[Other] And now for something different... (again)

My weird obsession with collecting video game plushies and artbooks continues. But here's an interesting question: what if one of your favorite game series had artwork made, but it does not have an official artbook for it? Would your quest end there, or would you continue to search for an alternative?

Artwork from Sin & Punishment (ISBN978-4-7753-1754-9). Any artwork from the first game is hard to find.

Sin & Punishment is an arcade-style railshooter, a short lived series with only two games that remains exclusive on Nintendo's platform. Its developer, Treasure Co Ltd, hired the freelance artist Yasushi Suzuki for the development of this series. His artwork was used for the game's box art, instruction manual and promotional material.

Artwork from Sin & Punishment 2 (ISBN978-4-7753-1552-1). Posters of the left artwork were printed to commemorate the second game's release, which has been hanging on my wall for over twelve years now. The artwork on the right was used for the non-Japanese box arts.

While Sin & Punishment does not have an official artbook (because Treasure seems to prefer to merchandise Ikaruga 

instead and port their older games to NSO), there are several volumes of Yasushi Suzuki's works. From my limited knowledge, only two volumes has artwork for the series: ISBN978-4-7753-1754-9 contains five pages of artwork for the first game, and ISBN978-4-7753-1552-1 contains sixteen pages of artwork for the second. Relative to the total of several hundred pages, that's only a small amount of available artwork for Sin & Punishment - but that's fine by me.

Artwork for Xenoblade X (ISBN978-4-7753-1552-1). Several years after Yasushi Suzuki made this artwork for Xenoblade X,
he would return to design a similar character for Xenoblade 2, who also shares the same Japanese name.

Here's a fun fact: Sin & Punishment has a couple of interesting things in common with Xenoblade. Yasushi Suzuki has made official art for both series, and Nintendo's Hitoshi Yamagami has been crucial to both game's development as without his involvement and patience, the first Xenoblade and Sin & Punishment wouldn't have been the same.

Artwork for Anubis: Zone of the Enders (ISBN978-4-7753-1552-1).

But back on the art of Yasushi Suzuki. The way he makes his art look like watercolor paintings is drop-dead gorgeous. I love his work on science fiction, and he's also been my entry into the world of biomechanical art. As an appreciator of his work and as someone who has the desire to become competent at hand-drawing, I know that I'm probably never going to get on his level of graphic design when it comes to drawing as an art medium. Despite that, perhaps a field of LEGO design is the right art medium for me, and for that, books such as these will provide plenty of reference to draw inspiration from. There's a lot I can learn and pick up from Yasushi Suzuki's works. While I still have a long journey ahead of me, maybe, just maybe, one day... I hope to be able to build something as beautiful as he draws.

That's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!