Making CG Japanese Schoolgirls Is Difficult

Kotaku EastEast is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.  

This is Saya. According to her co-creator, Yuka Ishikiawa, bringing her to life was not easy.

The hurdle, Ishikawa explained via Twitter, is “quite high.” The CG schoolgirl model needs to contain a certain softness as well as the purity of her age. In short, it needs to look like a real person.

Mission accomplished, no?

Ishikawa works as a freelance CG artist with her husband Teruyuki. Their portfolio (here) is filled with impressive faces and battle gear.

And schoolgirl shoes.

If you’ve spent anytime online, you’ve probably seen stills of highly realistic CG art. Ishikawa, however, is making an independent CG clip with Saya. The project was first made public in fall 2015.

Since then, the couple have released clips of Saya in motion.

“Since we’ve been working on this between jobs, it’s been somewhat hard,” Ishikawa says. “We’re going to give it our best when making it.”

The project has been featured in print and on TV.

No doubt, the thousands of people who retweeted Saya’s photos on Twitter wish the project luck.

This article was originally published on October 13, 2015. It has since been updated.

To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter@Brian_Ashcraft.

Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.