Takaya Imamura has a history with Star Fox. He was the character and 2D artwork Designer on Star Fox (SNES), the Art Director for Star Fox 64, Nintendo's Supervisor to Rare for Star Fox Adventures, a Producer on Star Fox Assault and Command, a Supervisor in Star Fox Zero/Guard, he helped with the Star Fox Zero animated short, and he worked on the Star Fox aspects of Starlink. We posted a recently translated interview with him that features interesting details about Star Fox Adventures and his work with Star Fox. Of course, he also worked on many other Nintendo projects.

On January 20th, 2021, after 32 years at Nintendo, he decided to retire and pursue a job as a professor at the International Professional University of Technology in Osaka. He begins that job today. IGN did an interview with him about his time at Nintendo, his work with Star Fox, F-Zero, and other memories of his time at Nintendo.

We wish him well in his new career path. Thanks for all your hard work and service over the years!

Photo from IGN article.

For those who don't know, Dinosaur Planet had a really really complicated story compared to Star Fox Adventures. Characters you thought were friends turn out to be enemies and it's not entirely clear who the true villain is. I think some of the voice acting that we have from Dinosaur Planet never actually gets used in the game, so this might have been an unused plotpoint.

Given that some people may be playing a build of Dinosaur Planet for the first time, this probably counts as a small spoiler, so I won't say much more. Anyway, StarToad64 made this quick animation of this surprising scene.

These appeared at the end of March, but due to a vacation, they have just now become available for purchase again. Constelia Art makes acrylic charms from her artwork, and now she has some Krystal and other Star Fox characters for sale. You can purchase them in her Etsy shop. Here's some WIP shots of some of the artwork.

After suffering for some time with illness, recent Krystal cosplayer NYALICE passed away on November 24th, 2020. The photo above is one of the last ones posted to Twitter, with that Krystal cosplay being one of the last cosplay projects worked on, completed just a few months before. It took a while for me to confirm what had happened, and with Christmas coming up around that time, I elected to not make the announcement until later. There's never a good time, you know?

Our condolences to NYALICE's family.

SchattenKitsune666 continues to explore new and more innovative ways to make Krystal dance. I have some catching up to do in terms of posting her actual dance videos. In the meantime, she's working on moving to Blender for rendering. Most interestingly, in my opinion, is the fact that in Blender, Krystal's tail model doesn't lay slack, but actually appears to float or be held up as it moves around. I think this is much more dynamic and visually appealing. Hopefully she keeps it for future videos. With the better shadows and future fur rendering, I think we can expect some really fantastic animations in the future.

The song used is What You Waiting For by SOMI.

Following up his earlier Star Fox Assault version, zienaxd made a new, boxy papercraft of Krystal, this time with Adventures styling. View the post in his gallery, and you can download the template to make one yourself.

Somehow I missed this during the time it was released, but here's a neat little animation showing some of the test footage Nintendo did when making Star Fox Zero: The Battle Begins. It comes from an interview explaining the behind-the-scenes of the animation.

Technicolor Cosplay recently informed us that the Ice Krystal variation featured in Twitter photoshoots lately will now be featured in a Canadian Cosplay Magazine, Cosplay Double Double Magazine. Technicolor Cosplay's Ice Krystal will be in the Spring 2021 issue, which has just shipped. Digital PDF versions will be available later. To my knowledge, this is the first time a Krystal cosplayer has been featured in print media (though there might have been some Japanese ones I'm unaware of).

Congrats to Technicolor Cosplay!

We've been preparing for the campaign launch of this new Star Fox-inspired game by the makers of Race the Sun, Flippfly. The game is called Whisker Squadron! It's a rail shooter game with procedurally generated levels and bosses, so no two playthroughs should be identical. It features a minimalistic, painterly, polygonal style with bright colors and feline characters. The campaign launched today, and is already well on its way to being fully funded. Check it out! The team is aiming for launch on PC and consoles in 2022.

Psicoyote, a storyboard artist and animator, has been doing a lot of Krystal fanart in the last year. He posts speedpaints to go with them so you can see the process from design to finished, colored artwork. Check them out!

• Assault Krystal Taking Fire
  • Art
  • Speed Paint
• Adventures Krystal Flying Strike
  • Art
  • Speed Paint
• Adventures Krystal Hanging Out with Dinos
  • Art
  • Speed Paint

Fun fact, the promotional images of Krystal from Dinosaur Planet helped inspire Psicoyote to start drawing anthro characters.