User:WillIdleAway/Celebration Picture Designer's Notes
From the Star Allies artbook. Translations waver between loose and literal and should not be considered authoritative. In some cases I've put some hiragana or katakana into kanji to aid reading—I'll fix this later ...
Friends' Getaway[edit]
夜で、綺麗な色のライトで照らされていて、周りにヤシの木とか生えていて、夢の泉ってナイトプールっぽいよねとひそかに思っていたので、夢の泉をナイトプールに目立てて４人がバカンスしている絵を描きました。
カービィは優雅にソーダを飲み、バンダナワドルディは槍を置きアイスを食べてまったり。メタナイトは泳いでいるデデデ大王を支えています。夢の泉遊泳をしたデデデ大王はきっと良い夢が見られるでしょう。神聖な泉でこんなことをして良いのか……と少し心配になりますが、果敢に戦った戦士たちへのご褒美ということで…
Being lit up at night by pretty colourful lights, with palm trees growing all around it, the Fountain of Dreams is like a night pool, or so I've secretly thought. So I drew a picture of these four on holiday, with the Fountain of Dreams looking like a night pool.
Kirby is elegantly drinking soda, and Bandana Waddle Dee puts down his spear and relaxes while eating ice cream. Meta Knight props up King Dedede as he swims. After swimming around in the Fountain of Dreams, King Dedede will surely have good dreams. Is it OK to do this sort of thing at a sacred fountain? ... one might worry a little, but let's say it's a reward for daring warriors ...
Translation notes[edit]
There is a slim chance that 'night pool' is a Japanism (wasei eigo is the term, I think) but English-language Japanese media tend to use 'night pool' as is (for example: [1]), so I kept it as is too.
Note that I translated 'vacance' as 'holiday' but since WiKirby is a predominantly American English wiki, 'vacation' is probably the acceptable term for mainspace.
In fact the last bit says something like 'warriors who fought boldly' but I have been more colloquial.
Crazy Mischief in the Stars[edit]
追加ドリームフレンズ第1弾のメンバーを描かせていただくことになりました。
初めは芝生の上でお昼寝しているような絵も考えたのですが、この6体が揃うと、おとなしく過ごすよりは多分しっちゃかめっちゃかになるだろうなと想像して、星空の中でわいわいとふざけ合っているような場面を描いてみました。
仕事として、デザイン案やコンセプトアートを描くことは多いのですが、データとしてゲームに入る一枚絵を完成させるというのはとても新鮮でした。
I drew the members of the Wave 1 Dream Friends additions.
At first I thought of a picture of them napping on the grass, but I imagined that a gathering of these six would be not so quiet and probably completely chaotic, so I drew a scene of them playing merrily in the night sky.
In my job, it's a common thing to draw design proposals or concept art, but it was a very fresh experience to complete an illustration piece that went into the game as data.
Translation notes[edit]
わいわい is one of those sound symbolism cases where a great translation is difficult. 'Boisterous' was one option here but I opted to follow the example of Merry Magoland.
The presumed illustrator is Riki Fuhrmann, a designer at HAL Laboratory who was design director for KSA and art director for KatFL. It makes sense that he doesn't really get to normally directly contribute artwork that goes into the game as is, since texture work is presumably done separately from the original design.
Chasing Our Dreams[edit]
「星のカービィ64」からドリームロッドで再会し、またみんなで冒険の旅へ！
ワドルディやデデデ大王は、「星のカービィ64」の雰囲気で入れてあげたいなと思っていて、本作で再び登場することになったコンセは、巻き込まれてうっかりこっちに来てしまったんじゃないかといろいろ想像しながら、自由に描かせてもらいました。
ほかにも、アイススパークの当時の能力星やクリスタルなど、当時ゲームに登場していたアイテムやキャラが描いてあるので、ぜひ探してみてください！ このイラストのほかに「ゴールゲーム」案や、本作のウィスピーウッズが落とすリンゴをみんなで拾う「とるとるバトル」案もありました。
Everyone from Kirby 64 is on an adventure again, reunited by the Dream Rod!
