| Kinu Nishimura
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An incredibly talented and influential female illustrator, Kinu Nishimura was originally hired by Capcom in 1991. When she was in college at Kyoto University of Art, she touched up some of Akiman's early illustrations for Final Fight and Magic Sword. She mentioned that Akiman was a huge inspiration to
her artwork.
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Kinu became famous and beloved for her work on a wide variety of Capcom IPs, including:
Street Fighter II, Street Fighter III, Saturday Night Slam Masters, Cyberbots, The King of Dragons, the Capcom D&D games, Gaia
Master, Marvel Vs. Capcom, and Cannon Spike.
Before Kinu's art style became easily recognizable, some of her earliest Street Fighter works
include: SF2's fully-colored character portraits (see Vega's below), SF2 Turbo's foreshortened character art, SF3's portraits / posters with the "sketchy" lines, and SF3's epic victory & loss portraits. Kinu was also the main illustrator for the "Capcom side" of Capcom
Vs. SNK & CVS2 character artwork.
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Social Media Links:
Twitter: @nishi_katsu
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After working with Capcom for many years, Kinu moved to freelance art and is still energetically active in various genres such as anime, figures, and games. Kinu Nishimura's dynamic and attractive touch has been highly evaluated not only in the game industry in Japan but the overseas community as
well.
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Kinu's beautifully clean, yet "sketchy" art style is iconic. She often uses a painted style, as seen in the Capcom Vs. SNK series portraits. The
way Kinu draws "youthful" and "beautiful" female faces is one of her art
style's most defining traits. A variety of Capcom gashapon figures and statues were created directly based on Kinu's 2D artworks. Kinu Nishimura is most definitely one of the greatest and most inspirational fighting
game artists in history!
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TFG
News Links: (March
2022): Capcom's Early Mobile Phone Games, Rare Art by Kinu
Nishimura
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| Shiroi
Eiji
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Shiroi Eiji (real name Jin Mera) is a female freelance artist and drawing teacher who began working for SNK in October 1992. She was the main illustrator for the Samurai Shodown series
(SS1 through SS4). Her first official SNK project was creating character
illustrations and several posters for Fatal Fury 2. She also drew character artwork and posters for many other SNK series, including: Art of Fighting 2, Kizuna Tag Battle, KOF series, and
Card Fighters Clash. Eiji Shiroi's iconic art style became synonymous with SNK games in the early years and helped define the art style and image of the developer.
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Social Media Links:
Facebook:
Shiroi Eiji
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Shiroi's vibrant art style resembles "ancient Japanese art" due to the fact that she uses brush outlining and other traditional painting techniques. Shiroi's main drawing tools for her illustrations are Japanese brush, ink,
marker ink, and pigment color. Shiroi generally outlines her work with ink and adds colors with marker ink or pigment color. Other painting colors such as
pastels, marker pens, oil color, acrylic gouache and air brush are also
used to achieve her colorful and charismatic character illustrations.
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FUN
FACT:  Eiji
Shiroi originally got her pen name from being known for playing as Eiji Kisaragi in Art of Fighting 2, as she always
picked Eiji's white alternate color. Therefore, her pen name was not read as
"Shirai" but "Shiroi" (White).
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