
A very successful example of an artist applying his talents to the creation of a successful art and merchandising empire, 山下しゅんや / Shunya Yamashita is now very well known both for a series of artbooks, and lately a rapidly growing line of figures.
A brief word on his background will probably help put his works in context – he previously worked with Square Enix designing parts of Final Fantasy X, as well as several other RPGs, such as Valkyrie Profile and Phantom Kingdom. In this respect he is reminiscent of Tony. He also has had some involvement with ero-manga magazines and eroge CGs.
Lately however, he has come to be most known for his artbooks, and the figures whose character designs he contributed, going under the label “The Art of Shunya Yamashita”.
His two recent artbooks, Wild Flower and Sweet Dreams, are quite representative of his works as a whole, so looking at a selection of images from these should give you an idea of what his works are like.
If you would like to see a much broader selection of his works, both from Wild Flower, Sweet Dreams, and other sources, you might want to examine Shunya Yamashita’s works collected on the Channel. Feel free to contribute any you find missing.

You may be more familiar with this lady, Nida Schuetlich, from her 3D incarnation:

















Few could find serious fault with his artwork; it is colourful, bold and original, if rather flat and perhaps in need of more modern techniques. It also possesses fairly pronounced erotic charms.
In spite of this, I’m not sure I’d rate his works over the likes of Range Murata and Okama, who occupy a similar position; comparing his works outside the genre to highly prominent CG illustrators such as Tony or Ino also leaves him the worse, though this hardly detracts from his excellent overall portfolio.
fucking awesome artwork! and that figurine is amazingly detailed O___O
yeah i love my needa
I’ve been searching for Sweet Dreams for quite a while now. Anyone knows where I could buy a copy of it?
Amazon (jp or com) don’t seem to have it in stock, so it must be severely out of print. Perhaps eBay or Yahoo Auction?
I would echo the sentiment about the flatness of his creation; it seems rare to me that he displays much figure ground interaction.
However, I do compliment the line quality and coloring which give his drawings a very beautiful hand-drawn quality. Not quite evident here, but it seems like he has a master of subtly and range in expression as well.
Yamashita-san pure talent
I appreciate the style but the facial features are pretty much the same which leads me to wonder if they’re not all just the same girl with different hair styles.
I think he has the same problem as Tony or Masamune Shirow in that respect.
wow, my comment got deleted? did i said anything wrong?
Apologies, I didn’t see it – I will see if it got caught by an over-enthusiatic spam filter…
Shunya Yamashita’s artworks are awesome
The shape of his women are really amazing…
But yes, they do have the same faces.
<3 great artist… something for me to work towards ^0^
i especially love the last three the first and fourth picture great artwork and i can’t put any on my wallpaper *sobs*