Tatsuro Iwamoto

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Tatsuro Iwamoto

For example, whenever you draw Naruhodo, there are of course details you can't miss in terms of his appearance, but what is even more important is that he's overflowing with baseless self-confidence. I'd draw him over and over until I could look at him and sense that he was really self-confident for no reason.

— ^[1]

Tatsuro Iwamoto (岩元辰郎) is a Japanese freelance illustrator who has worked as the art director for some of Capcom's Ace Attorney games, along with providing the in-game Japanese voices of Miles Edgeworth (in the original versions of the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS games) and Bronco Knight^[2]. He is said to be good at drawing "fatherly" characters, but drawing "moe" girls is his weak point.^[3] When he first started at Capcom, "a certain stylish director" advised him never to cheap out on reference materials. He uses books from a variety of genres, including henshin hero books, children's magazines, and bishōjo art books.^[4]

Career[]

Iwamoto joined Capcom "about one year before development started" on Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. At first, he was in "the division in Capcom that worked on Biohazard" (possibly Production Studio 4). He was then reassigned to the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney team led by Shu Takumi due to his stated desire to do 2D illustration work. He was one of the two graphical artists on the team, with Kumiko Suekane being the main designer while he designed characters outside of the main cast, such as Manfred von Karma and the judge. He took over Suekane's main designer role for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations, where he oversaw all character designs and did the final checks on the pixel art and animations, which were done by others. Iwamoto did his best to understand the main characters that Suekane had designed, in order to have a clear sense of what they should look like instead of just trying to replicate the original designs. Iwamoto's educational background was in background design, so he struggled at first with concepts related to video game character design, such as how to design a protagonist. He was more at ease during the development of Trials and Tribulations, and was able to think better about his designs, with Godot standing out as his favorite character.^[1]

Iwamoto then transferred to Clover Studio and worked on Ōkami before becoming a freelance illustrator. Being a freelance illustrator has allowed him to achieve his childhood desire to do work involving history. He has worked on mobile games and otome games. However, he has continued to work on some of the later Ace Attorney games, and has had positive feelings about the plays and the film based on the games.^[1]