The Nameless Quality

Max Nichols' Game Design blog

Skip to content
Menu
  • Home
  • LinkedIn
  • Bluesky
  • Portfolio
  • Hyrule Interviews

Zelda Dev Highlight: Satomi Asakawa

by maxnicholsPosted on 2026-01-192026-07-07
The header. This entire post is made of a series of images, al of which are collages of quotes, photos, art, and screenshots. It is organized with two columns, all on a timeline. I will do my best to transcribe it all in the alt text. Timeline: 1970, Born Satomi Maekawa Quote: "I didn’t realize it until I grew up, but my dad was the manager of a SEGA arcade, so when I was a young child, I’d go to the arcade he managed and was allowed to play games 10 times for free. I played a lot of Galaxian and Space Invaders." Images: Screenshots of Space Invaders and Galaxian Quote: "My parents divorced as a child, so I moved to my mother's hometown of Kyoto." Quote: "I wanted to be a manga artist, and later when I was a student I was drawn to photography. I studied graphic design in high school."
Quote: "Asakawa: I think I first connected with console gaming with the Super NES … possibly with the release of Glory of Hercules III, which was sadly never released in North America. It was an RPG that really made an impact on me. It was the story of a hero who lost his memory and went on a quest … to beat an evil power that destroyed a world; during their journey, they heard about many sad, tragic events caused by the evil forces … In the end [he] atoned for his own sins by carrying heavy rocks to rebuild the world. At that time, I was deeply moved—and quite surprised—by how much video games could create such a range of emotional expression." Images: The boxart for Glory of Hercules 3, as well as two screenshots showing a top-down action adventure for the Super Famicom.
Timeline: 1994: Age 24, Vancouver Film School Quote: "In those days, computer-graphic creations were getting a lot of attention, and I wanted to study CG design, though there was nowhere to study it as a discipline in Japan. So I saved up money to leave the country and study abroad—no specific place in mind." Image: Logo for Vancouver Film School Quote: "Asakawa: To be honest, I first bought Nintendo games and started playing them after I turned 20 years old, around the time of the Super Nintendo. The first time I really got into a Nintendo game was Rare’s Donkey Kong Country and later Banjo-Kazooie. I was really attracted to Western-style character design. I was also really influenced by Rodney Alan Greenblat’s work. Even before his most famous game PaRappa the Rapper came out, I was a big fan of his earlier computer game, Rodney’s Wonder Window." Image: Boxart and some screenshots of Donkey Kong Country, a Super Famicom platformer.
Image set 1: The Japanese boxart and a screenshot of Banjo-Kazooie. Image set 2: The boxart and a screenshot of Rodney's Wonder Window. Image set 3: The Japanese boxart and a screenshot of PaRappa the Rapper.
Timeline: 1996: Age 26, Digipen Institute of Technology Quote: "I wanted to animate characters with cute and interesting movements, so I picked a monkey [for One Big Banana, my senior animation at DigiPen], since they can express a range of emotions. Also, I liked Donkey Kong, and when I was a chilld, I actually used to be called 'monkey' as a nickname!" Images: Two screenshots from her senior animation. One shows a big clump of bananas with a giant banana hanging off. The other shows a donkey-kong style cimpanzee. Timeline: 1998: Age 28, Graduated from DigiPen. Quote: "When I graduated from the DigiPen Institute of Technology, I wanted to get a job in North America at an animation studio like Pixar. It was my dream to work on a production like the Wallace & Gromit series or on a movie like The Nightmare Before Christmas."
Images: One each of Wallace & Gromit, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. Quote: “As it turned out, I applied to only one Japanese company—Nintendo. I’d lived near Nintendo in Kyoto since I was 12 years old, and I’d always loved the Mario-world characters that the company created.” Quote: “I sent [my student film project] One Big Banana to Nintendo, and it’s a big reason I got a job there. After joining the company, I actually got the nickname ‘Baby Monkey’ because of the film! People at Nintendo would say, ‘If you need monkeys and animal characters, ask Ms. Maekawa!’”
Quote: “My first character design assignment for Nintendo was the wise, old owl in Ocarina of Time, Kaepora Gaebora. Mr. Miyamoto left me a yellow sticky note with a few pointers for the owl’s design and turned me loose to explore the owl’s look on my own.” Image: A screenshot of the Bombchu Bowling Alley Girl from Ocarina of Time. Image: A screenshot of the owl, Kaepora Gaebora, from Ocarina of Time.
