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Atelier series artists look back on their work with the franchise and share development stories

The art of Atelier
by rawmeatcowboy
19 May 2020
GN Version 5.0

Famitsu recently had the opportunity to chat with numerous Atelier artists to discuss how the franchise has evolved over the years. The feature includes comments from Hidari, Kishida Mel, NOCO, Toridamono. You can see a summary of all the interesting tidbits below.

- NOCO (Mysterious series) came up with twelve different rough designs for Nelke in Nelke & the Legendary Alchemists
- after hearing that NOCO designed twelve options, Hosoi told him to draw one more
- Hidari (Dusk series) laughed and said he’s glad that this part of the character designer company culture continues on
- all the Atelier series character designers went through a phase where they felt they were unsuited to be the character designer
- Hidari had to ask advice from Kishida Mel when he was present for another project
- Toridamono only got some confidence after taking the first step and drawing some rough designs at the Nagano office
- NOCO was more feeling the pressure to meet expectations, but character design duties were split between him and Yuugen
- Gust’s Atelier series is a rare case where character designers are put at the forefront of game projects
- according to Hosoi, this wasn’t the case before, but rather a change made during the PlayStation 3 era
- this was done in order to give more focus on the creators, including character designers
- this movement started with Atelier Rorona
- NOCO says that he wants Gust to create a dark Atelier game
- Toridamono wants to see a sci-fi game
- Hidari mentioned that the Dusk series was conceived to completely change the impression of the Atelier series
- as part of this, he drew some darker-themed and Japanese-themed concept art
- that concept didn’t end up coming to fruition, leading to the Dusk series we know today
- Hosoi said those ideas ended up getting fleshed out in Nights of Azure and Blue Reflection

[Link]