Kazuya Shiotsuki
Kazuya Shiotsuki is a Japanese animator and character designer.
Career
Shiotsuki joined Hadashi Pro in the early 2000s as a rookie in-between animator. Within a few years, he left the studio and joined Shaft around 2003. Initially, Shiotsuki continued with in-between work, but was promoted to key animator within a year; and by 2006, he was doing animation direction work. In 2008, Shiotsuki received his first job as a character designer for one of the Shina Dark music videos. Soon thereafter, he became more involved with Shaft's works as a main staff member taking on a variety of different roles from accessory designer, to chief animation director, and so forth. His first character design work for a televised anime came in 2015 when he designed the characters for Gourmet Girl Graffiti. Shaft president Mitsutoshi Kubota gave Shiotsuki the first three volumes of the manga and asked him to make some drawings from it, and then asked Shiotsuki to draw something like a character chart which he submitted and was adopted by the production.In 2022, he designed the characters for the Strike Witches spin-off series Luminous Witches, and in 2024 designed the characters for Ninja to Koroshiya no Futarigurashi.
Shiotsuki named Shaft colleague Nobuhiro Sugiyama as a particular influence on his style. Nisekois first season, which Sugiyama drew the designs for and acted as chief animation director alongside Shiotsuki, garnered praise from the latter, who described the key visuals and character sheets as "godlike".