Hirokazu Yokohara

CG Artist / Co-Founder Khaki

Widely known as a perfectionist, Hirokazu Yokohara is the co-founder of Khaki – a Japanese VFX studio that specializes in 3D/CG. He’s known as one of the top character artists in the world and is presently the Art and [...]

We are human beings, and the best way to tell a story is to look at people, so we wanted to try our hand at that.

Designing Worlds in 3DCG: Let Your Imagination Run Amok

Hirokazu is a fan of moving images that can tell stories. However, he finds live-action too restrictive for his vision, which is why he was naturally drawn to VFX and 3DCG.

He explains, “3D allows me to create my own world, and share with others what I see.”

[Ruins , 2019, Designed by Hirokazu Yokohara]

“I can create whole worlds the way I want it to be.”

Still, the character remains central to the world and story that the storyteller wants to share with the world, which makes character creation and detail one of the most critical aspects of production, according to Hirokazu.

In one of their more recent projects, Khaki worked alongside KAMITSUBAKI STUDIO (Japan) to direct a beautiful rendition of ‘My Voice’ (YouTube link) in the form of a music video starring the virtual singer KAF. Yokohara worked as a CG supervisor and virtual human visual designer.

【Suite】KAF x MONDO GROSSO #128 - My Voice [Music Video]

“We are human beings, and the best way to tell a story is to look at people, so we wanted to try our hand at that.”

When asked to go into more detail about this project, Hirokazu details the tight production timeline for the music video.

His team had to work quickly as the timeline given was around a month and one week. With only 3 main CG artists tasked with the animation of virtual human characters, backgrounds, and effects, it took a month and 10 days of hard work and perseverance to produce the video!

Most of the processes involved in the creation of the virtual human characters, animation, backgrounds and effects had to be completed by only 3 main CG artists.

[te'resa #06 Ace（Official Music Video）]

Hirokazu’s love for telling the perfect story ties into his love for creating detailed virtual characters, as he found that showcasing a story without humans (virtual or otherwise) doesn’t leave a lasting enough impression on people.

So, in 2019 when he started work on animation after a period of inactivity, he experimented with going the virtual human route rather than the traditional cinematic route with great success! And Khaki’s success ever since is a testament to how well this experiment worked for the studio.

A blend of Powerful Hardware and Software: Iterating Perfection, Faster

“With conventional pre-rendered images, it takes a lot of time to render and lookdev during the process,” says Hirokazu, talking about GPU rendering with modern hardware, continuing, “but this time, thanks to MSI’s RTX 4090 Graphics Cards, the process was much smoother and faster as we could see previews in real-time.”

“I was able to see the textures of the characters, and the final exports.”

Not only did they achieve a level of quality that both studios were pleased with, but they also managed to stick to their tight schedule!

However, Hirokazu hasn’t forgotten how, 20 years ago, such a production was impossible without very deep pockets and money to burn. According to him, the true power of modern hardware is the democratization of art. Even budget machines today boast an astounding amount of processing power – making digital art more accessible to artists across the globe.

“Today, you can do a Hollywood-esque production with a single PC,” exclaims Hirokazu, “as long as you have the technology and ideas,” he clarifies.

In addition to the new MSI graphics cards being demonstrably fast when it comes to GPU rendering workloads that Hirokazu’s team needs to run, he also notices a considerable uplift in responsiveness, saying that it feels response times have improved manifold.

Better responsiveness makes interacting with applications, viewports, and previews much smoother and helps artists like him tweak and iterate faster than ever.

“Even running 24 hours a day, for 3 days straight, rendering the KAF music video, the MSI graphics cards had absolutely zero stability issues and stayed at reasonable temperatures.”

While Hirokazu’s previous graphics card used to run into thermal issues occasionally (especially when running prolonged workloads), the upgraded setup with an MSI RTX graphics card has been rock solid. “I ran it all 24 hours a day, for three days when rendering the KAF music video,” he exclaims, “and it ran very stable and cool without any problems.”

Looking Ahead with Optimism and Excitement: AI is Here to Help!

Hirokazu also stresses the importance of keeping up with technology, especially in his field, “we need to leverage emerging technologies to make our work faster,” he answers when asked about AI image generation with models like Stable Diffusion.

“AI is used to create a preferred median aesthetic.”

He remains optimistic that technologies like AI will help budding artists and established professionals compete with the rest of the world. “It gives us even more ways to express ourselves,” he explains.

When it comes to AI, for Hirokazu, it sets a sort of median aesthetic for a particular art style. It still hasn’t come close to replacing humans, but it does help artists get to their vision faster and iterate more efficiently.

However, it’s not all good news.

AI models still routinely generate very unnatural-looking images (strange hands/fingers, body parts, etc.) that absolutely cannot be used without substantial editing. When using such techniques in large productions, he says, “You have no choice but to go in and fix the results one frame at a time.”

Also, currently, ethical standards for learning sources in AI are not yet in place, so there are many issues that need to be resolved before artists can use AI in their own work."

Nonetheless, Hirokazu is optimistic about expanding the use of AI within artist workflows and genuinely believes it’s a tool ‘for’ artists to be better and faster, and is not something that replaces them.

“At present, I think there is a possibility that in the future, AI may take over the direction and direction part of the work we do now.”

He also feels that the wariness many artists exhibit towards AI isn’t warranted, as it is an amazing tool that will nurture an artist's creativity and greatly expand the possibilities for artists in the future.

"People will never be truly satisfied with work created solely by AI," he said. As long as we are human, we will be moved by work which has been created by humans.

He goes on, “AI has been used in 3DCG and editing workflows for a long time now. Even at Khaki, AI is trained to cut masks and to denoise videos.”

Hirokazu has some advice for young, aspiring CG artists. “It’s simple,” he says, “if you like something, like a movie effect or animation, try replicating it and making it your own; give it your own artistic touch.” According to Hirokazu, it’s this journey, repeated several times over, that equips young CG professionals with the practical knowledge and skills they need to leave a mark on the industry.

Full PC Specification:

Processor: Intel® Core™ i9-13900K Processor
Motherboard: MSI MEG Z790 ACE
Graphics Card: GeForce RTX™ 4090 SUPRIM X 24G
Cooler: MSI MEG CORELIQUID S360
Memory: Kingston FURY Renegade DDR5 RGB 6800MT/s 16GB
SSD: MSI SPATIUM M480 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 2TB
PSU: MSI MEG Ai1300P PCIE5
Case: MSI MEG PROSPECT 700R
Monitor: Optix MPG321UR-QD

Hirokazu Yokohara | Art Station: https://www.artstation.com/yokohara
Khaki Studio: https://khaki.tokyo/en/

Back