Katoki and his influence?

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Xenosynth
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Katoki and his influence?

I have quite a few questions about Katoki. One other board focused on models that I frequent has quite a few members always saying things how they hate Katoki and they hate his 'philosophy' and what he has done with mecha. I've... honestly never understood what they are talking about or what they mean. And I've seen it from multiple individuals, not just one. Thing is I've never seen anywhere else where so many people have hated all of Katoki's designs, it sort of confused me. The way they word it is as if he's changed how people design mecha, especially for Gundam in particular, and that the 'art' is now worse off.

Has Katoki actually changed the way mecha designers approach their designs in Gundam or beyond?

What are his 'philosophies' and the things he 'stands for' that people seem to talk about and like (Or dislike)?

Does Katoki seem to overshadow Okawara or Izubuchi or any other designers?

I want to also ask, could the hate maybe just be sort of a 'change in style now I don't like it' thing from older fans?

I hope this is the right board for this. Sometimes I feel a bit nervous posting if only because I am still relatively new to this site.
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ShadowCell
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

moved to Mecha and Technology
Xenosynth
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

Thank you Shadowcell ^^ I apologize, I just saw that some older threads that had asked about other artists were in the Anime and Manga section, so I didn't know if that was the right section or the Mecha and Technology one, given that mine was more specific question-wise.
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Geoxile
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

http://i.imgur.com/PkXrc.jpg

I think this should sum up 2/3 of the problems people have with Katoki. If you don't get it, basically it's long legs and a crapton of useless or random decals. Another thing is that Katoki gives designs needless hard edges and details

It seems Sunrise has been going to Katoki a lot recently for Gundam designs. Most or all of the MS in Unicorn were designed or redesigned by Katoki, he's done a lot of MG redesigns like the upcoming Nu ver. Ka, and his Wing redesigns have also taken priority recently.

I personally like most of Katoki's designs but he does has a very specific design paradigm: the aforementioned traits. And about the entire leg complaint, it's very clear people haven't seen the Kestrel and proto Kestrel from AoZ 2.
Xenosynth
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

I will admit his decal amounts are a bit annoying, however, I never really noticed the legs. The Kestral does look way more long legged.

http://www.dalong.net/review/mg/m57/p/m57_m0002.JPG

I mean, the arms and legs are proportioned properly to one another, so I don't see that as that bad. Personally I think the old art sometimes makes MS look short and stubby (I never liked the GM Sniper Custom until I saw the GFF of it, which I thought was wonderful.)

That picture honestly at the top, though funny... Iono, I feel the leg thing is inaccurate xD; That looks a lot more like how I imagine the Kestral from AoZ Traitor to Destiny, agreed on that.
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Mu La Flaga
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

Personally I don't have a problem with his Unicorn work.
But for instance, take a look at his Endless Waltz redesigns in pretty much all cases the Gundams loose a weapon and in the case of Wing Zero it can no longer transform and has techno-organic like feather wings, HOW does that work or let alone how would Heero Yuuy rebuild or have it built that way to begin with?

There is that and the horrid colour choices at times are just weird.
I don't mind his own Gundam Wing Gundam designs tv versions though(not Endless Waltz)

I don't ever have an issue with the legs and all that.
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AmuroNT1
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

Mu La Flaga wrote:HOW does that work or let alone how would Heero Yuuy rebuild or have it built that way to begin with?
Well, he didn't. The idea that Katoki's versions are customized or upgraded versions of Okawara's has been thrown out (or never applied in the first place), and is only really represented in the doujin Ground Zero (where Duo shares your sentiment, remarking "This isn't a custom hotrod we're talking about here!")

Instead Katoki's designs are simply a parallel universe version, kind of like how Macross TV has Millia shrinking to human size to be with Max while DYRL instead has Max growing to Zentraedi size. That's why we got the scene at the start of Endless Waltz that depicts the final battle of the series with Katoki's Gundams (including at least one scene that's almost frame-for-frame from the show). That's why we've had the subtle shift away from "Custom" over to "EW Version".

Also, Heero didn't build Wing Zero - crazy Quatre did, and I think he was more concerned with blowing stuff up than with the robot's design. :P
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Mu La Flaga
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

That may be so, but it kind of makes me wonder why sometimes they push EW over Wing in some media forms.
For instance Gundam Extreme VS, there was a tv series beforehand you know guys?

But that is more something probably from Capcom who develop the series.
Xenosynth
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

Well, in regard to the EW vs TV versions, I think that, gamewise, even though they are different in design, it might be a bit of a waste since the gameplay would be very similar, especially between ones such as the TV Deathscythe Hell and the EW Deathscythe hell. The EW designs are maybe considered more 'modern' so they take those ones over the TV ones.

