Akira “Akiman” Yasuda is a prolific illustrator, who worked at Capcom for over years and responsible for many video game art, including Street Fighter II, Final Fight, Captain Commando and Darkstalkers. He is now a freelancer.
He was also responsible for the creation of Chun-Li, the world’s first playable female character. Chun-Li was first designed to wear pants but according to Akiman, the design was not strong enough when translated into pixel art. Which is why they give here thighs.
But he also did work in Red Dead Revolver. Yes, that game that was now published by Rockstar that spawned Red Dead Redemption and the upcoming sequel, Red Dead Redemption II.
Akiman was still at Capcom at the time, but was given freedom to work on other projects outside of the company such as the anime series Turn A Gundam.
“To be honest, I really didn’t want to,” he said about working on the game. “But since I was given the freedom to work on Turn A Gundam, I felt I needed to give back, so I went to work in the United States,” he added.
Red Dead Revolver started development with developers Angel Studios (now Rockstar San Diego) and Capcom being the publisher, though things did not go as planned. That was Akiman’s last project with Capcom as he resigned afterwards, and Rockstar eventually bought the Angel Studios and took over publishing rights.
He also loves Overwatch, plays it everyday and said to be “the heir of Street Fighter”, and reinvigorated his interest in working in the game industry again after the sour taste from working on Red Dead Revolver. He recently designed new DLC costumes for Chun-Li in Street Fighter V.
The documentary by the ever-excellent toco toco tv has Akiman shares his work process and recounts his past works. It’s worth watching.