shooting game Section Z.

Actually, there’s an embarrassing story behind that. While I was still training in pixel art, the new hires in our department were gathered by a supervisor and asked, “Can anyone draw an illustration for Section Z?”

There were five of us, and no one raised their hand. Everyone stayed quiet. The silence was unbearable, so I raised my hand without thinking. That’s how I got the job—even though I had never drawn a large full-color illustration before, and had never even used poster paint. The moment I volunteered, I instantly regretted it, but it was already too late.

While the others were practicing pixel art, I was alone in another room drawing a huge A0-sized (841x594mm) illustration. I got through the sketch, but I stumbled when it came time to paint. Honestly, I didn’t even know whether to start with the background or the characters.

But there wasn’t time to overthink it, so I just did my best in my own way. Sometimes I do things like this—reacting impulsively out of instinct or guilt when everyone else stays quiet. It’s probably a habit leftover from my sports days, where obeying your seniors was second nature. I wasn’t thrilled about it.

At one point, my colleague S (from the same batch of new hires) stopped by the room while I was drawing. This skinny guy with glasses always had his arms crossed, wore a smirk, and rubbed his glasses up with the back of his finger. Sometimes he’d sneak up behind me without warning and startle me, but I couldn’t bring myself to dislike him.

“What do we have here? That’s unusual,” he said.

I had been working alone the whole time, so honestly, I was a little happy to have someone drop by.

“You drawing this?”

He asked the obvious while smirking and pushing his glasses up.

“Yeah. Still gonna take a while, though.”

He didn’t respond at all to my answer.

Still arms crossed, S silently stared at the illustration. After a while, when he still hadn’t said anything, I figured I might as well keep drawing. Then, as usual, he gave a little downward glance and chuckled:

“Heh… You suck.”

“Huh? Wha…?”

“Heh heh. You suck.”

“Whaaat!?”

Sure, I wasn’t great at it, so he wasn’t wrong—but there’s a way to say things! He was the kind of guy who could say stuff like that without batting an eye.

“You’re using acrylic, right? You should apply it thicker. If you paint like it’s watercolor, it’ll end up patchy.”

“Huh, really? You’ve used acrylic before?”

“Yeah, a little.”

“Wait—then why didn’t you raise your hand?!”

“Heh heh.”

“Don’t ‘heh heh’ me. Switch with me!”

“Well then… good luck.”

“Hey! Come on!”

He was impossible to deal with. I’m sure he came by to check on me because he was concerned, but still—a little tact wouldn’t have hurt.

In the end, I managed to finish the piece, but as S predicted, the result was pretty poor. Later, he drew the packaging art for the game he was assigned to. I thought about getting back at him somehow, but it turned out pretty good, so I let it go.

I gradually improved at pixel art and was able to design several enemy characters for Trojan. It made me so happy to see my creations flying and fighting all across the screen—it made me fall even deeper in love with making pixel art.