Born on December 25th, 1971 in Hiroshima, Japan, Yoji Shinkawa is an illustrator and concept artist best known for his character, environment and mechanical designs for the Metal Gear series (Though he has also done the japanese promotional art for Pacific Rim). So far he has worked on nearly all of it's installments (At least on all of the main ones) and has published a few art books.
Shinkawa's distinctive art style has earned praise as bring "original, stylistic, yet technically accurate". Presently he is the lead artist for many of Kojima Productions' titles. He normally uses ink pens with a brush felt-tip, and both Photoshop and Corel Painter for most of his creations, which is quite evident when one has a proper look at his works.
While ink tends to be popular choice of medium favored by most artists (Including myself), Shinkawa was able to create a fantastically realistic yet original style when using it, taking advantage of abrupt, negative spaces while also still giving some amazing amount of detailed (And once again, surprisingly accurate) brush strokes to his illustrations. It is not to say though that his style has not been influenced by other works, aside from being inspired by anime-related artists such as Yoshitaka Amano, he is more so influenced by western artists such as Frank Miller and Aubrey Beardsley, and especially the late French artist, Jean Giraud (AKA, Moebius).
When Shinkawa had first started working for Konami, he was still trying to find his own art style at the time, imitating various works (Including works done by the artists mentioned before), comic book styles served as one of his main inspiration for the coming years, such as WildCATS and Hellboy, animes have also served as another influence for him.
Before I actually got into the games, I always found the artwork for the series to be really unique, as a child I had tried numerous times to imitate it, and up till now, Shinkawa's works remains a valuable inspiration and influence to my art, as I continue exploring and trying to find an art style I am comfortable with using for my concept designs.
His style is just such a unique blend of hollywood-esque promotional art and other japanese artworks (Manga, retro game art, etc.).
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