Book Review: シャイニング・フォース イクサ ビジュアル設定資料集 (Shining Force EXA Design Works)

Shining Force EXA (シャイニング・フォース イクサ, Shainingu Fōsu Ikusa) is an action role-playing game for the PlayStation 2. It tells the story of a world divided by a war between humans and demons.

シャイニング・フォース イクサ ビジュアル設定資料集 or Shining Force EXA Design Works is the Japanese concept art book for the game. There are only three chapters, namely Characters, World and Game.

The character profile art are in typical Japanese/Korean style. Plenty of stylish painted illustrations and sketches for each character are included. There are also the different character poses used in the game. The captions talk about the design and concepts. The characters include Toma, Cyril, Gadfort, Mabel, Duga, Adam, Amitalilly, Firklin, Garyu, Avalon, Gantetsu, Borne, Gilna, Hikane, Ragnadarm III, Catina, Phillip, Liemcyan La Verse and Luluneyzi.

Although the environment illustrations are very beautiful, they are printed too small. They are lavishly painted and certainly deserve a bigger canvas. Lots of intricate details are drawn in, especially the line art, but are hard to see in the tiny panels.

The final chapter talks about the game itself, the production and gameplay. There are interviews with the producer Yoichi Shimosato, game director Shinya Togo and scenario designer Takashi Hino. In this section are also the publicity art, some storyboard sequences for the cut scenes and a few more pieces of character art.

This is a fantastic book for character designers and game artists.

This book is available at:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon Japan | YesAsia US | Play-asia.com

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This book is available at:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon Japan | YesAsia US | Play-asia.com

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