Yoshiyuki Sadamoto

貞本義行

Yoshiyuki Sadamoto is an animator, illustrator, character designer, and one of the founding members of studio Gainax.

After college, Sadamoto learned the ropes of key animation under Yasuo Otsuka at Telecom before becoming a founding member of Gainax. Otsuka later named Sadamoto one of the three men more skillful than him. Though Sadamoto is not an unskilled animator by any means, his reputation rests mainly on his iconic character designs, evident in the reception of the Evangelion cast. Nearly all of Gainax' biggest productions have their characters designed by Sadamoto. He is one of the biggest contributors to the general look of Gainax anime and has proven to be massively influential for character designers of future generations.

Sadamoto's characters are often thin, fragile and have sharp yet understated facial features. He pays a lot of attention to fashion as well.

Most of Sadamoto's influences are mangaka such as Katsuhiro Otomo, Yoshitaka Amano, Kazuo Umezu, and Leiji Matsumoto. Sadamoto would go on to author the Evangelion manga.

Post-Gainax he has remained active as character designer, mostly for Mamoru Hosoda's popular feature films. He has also focused on different visual and illustration works, as he worked on several manga and is co-creator and character designer for the .hack game franchise.