I had the thought that I wanted to add Waddle Dee and King Dedede with the atmosphere of Kirby 64 included, and for Plugg reappearing from this game, maybe he got accidentally caught up and ended up here? I let myself draw freely imagining these various things.
Also, I drew items and characters that appeared in the game at the time—for example, the Ice Spark Ability Star from the time [of Kirby 64] and the crystal, so please look for them! There were also other proposals for this illustration like the Goal Game, or the Bumper Crop Bump Mini-Game from this game where everyone catches apples dropped by Whispy Woods.
Translation notes[edit]
This one is a bit tricky in places. 本作 seems to refer to Kirby 64 rather than KSA, so I have translated accordingly (as otherwise 本作で could be translated as either 'in this work' or 'from this work'). I also definitely initially thought コンセ was some kind of bizarre shortening of 'concept' at first. (Sorry Plugg.)
It's interesting that the note says クリスタル and leaves it at that. The Japanese manual suggests that a Crystal Shard should be called クリスタルの破片, but then goes on to refer to crystals (as in the shattered pieces of it) as just クリスタル. There are reasonable arguments for it being a Crystal Shard and for it being the full Crystal. The cop-out is to just leave the translation at a non-committal 'crystal' and be careful to translate sentences in a way that would place definite articles in front of it whether it was otherwise a crystal or the crystal.
Although this ended up not being an illustration based entirely on the Goal Game (or Bonus Game), the items available as part of that evidently made it into the final illustration.
A Farewell to Kirby[edit]
「星のカービィ」シリーズ集代成の本作。その最後に登場する、鉛筆で描かれたイラストです。冒険の旅を終え、彼はまた新たな世界へ歩み出す……そのしばしの間の別れを描いたものです。カービィは、春風と共に現れた星のひとであり、若者であり、旅人。
実は「彼って旅の若者なんですね」と言うスタッフも増えてきた昨今、改めて若者であり旅を続けている存在である、と言うことを忘れぬようにと、そんな願いも込めています。夕焼けのシーンであるのも、風呂敷一つで旅する姿なのも、集代成に原点から続く情景をどこかに取り入れたかったからです。
At the very end of this work—a total synthesis of the Kirby series—appears this illustration drawn in pencil. At the end of an adventure, as Kirby steps out towards a new world ... that parting for a short little while is sketched out here. Kirby is one from the stars that appeared with the spring breeze, a youth, a traveller.
In fact, lately our staff are increasingly saying 'Kirby is a travelling youth, isn't that so?' so this drawing contains a wish to not forget to say again Kirby is a youth and a being that continues to travel. The sunset scene also, and the image of travelling with just a furoshiki [cloth wrapping packed with belongings] too, are there because of wanting to bring into this total synthesis [of the Kirby series] an emotional scene continuing from the origin.
Translation notes[edit]
I think it's really funny that Kumazaki describes Kirby walking into a new world (新たな世界) given that the setting of the mainline game following Star Allies was literally a New World.
By all rights 別 should be translated as farewell given that the illustration is literally titled A Farewell to Kirby, but it kind of reads like Kumazaki is sketching out the liminal time in between adventures, where the player says goodbye to Kirby at the end of one game, but is only parted for a short while before the next game. So I chose 'parting' instead. There's probably a more optimal translation, though.
The optimal translation of 集代成 is fuzzy. It is tempting to translate it as 'culmination', given that the devs have mentioned Star Allies as the 'end of an era'; however, a more neutral translation would be something along the lines of 'integration', 'summation', or 'synthesis'. My rendering of 'total synthesis' kind of blends these possibilities to emphasise that it's really about putting together all these different things from the series and creating Star Allies out of it, while avoiding potentially unintended implications of 'culmination' (like Star Allies being 'peak Kirby' or it being what the series has been building up to). 'Collection' and 'compilation' are possible translations of the word by itself but are less appropriate here.
