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French animator shares experience working on Japanese video games

Delphine Zombo moved to Japan in 2014 and started working for Square Enix, the Japanese company behind the Final Fantasy franchise. (Supplied)
Delphine Zombo moved to Japan in 2014 and started working for Square Enix, the Japanese company behind the Final Fantasy franchise. (Supplied)
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22 Aug 2024 04:08:50 GMT9
22 Aug 2024 04:08:50 GMT9

Amin Abbas

DUBAI: Delphine Zombo, known as ZNanaEO, is a talented French animator who worked on various Japanese video games such as ‘Final Fantasy,’ ‘Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age,’ and ‘Street Fighter 6.’

Zombo told Arab News Japan that her animation inspiration is Studio Ghibli’s ‘Spirited Away’. “The atmosphere, motion, characters, colors, textures. Everything is amazing in that movie,” she said, adding that her video game inspirations were the event sequences, known as cutscenes,  shown in Tekken 3 and Final Fantasy. 

She has been working in the animation industry since 2013, beginning her journey with the movie ‘Jupiter Ascending’. She worked in France until she moved to Japan in 2014 and started working for Square Enix, the Japanese company behind the Final Fantasy franchise. 

She joined the cinematics department of the company, where she made the games’ cutscenes, similar to the ones she was once inspired by. “Cinematics are made to make you understand and enjoy the game. I think that the responsibility is higher compared to a movie. If you miss the cinematic, you miss information for the following game,” she said. 

The first game the artist worked on at Square Enix was ‘Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age.’ “I was very lucky because when I joined Square Enix, it was the end of the cinematic production,” she said. “They planned to put me on training to learn about Square Enix tools for two months but because I worked on ‘Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV’ with my previous company and I had to use a lot of Square Enix tools, my training wasn’t that long and I could get one cinematic shot on Dragon Quest for myself. I felt so lucky.”

Furthermore, she told Arab News Japan that one of the best experiences that she had on a video game was on ‘Street Fighter 6’ “Even if it is one of the oldest and most powerful video game licenses, we were pleased to bring new ideas and push it to the best it could be. I felt free to share fresh ideas and participate in the entire process of creation when, on other projects, everything is kept secret and you just do your part. On this game, we could watch the game build day after day,” the artist said.

“It was such an honor to be able to work with legendary characters and also give identity to new characters. I had so much fun and it never felt too difficult to work on this title,” she added.

She explained that western animation styles are completely different from those in Japan. “In Western countries, the most important thing is the movement and action, but in Japan, it’s more about a decided pose,” she told Arab News Japan. “It’s important to get a great pose for your character or having a great image for the scene. It quite improved my animation skills because you need to well think your key pose before interval, smoothing all transitions. feel that in Japan, there is less checking about your work.” 

Currently, Zombo is working at Kojima Productions doing facial animation on high-quality character models. “I’m pushing my knowledge to give a highly realistic motion to Hideo Kojima’s upcoming projects. It feels like working back again for movies. This level of cinematics is challenging but that is exactly what I was searching,” she told Arab News Japan. 

About her recommendations for those who wants to work on animation and video games projects, Zombo said: “Learn as much as you can at school and online. Ask questions and keep technical information in a memo. Search by yourself help, new tools, references. Observe the world and collect all the things you like (movements, textures, shapes) everything that you can use for your work. Most important (thing) is to exercise a lot if you are not yet in a company or having animations projects. Make sure to have a good portfolio and/or demo reel.”

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