Daigo Ikeno on the challenges of Street Fighter 4 art and character design

Artwork and character design for a long-running fighting game franchise tend to evolve over time, as seen in the transition between Capcom‘s Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter Alpha, and Street Fighter 3 series. With Street Fighter 4, Capcom art director Daigo Ikeno is facing a bit of a challenge as he attempts to meld the old with the new.

Find out what that challenge is after the jump!

If you’ve played Capcom‘s Street Fighter 3: Third Strike and Devil May Cry 3, then you’ve probably heard of Daigo Ikeno. As an artist for Capcom, Mr. Ikeno is now handling the art and character design for the upcoming brawler,Street Fighter 4, and he had a little something to share about his work experience with Capcom in a recent interview.

According to Mr. Ikeno, supervising the art and character design for Capcom’s Street Fighter 4 is a challenge due to the preservation element. In other words, while he has been tasked with making the Street Fighter 4 characters look good for the new game, he’s still doing his best to keep all the characters’ distinguishing traits intact while avoiding injecting his own preferences into the mix.

Mr. Ikeno also revealed an interesting bit of trivia about himself during the interview:

Compared to male characters, I have a really hard time trying to draw women. That’s probably because my mind wanders and I’d rather be looking at — or better yet, touching — real women rather than drawing them. [Laughs.] Men are easier to draw as the urge to get touchy-feely doesn’t really come up…

Capcom’s Street Fighter 4 wasn’t the only thing that Mr. Ikeno talked about, however. If you’d like to know more, simply follow the source link back to the full interview.