Street Fighter IV: Official Complete Works
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.