Actually, on Gamefaqs I've seen that as justification for the hate of Katoki >.> People saying 'OMG EWWW I HATE THOSE DESIGNS WE NEED THE TV ONES KATOKI RUINED GUNDAM WING FOREVER.' Sadly I saw that on the SD Gundam G Gen Overworld one which is pretty much guaranteed to have versions from both TV and the EW, yet... still the complaining commences xD

Thank you both also for the info regarding Katoki. Maybe his stylistic difference isn't so jarring to me since I am relatively new to Gundam and am used to most of his designs when I see them and just thinking that is sort of the norm.
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Arsarcana
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

Hopefully the fact that SRW Z2 brought back the TV series (thanks to it playing nice with 00) will quiet that group of fans down on the Katoki hate, at least for a while.
Mu La Flaga wrote:For instance Gundam Extreme VS, there was a tv series beforehand you know guys?
They gave us a whole bunch of TV designs in GvG(N) though so it's not like they ignored what came before. The first game didn't even have EW and the second made Wing Zero TV stupidly powerful...

Anyhow, any confusion about the EW vs TV designs and their role can be dispelled with the ongoing manga that retells the events of the show with Katoki's designs present from the start. If you want you can think of them as alternate continuities since some things have to happen differently but the idea EW was trying to convey is that the new designs were always there, we just didn't see them properly the first time. :D
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

It should be noted that Hajime Katoki's educational background is in Industrial Design; his style heavily reflects his training in professional technical illustration (unlike, say, someone who took up textile design).

In addition, his industrial design education actually made him a highly qualified choice for work in plamo design & production. In connection with this, there's a good (to Bandai) reason why a lot of his mobile suit designs/redesigns tend to have a generic-y sameness to them.
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AmuroNT1
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

Mu La Flaga: Like Arsarcana said, the original GvG didn't have Endless Waltz at all while Next only got two units (Zero EW and Nataku) in the home version; otherwise they had a lot of representation for the series (Zero, D-Hell, H-Arms Kai, Tallgeese, Epyon). In Extreme Vs, Zero, Heavyarms and TG3 all draw heavily on their predecessors' movesets.

As for why EW shows up so much...not entirely sure. My theory as to why it's so prominent in Super Robot Wars is that it's a quick, easy, and cheap way to get the very popular Gundam Wing cast into a game. Doing the TV series means you have to figure out how to integrate the plot, set up stages, etc.; with EW, half the time it's post-movie or Mariemaia doesn't even show up and the cast simply plays out their plots with other series in the game. As a fan of GW I find this pretty frustrating.

Xenosynth: I wouldn't put much stock in the opinions of anyone who says "RUINED FOREVER!" :P
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Xenosynth
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

Very good point xD;

When it comes to Katoki's history, has he designed a lot of original MS beyond just Sentinel and 0083? Most of the time I see his art as reimaginings rather than full on new or original MS.
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ShadowCell
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

he designed the League Militaire mecha in Victory and the OZ/Romefeller mecha in Wing

according to MAHQ, he also designed the original Crossbone Gundams, the Devil Gundam and the Master Gundam from G Gundam, and probably a bunch of others i'm not pedantic enough to go searching the entire archive for

anyways, the Crossbones are a good example of why i have a love-hate relationship with his designs. sometimes he comes up with really awesome and relatively unique stuff (the Victory Gundams, the Leos, the Taurus, the Crossbones); other times there's that aforementioned generic-y sameness and blockiness and giant hideous rain of stupid decals (like the GFF version of the Crossbones, which turn the Crossbones into pretty much everything else we've seen by him).

and then there's some designs, like the S Gundam and Ex-S, which are just weird.

the stuff about Katoki that i don't like, though, seems to be pretty much exclusively what Fujioka is up to in Advance of Zeta, which i guess would explain why i have no particular love for those designs

unless MAHQ is wrong and he wasn't responsible for those designs, in which case i'm just back down to hate c:
Xenosynth
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

Huh... that's very surprising to me actually, I didn't realize he worked on many of the main series like that o.o Never qould have guessed the Devil Gundam or MAster Gundam were his creations. Also was a bit surprised by the victory designs he did, given that, as mentioned, his designs are very angular and blocky, whereas most of Victory Gundam has a lot of rounded bits to it. Though with Victory he only seems to have done the victory Gundam and its variation, not the Jamesguns and other grunt MS they use. Though now I am having fun seeing all the different designers on the shows (going through the MAHQ database).

