Summary
- Fox McCloud’s character design was inspired by Shigeru Miyamoto.
- Star Fox characters were initially intended to be human before becoming anthropomorphic animals.
- The eyes, Chico, they never lie.
When working with anthropomorphic animal characters, one of the main things to consider is the features you’ll be adding to make the animal look more human. Artists and character designers usually add a tinge of human features to make a character seem a bit human, but even selecting those features is an important decision.
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Takaya Imamura On Star Fox, F-Zero, And Working With Miyamoto
We sit down with Nintendo veteran Takaya Imamura, going over his new project, and what he expects from future F-Zero and Star Fox sequels.
So, when Takaya Imamura was designing Fox McCloud and the rest of the Star Fox crew for Nintendo, he decided to take inspiration from within the development team itself, with Fox being based on none other than Shigeru Miyamoto himself.
Shigeru Miyamoto Was The Inspiration For Fox McCloud’s Character Design
In a conversation with Edge magazine (via GamesRadar+), Imamura revealed that Star Fox’s character designs were supposed to be “an extension of the whole F-Zero world.” This meant a relatively realistic looking world with human characters. However, Miyamoto eventually made the decision to turn all the characters into animals, with Fox McCloud’s character species being settled on thanks to a nearby shrine called Fushimi Inari, dedicated to a fox diety.
“The [designs] are based on the game’s staff – not like a caricature of them so much as their essence,” explained Imamura. “Fox is based on Miyamoto-san, and the rabbit, Peppy, is based on the game’s director [Katsuya] Eguchi-san. I think, if you look closely, you can see the similarities.”
You know what? I do see the resemblance, but in the original Star Fox puppet, rather than the actual game itself. There’s something about Fox’s eyes that reminds me of Miyamoto.
Shigeru Miyamoto with mario doll
It seems the rest of the Star Fox crew is based on the development team as well. “Falco was based on [Tsuyoshi] Watanabe-san on the graphics team,” Imamura said. “When I looked at his face, his nose was quite big, like a Roman nose. And Slippy was based on the assistant director, [Yoichi] Yamada-san – he just kind of gave me that impression, and he liked frogs as well.”
Last year, Imamura told us that Miyamoto “has very strong feelings” toward Star Fox and would need a very good reason to greenlight another game in the series. And, only a few days ago, we reported that Imamura spoke about Nintendo’s corporate attitude, where the company didn’t get carried away and didn’t even celebrate the company’s 100th anniversary.
