Japanese · b. 1964 · 1985 – present
The Capcom artist and planner whose character designs defined Final Fight and Street Fighter II, before he left games for anime and designed the mecha of Turn A Gundam and Code Geass.
Akira Yasuda was born in Kushiro, Hokkaido, on 21 July 1964, and works under the pen name Akiman. He joined Capcom in 1985 and spent eighteen years there, working as both a designer and an artist during the company's most important arcade period. He was a game designer on the shooter Forgotten Worlds (1988) and a planner on Final Fight (1989), whose large, characterful sprites set the standard for the scrolling brawler. His best-known work came with Street Fighter II (1991), on which he was a planner and is credited with the character designs that gave the game's cast — Ryu, Chun-Li, Guile, Zangief and the others — their distinctive, exaggerated proportions and personalities. Those designs became some of the most recognised in gaming. He went on to work on Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors (1994), Street Fighter Alpha 2 (1996) and Street Fighter III (1997). Akiman left Capcom in 2003 to work freelance and became a prominent designer in anime. He was character designer on Turn A Gundam (1999–2000), and mecha designer on Code Geass (2006–2007) and Gundam Reconguista in G (2014–2015).