CULDCEPT REVOLT 20TH ANNIVERSARY

When we worked on "Culdcept Revolt," we had the idea of creating a special emblem to celebrate the brand's 20th anniversary. I created this icon using the original game's logo, surrounded by the subtle shape of a six-sided die (it's turned a bit!). The background uses another of the game's alternate logos, a C surrounded by sharp lines forming a mysterious crest.

This emblem was used on the side of the collector's edition box, the back of the new game's cover, and on promotional material at various gaming and comic conventions.

YOMAWARI: NIGHT ALONE
and sequel, Yomawari: Midnight Shadows

Here are a pair of logos for 2 video games: Yomawari: Night Alone, and Yomawari: Midnight Shadows. These games are a unique mix of cute fun and gruesome horror. They both star young unnamed girls and their pets, and are based on traditional Japanese monsters.

In the first logo, I replace the first O with the head of the main character, and the second one with an image of one of the game's monsters - a disembodied eyeball. Because the game was based on monsters from old stories, I used a typeface that would evoke books, a classic font with serifs. The underline is reminiscent of the painted lane dividers on the streets where the game takes place, and the surprise addition of a striking eye at the end refers to the game's pop-up jump scares.

For the 2017 sequel, I updated the main character art to the new girl character, whose hair and bow were different enough to make an obvious change. The eyeball at the end has been replaced with a noose - foreshadowing the death of another main character...

TOUHOU GENSO RONDO: BULLET BALLET

Aside from having an unwieldy, lengthy title, "Touhou Genso Rondo: Bullet Ballet" was a game with a complicated concept. It featured a cast of cute characters who could shoot magic bullets called "danmaku" at each other, in 1-on-1 battles. I had to make the logo fun, but communicate the fast paced nature of the fighting at the same time.

I colored the main text yellow to keep things from looking too serious, and encircled the G with the auras and stars that surround the characters during battle, to bring out an element of the gameplay in the logo. I then "shot" a hole through the "enso" and "ondo" portion of the logo, and reinforced this bullet motif with the subtitle, zooming past. The blurry lines in the background help increase the speed even more, and the over saturated colors turn the hyperactivity up to 11!

TOKYO TATTOO GIRLS

Typical of the games we worked on, Tokyo Tattoo Girls was a game that featured a healthy cast of cute characters in an otherwise atypical setting. In this case, the girls had a background in the Japanese mafia (called the Yakuza), and received magical tattoos which helped them conquer territory for their gangs.

My concept for this was to imply their Yakuza backgrounds somewhat subtly, but to also keep the game from looking too cute at the same time. Here, I've used a cute typeface for the GIRLS, with a rougher brushed font for the "Tokyo Tattoo" portion. The purpose of the brush script was to bring a bit of a handmade look to the logo, which I paired with white Japanese tattoo brushes. Next, I applied the tattoo pattern from the original Japanese game cover to the GIRLS text - literally showing "girls" with "tattoos." I adjusted the masking of the tattoo so that the shapes inside would follow the forms of the letters, which kept them legible.

Next, I used a diamond shape for the container. This diamond shape was actually taken directly from the family crest of the Yamaguchi-gumi, the largest family in the Japanese Yakuza. Here now, the girls have a background in the Yakuza. 

Finally, I used the Japanese script from the original game's logo to reinforce the Japanese setting, and break the container. These are girls who aren't afraid to break rules, after all.