I recently posted a little review type thing on another Street Fighter art book, Street Fighter: The Complete History, and it featured a very broad range of Capcom’s internal artists. This, on the other hand, is mostly the work of one man. Ikeno.
It was those gorgeous character select screen portraits by Ikeno that made me look more carefully at the art of Street Fighter IV. Those subtle, overlapping brush-strokes, the vibrant and diverse colours which interweave to give the images warmth and life. The masterful way that faces and leading hands are super-detailed, but everything that is not a natural focal point recede into concept art-like quality. Compared to the dodgy character select screen portraits in the original Street Fighter II – it’s not only indicative of the power increase in consoles nowadays, but also the care and attention to detail that is required in AAA videogame titles. An interesting bit of trivia: the aforementioned portraits were created with the in-game 3D models. Sadly, these models lacked the requisite amount of detail, so Ikeno painted over them. You may think this is cheating, but the 3D models are based on Ikeno’s original sketches and designs, and very closely resemble them, so it comes full circle.
The sumi-e style is everywhere in this book. Each character is given a full page, full body shot, with ink blotting everywhere, giving all kinds of impressions of movement. It’s the Street Fighter IV trademark look, and a smart move on the developers part – give the art a distinctive look, and link it to a distinctive part of the combat. Focus Attacks giving off streams of black ink. The other pages that are given to each character go through things like initial sketches, alternate costumes (both realised and rejected), and in the case of the new characters, development ideas. It’s interesting to note that Crimson Viper was pretty much decided from initial sketch, while Rufus went through many iterations before becoming final – and some of his most interesting characteristics were leftovers from an abandoned idea.
There are two very interesting interviews, one with Yoshinori Ono, and another with Ikeno. Ono’s is typically full of humour and I share in his lamentation that Rainbow Mika never made it to Street Fighter IV. I felt that Ikeno was very humble in his interview, as he explained that he was only initially put on the project to check that the details of the combatants were correct, but in the end he designed the look and feel of all the characters, and also the look of the new fighters. The book shows every character’s ending cinematic, and it also has a relationship chart, which actually does a great job of explaining the various characters motivations, and how they know each other. I was saddened to see that Guy and Cody are “former” friends. There are numerous storyboards, detailing the fighters opening cinematic videos, the rival battles, several characters’ Ultra combo moves, and my favourites: the storyboards for the attract sequence movies for both Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter IV.
The only bad point this book has is that it’s galling how some characters that I would have liked to have seen more of, such as T.Hawk and Adon, are only allocated two pages of art. I would have preferred all characters to have had an equal amount of pages lavished upon them. But to be honest, that this is the only complaint is a testament to how much I enjoyed this book – and will not doubt continue to enjoy and be inspired by it for a very long time.
It’s very easy to understate the impact Street Fighter IV had. It rejuvenated not only the fighting game genre, but the competitive scene as well, and also consolidated the Street Fighter franchise as the undisputed champion when it comes to one-on-one brawling. And on a personal note, it was one of the things that inspired me to pick up a pencil again. With a new version featuring some old favourites coming soon it looks to continue its domination for a long time to come.
