Collaboration in video games often times means a collaboration between artists. They admire one another and would like to work together in order to make a game. It is very rare that two very different intellectual properties come together for the same purpose. Kingdom Hearts is a shining example of the other type of collaboration. This video game has a unique visual style that features beloved Disney characters as well as those famous few from Final Fantasy.
There’s a lot that goes into creating a new IP so that it stands out from everything else. A player should be able to see a screenshot from a game and immediately know what game it is. But can this be achieved when a video game features already existing characters that look wildly different from one another?
Kingdom Hearts’ visual style is what makes it unique and stand out as a collaborative video game. It is not the cartoony Disney nor it is the outlandish style of Final Fantasy but both combined. Fortunately enough, Tetsuya Nomura, the character artist behind creating Final Fantasy 7 through 10, was in charge of bringing all these characters and worlds together as well as making new characters to fit along with it. He achieve the unification of both Disney and Final Fantasy. The main characters, Sora, Donald and Goofy, look natural together in both their original characterization and visual style of Kingdom Hearts. The player can believe that these characters were created alongside each other and were meant to be together.
Kingdom Hearts is an outstanding achievement in collaboration. Bringing both Disney and Final Fantasy characters together for the first time seems like a risk but it was worth it. Not only did the player experience new characters and worlds, they saw characters they loved in a different style and setting.
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