Art Director Takeshi Fujimoto Blogs About Birth By Sleep

Two weeks ago, a series of blogs created by Square Enix staff about Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep were to be published exclusively on 1UP.com's website. The first blog, written by Co-Director/Battle Director Tai Yasue, had explained the PSP title's new battle system, the second blog however is more focused on the art direction.

Takeshi Fujimoto, Art Director of Birth by Sleep, has written his own blog on his team's involvement in the game. Fujimoto describes how his team were able to come up with the map designs, how helpful Disney were on the project and how watching too many Disney films can be a good thing.

For Disney worlds such as Castle of Dreams (Cinderella) and Dwarf Woodlands (Snow White), we based a lot of the map designs on the film. Basically we watched the DVDs over and over and recreated the worlds in 3-D as accurately as possible.

Fukimoto also describes some of the challenges that had cropped up while working on the anticipated Kingdom Hearts title, stating "It was hard to determine how much data we could use during early development, since the game engine wasn’t running optimally yet."

Read the full blog at 1UP.com.