Shinichi Kameoka

Shinichi Kameoka is one of the founders of Brownie Brown (presently 1-UP Studio), the other three being Kōji Tsuda, Tomoki Anazawa, and Nobuyuki Inoue. Kameoka is responsible for the character designs and production of Magical Vacation and Magical Starsign. On January 31, 2013, he retired from 1-UP Studio to form a new studio called Brownies later that year, and is currently its president.

Beyond the Magical Vacation series, Kameoka has done artistic work for titles such as SaGa Frontier, various Mana series instalments (most notably Secret of Mana, Legend of Mana and Sword of Mana), and more recently, Brownies' original EGGLIA series. He is also in the credits of Mother 3 as a producer.

As an artist, he publishes his work under the pseudonym "Kameoka Shinta" (かめおか慎太).

Early career (c. 1991-1999)
Around 1991, Kameoka joined Square Co., Ltd. after working as a manga artist for Monthly Shōnen Magazine, in which he illustrated a series of short comic strips titled "Aitsu ga TOHRU!". His first known contribution to a Square video game was debugging for Final Fantasy IV.

Kameoka's debut as a game character designer started with the second Mana series title, Seiken Densetsu 2, known in English as Secret of Mana. In the 2020 Mana series art book, Art of Mana, series creator Koichi Ishii comments that "[Secret of Mana] is where Kameoka characters really began", and the characters Randi and Primm are his "most well-known" male and female character designs.

Leaving Square and Brownie Brown's creation (2000)
Before and after the release of Legend of Mana, Square was seeing excellent sales in Final Fantasy VIII, and planned on using its profits to increase the production costs for its full CG movie, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. In January 2000, the company responded to the commercial success of Final Fantasy VIII by focusing development resources on its Final Fantasy series and 3D graphics software. Alongside the relocation of employees, Square announced a policy that reduced the development of 2D games in favor of 3D. This sudden switch to Final Fantasy limelight actively worked against Square IPs which were primarily based on 2D graphics, especially the Mana series. Having contributed to 2D Mana games up until that point, Kameoka left Square with Tsuda, Anazawa, and Inoue to form their own company, Brownie Brown, around February 2000.

With the investment of Nintendo Co., Ltd., who were about to release the 2D handheld Game Boy Advance, Brownie Brown Co., Ltd. was established on June 30, 2000, with Shinichi Kameoka as its CEO.

Sword of Mana (2003)
Those who stayed with Squaresoft, which would later become Square Enix in 2003, were merged with the developers behind games such as Chrono Cross and Parasite Eve II. In turn, Square chose to outsource the production of the fifth Mana series title, Sword of Mana (an expanded remake of the original Seiken Densetsu title, Final Fantasy Adventure) to Brownie Brown, in which Kameoka was the lead character designer.

Art style
Shinichi Kameoka's art style is widely recognized for its exaggerated high-fantasy fashion, coloring style, and anatomical proportions. In his earlier years as a character designer, especially during his time working for the earlier Mana series titles, Kameoka's main artistic medium was watercolor (or acrylic paint on occasion) and ink on paper, plus hatching for volume and texture. The line art in his final drafts incorporated black and colored lines to distinguish and emphasize particular parts of the body, mostly in a character's hair and facial regions. Between late 1999 and 2003, his style of shading and blending became a lot smoother, evident in his character art for Chocobo Stallion and Magical Vacation. Kameoka has also stated that he designs characters "in reverse" when drawing full-body artwork, since he believes a character's role within a game's setting can be determined based on the style of their shoes.

In the mid-2000s, Kameoka began producing draft artwork through digital means, as seen in the scrapped Game Boy Advance remake of Secret of Mana, Magical Starsign, and Friends of Mana. During this era, his line art was predominantly black, with both coloring and shading being presented through flatter, bolder tones. Additionally, the head and limb ratios took a significant approach towards realism and balance, thus making the character appear more mature. In recent years, specifically between 2013 and 2022, he has steered back towards producing art traditionally for EGGLIA, as well as the box art for the 2021 Legend of Mana remaster.

Trivia

 * He voiced Pico's battle shouts in Magical Starsign.
 * His preferred Magical Vacation element is blade.
 * Peche, Kirsche, and Candy are his favorite characters in the Magical Vacation series; Peche for her design, Kirsche for his personality, and Candy for her character arc.
 * For his artwork, Kameoka takes great inspiration from Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, Leiji Matsumoto, Fusako Kuramochi, and Makoto Kobayashi.
 * One of his favorite foods is condensed milk.