Masahiro Sakurai is back with another game development video and today's lesson is all about Manga-like visuals.
The legendary game designer discusses the expressive and unrealistic techniques employed by manga and anime artists to achieve the most expressive result, specifically, how a character's mouth appears in profile and from the front.
Sakurai brings up a handful of examples of where you can see this side-mouth technique in action from Mega Man Legends to Sonic Forces, but, as tends to happen, all roads lead to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
According to Sakurai, he used the unrealistic manga/anime approach to mouths when making changes to Kirby and Jigglypuff's Ultimate character models. In the above video, he showcases what the fighters' mouths initially looked like alongside his requested changes to create "a more expressive visual".
While he concedes that striving for manga-like visuals can sometimes make more work, he still recommends that more devs should give them a try: "We may be better off welcoming the fun kinds of expression these methods can bring about".
Sakurai recently announced that he has finished recording the final video for his Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games YouTube channel. While it looks like it'll be a while before this video sees the light of day, we sure are going to miss getting these little nuggets of information.