I do enjoy his art style but I can totally see what you mean by the blockiness. The decals are the main thing that have been bothering me (I noticed his love of decals with the MG ver ka kits I have, and pretty soon we'll have a Nu Gundam with a bunch of those decals, I'll probably opt out and never apply them).

A few of his designs have caught me off guard however, the Victory being originally done by him, as well as many of the OZ MS, I never would have guessed were Katoki, especially designs like the Leo and Aries.
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AmuroNT1
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

Actually, Katoki did ALL the OZ MS. Here's the breakdown just for Wing:

Kunio Okawara: TV Gundams
Hajime Katoki: OZ mobile suits, EW Gundams, FT Gundams (IIRC)
Junya Ishigaki: Maganac (TV, EW, FT versions), Oliphant, misc. vehicles and transports, mechanical details (inc. cockpits), Scorpio MS Mode, Aquarius

For the curious, Scorpio's MA Mode was done by manga-ka Koichi Tokita - which might explain the inconsistencies between the two modes. I believe Tokita also did the principle work on the G-Unit mecha, with Junichi Akutsu (aka BEE-CRAFT) doing clean-up.
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

I like long legs on both women and Gundams. In fact, Long legs are generally considered an attractive trait; I don't see why that can't apply to mecha as well. /m/'s just full of angry little midgets.

On that note, I generally like Katoki's style. He's not nearly as convoluted as a lot of people make him out to be, and in the same vein, he's not as simplistic as others make him out to be either. When he's given free reign to go nuts, he can pump out some pretty gnarly stuff (his work in Sentinel and some from Unicorn come to mind.)

In addition, a lot of his original work actually tends to have rather thick legs compared to most designers (Victory, Sinanju, Unicorn, EX-S, etc,) which in turn tends to make the torso look small (another issue a lot of people have.) He's not my favorite mechanical designer, but he's definitely in my top five. My only real problem with Katoki is when he redesigns something just for the sake of having lineart of an existing design in his pose. That's just stupid and a waste of his talents. Unfortunately, it's what he's called upon for most often.
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Amadi Akintunde
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

J-Lead wrote:I like long legs on both women and Gundams. In fact, Long legs are generally considered an attractive trait; I don't see why that can't apply to mecha as well. /m/'s just full of angry little midgets.
Here's a good example. Those legs just seem absurdly long.

I like Katoki's work as well, but his use of the golden triangle tends to screw up the perspective of his designs. Case in point. The way he poses things makes it hard to imagine how they look standing up straight. And with the legs positioned like that the whole design looks rather slanted.

Regardless of whatever criticisms I may have for how he does his thing, I'll always love his GM and GM variant work, with the GM Custom and Jesta being my favorites. Can't miss out on some of his heavier stuff too, like the Loto.
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

I do love Katoki design. I had theSRW OG Wildwurger model kit flown from Japan to Costa Rica just to enhance my Katoki stash of mechas. I think most designers aren't that meticulous. Take for example Ebikawara: his Gundam Age is too plain. Sure he did an awesome job setting up most of the Gundam look from 00, but his top works lack punch like the 00 Gundam (without the Raiser mind you, with it is its amazing fierce) and the Qant.

I don't know if Katoki is influencing the new trends -aside from the guy from Frame Arms- most mecha designers follow an aesthetic path, as the aforemention Ebikawara which is very unlike Katoki's.

I do find curious that there are few old school mecha designers still around, most of them have been upgraded to directors such as Kawamori and Izubuki.
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Re: Katoki and his influence?

Well, I love Katoki's designs. He has this right mix of robustness and elegance on his arts.
Gundam designs that I love from him is The GP-01 Zephyrantes (non FV) and GP-03S Dendrobium Stamen. Other designs I love from him is the Unicorn (Unicorn mode). That design, again, radiats robustness and elegance, a soldier ready to fight. For some reason I hate Unicorn destroy mode, bling bling and all that crap, and the fact that it has bland Gundam face that comes with all that bling.

But Katoki, for me, is still below Okawara. That man can churn out very different designs that I love: X, X Divider, Airmaster/Airmaster Burst, Freedom, cleaning ups of the GAT machins on SEED, and Astray M1. He seems to be the perfect fit for cold, mechanical, sagacious, antromorphic war machines, while Katoki seems to fit for to-sell pretty figures.

Main SEED designer, Junichi Akutsu, is also a designer I love, third after Ookawara and Katoki, for he is the one that comes out with GAT series and Astray Red and Blue :)
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