Born in Tokyo, Japan on December 2nd, 1975, he is a Japanese designer known for his works in many of Japan’s top anime franchises including Disney’s Big Hero 6. He got his start in the industry by participating in Aim for the Top 2! (Diebuster) in 2004.
Since then, he’s participated in some of the most popular anime titles of the last 20 years. Some of these titles include; HEROMAN, Eureka Seven, GURREN LAGANN, STAR DRIVER, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, Rebuild of Evangelion and KILL la KILL.
Aside from his work in anime, Shigeto Koyama has also lent his design work to Disney with their lovable robot from San Fransokyo, Baymax, in Big Hero 6. Koyama specializes in mechanical design, working on some of the big robots that you see in many anime such as Evangelion and Eureka Seven, but he also has worked in the fields of illustrations, character design, key animation, storyboarding, and scriptwriting.
The History of Shigeto Koyama
Initially, he used to do illustrations and draw manga, but he wasn’t too proficient at storytelling which requires the person making the manga to do everything by themselves. He felt that this was really tiring due to the fact that you had to do everything alone and it made him feel really bored due to the solitary nature of the work.
This actually was a blessing in disguise as he was contacted by Sadamoto of Evangelion fame asking if he would help out with the anime “Diebuster”. He decided that he would give this a try because he might be able to learn something about being a better storyteller. Through this experience, he learned that he really had a niche for design, so this is where he decided to take his career.
As we mentioned previously, he primarily works on Japanese anime titles, but Shigeto Koyama has also had his hand in some Hollywood film as well with Disney’s Big Hero 6 as the designer for the character, Baymax.
He stated that he got a call from Don Hall after Hall had purchased a Heroman toy in Akihabara, Tokyo. He said that Hall had a general idea for Baymax as he wanted a character that was white and had a soft appearance and that Baymax was supposed to be a medical machine so it wasn’t supposed to harm anyone.
But as you know as well as I do, Baymax does indeed fight and can transform as well. Shigeto Koyama stated that he himself enjoys round white things as well such as mochi, nikuman pork buns, and baby polar bears.
But he felt that it would be really cool if Baymax as a soft white character put on armor and transformed into a tough-looking robot. It’s with thoughts like this Baymax became the character that we know and love today.
What’s Next for Shigeto Koyama?
Shigeto Koyama is without a doubt a mechanical design genius as seen in his most recent work with Studio TRIGGER’s PROMARE movie. Anything that can transform, become a robot, have a pilot inside of a robot, or anything that moves like a robot, you can be sure that Shigeto Koyama has something that he could do to add some spice and flair to it.
We look forward to seeing what the future holds for Shigeto Koyama because if his past works is anything to say for what he is capable of, we can’t wait to see what he can come up with as anime projects start to become more and more out of this world.