Yoji Shinkawa

Yoji Shinkawa (Japanese: 新川洋司, Hepburn: Shinkawa Yōji, born December 25, 1971) is a Japanese artist. He is best known as the lead character and mecha designer for the Metal Gear franchise.

Shinkawa was born in Hiroshima on 25 December, 1971. He began working for game developer Konami in 1994 after graduating from Kyoto Seika University. He first worked as a debugger for the PC-98 version of Policenauts. He moved on to serve as art director for the later console ports of the game, then as the lead character and mecha designer for the Metal Gear series. He served as the art director for all the Kojima-directed Metal Gear Solid games, while also providing character designs for Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. He is the lead artist and character designer for Kojima Productions.

Shinkawa was inspired by anime and manga artists like Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and Yoshitaka Amano as well as Western artists such as Frank Miller, Aubrey Beardsley and Willy Pogany. He also draws inspiration from French artists such as Mœbius. Shinkawa uses felt-tip pens, especially the Pentel Brush Pen, as well as Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. He is a fan of heavy metal and artists such as Megadeth, Rage, Killswitch Engage and Yngwie Malmsteen.

Video games

• Policenauts (1994)
• Metal Gear Solid (1998)
• Metal Gear: Ghost Babel (2000) (promotional illustrations)
• Zone of the Enders (2001)
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001)
• Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner (2003)
• Fu-un Shinsengumi (2004)
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004)
• Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (2004) (revised character portraits for re-releases)
• Fu-un Bakumatsu-den (2005)
• Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (2006)
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008)
• Metal Gear Solid: Rising (2009, unreleased) (character & mech design)
• Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2010)
• Busō Shinki Battle Masters Mk. II (2010) (character/mechanical designs for Justice and Mimic)
• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (2013) (character/concept artist)
• Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (2014)(character & mech design/art director)
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015) (character & mech design/art director)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops III - Zombies Chronicles (2017) (artist)
• Left Alive (2019) (character designer)
• Death Stranding (2019) (art director)

Other works

Novels

• Urban Hercules (illustrations)

Films

• Godzilla: Final Wars (monster and mecha designs)
• Pacific Rim (Poster design, Japanese release)

Toys

• Frame Arms/Frame Arms Girl (mecha/character design for Byakko)