Quote: “NPC characters are always created by considering how they will be seen, and only have a small number of bones and polygons. To get the player to empathize with them, we use lots of motion and facial expressions to show off their personalities. We usually have a model when we create our characters. For example, the monkeys [in Majora’s Mask] were based off a cat I had bought. If anything, the monkey's faces look cat-like, right? Next, the giant turtle was modeled after the famous Japanese twins Kin and Gin, of which Kin happened to be in the news at the time for passing away.” Quote: “The idea of the white monkey of Majora’s Mask was Mr. Aonuma’s idea, but I received the offer to design the character from Mr. Aonuma by name. … I think that the white monkey in Majora’s Mask actually is very similar to myself.” Timeline: 2000: Age 30, Majora’s Mask Release Images: A collage of character models and screenshots from Majora’s Mask, showing the Giant Turtle, the Bombchu Bowling Alley girl, Pamela the little girl, and the white Monkey.”
Images: Screenshots of 4 bosses from The Wind Waker, with the caption “(She worked on animations for some Wind Waker bosses, but it’s unclear which” Timeline: 2002: Age 32, The Wind Waker Release. Timeline, Between 2002 and 2004: Age 32-34, Married to Nintendo sound designer Toru Asakawa.
Image: The Piantas from Super Mario Sunshine, with the caption “Asakawa designed Super Mario Sunshine’s Piantas” Image: The Water Wraith and the President from Pikmin 2 Timeline: Age 34: The Wind Waker 2 scrapped, Twilight Princess dev begins
Image: A screenshot of the Twilight Princess credits that says “Character Design Lead: Satomi Asakawa”. Quote: “Asakawa: I'm responsible for all NPCs in Twilight Princess. Because this game demands realistic human characters, this is quite a challenging task, as you can imagine. My hope is to create strange, cunning characters for the game—it's a unique combination. But I hope to turn my fantasy into reality with this project. Such characters can also elicit fear from players. Think Disney's Alice in Wonderland, one of my all-time favorite animated movies, and you'll get a sense of what I'm going for: all of its characters were colorful and vivid, but the fact that they inhabit dark, moody environments makes them very strange.” Note: (It’s unclear which characters she personally designed, but as lead she impacted all NPCs)
A bunch of concept art sketches of adult villager characters from Twilight Princess, including the mayor, the general good merchant, the pregnant woman, and some sketches of ab abandoned design for Ilya.
A mixture of black and white sketches, color sketches, and 3D renders of various characters. This includes the three village children, the clown guys, Renado, Ilia, Renado’s kid, Ashei, and more.
Quote: “It was necessary for a single artist to do everything from character design to modeling, animation, and even general game direction. It was very fun and interesting! But nowadays in the video game industry, there’s more division of labor. I think that I worked there during the last era when an artist got to do all those different kinds of work.” Images: Some photos of Asakawa gesturing during an Iwata Asks interview in 2006. Timeline: 2006: Age 36: Twilight Princess Release Note: After Twilight Princess, Asakawa returned to NPC design on titles like Spirit Tracks, Skyward Sword, Mario Kart 7 and 8, and Animal Crossing: New Leaf. It’s unclear which characters she designed. She left Nintendo and the game industry in 2013, to found a wellness business in Kyoto. Timeline: 2013: Age 43: Left Nintendo after 15 years.
Quote: “I realized mental health management is the key to your overall long-term health at work. The employees who come to Nintendo are very good at what they do, and they’re great workers. But it also takes a lot of time and effort to make a game. I used to talk with some of my colleagues and coworkers and became a sort of counselor for them. So in the office, not only was I an artist, I was also playing a role in some staff’s mental care. I gradually learned more about mental health and therapy, but at the company, I myself was also overwhelmed by all the work I needed to do as an artist. So I couldn’t really allocate too much of my time to being a therapist for my coworkers!” Image: A photo of Asakawa in her 40s. She’s wearing a purple shirt with a white shawl, a big fanciful choker necklace, and has long brown hair with some natural curliness. She is smiling at the camera. Image: A photo of Asakawa from 2019. She’s looking at the middle distance behind the camera, outside, with an out-of-focus scene of flowers and trees behind her.

Posted in Game History, ZeldaTagged For Everyone, For Zelda Fans, Format: Images, Social Media Post

Post navigation

Prev The Paradox of Crunch
Next Breaking Game Rules for Dramatic Storytelling
  • Learning Resources
  • Game Design (58)
    • Content Design (18)
    • Design Leadership (12)
    • Design Workflows (11)
    • Gameplay Design (16)
    • Level Design (13)
    • Meta Design (15)
    • Narrative Design (8)
    • Systems Design (18)
    • UX Design (2)
  • Game Documentation (5)
  • Game History (22)
  • Game Industry (14)
  • Misc (4)
  • Personal (6)
  • Zelda (37)
Warp Point logo

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
© Copyright 2026 – The Nameless Quality
Bandana Theme by DesignOrbital ⋅ Powered by WordPress