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.
Yoshitaka Amano ripoff in three places. Same poses, same context. Still, there are only so many poses, he should try to make them less blatant thou.
Still, i think this style is awesome. Just a bit “old” doesn’t make it bad.
And work on the faces….gd…
He doesn’t have much variety in his art. Very similar body types and faces. Not the mark of a good character designer. Yes, he has good presentation, and good line weight in his sketches, and a good sense of color, but what prevents him from looking like a true pro is variety and flexibility in his artwork. Anyone can learn to draw the same face type and body type over and over. Whether or not they excite is another issue entirely. But looking at it as an artist, he’s lacking if this is the strongest in his portfolio.
Wow, and you just described every manga artist who’s ever lived. Way to point out the obvious downfall of the comic book genre you homo.
There are good artists that can create different body types. What *21:27 said is true. The artworks are certainly beautiful, but lacks different body size/shape and the faces are just copy and paste.
In Japan, Shunya Yamashita will have no problem getting a job doing illustrations, but in America, he will not be hired due to lack of variety.
i especially love the last three the first and fourth picture great artwork and i can’t put any on my wallpaper *sobs*
<3 great artist… something for me to work towards ^0^
The shape of his women are really amazing…
But yes, they do have the same faces.