Kim Hyung-tae's Path From Manga Dreamer to SHIFT UP Founder
The profile explains how Kim's early ambition to draw manga, shaped by Japanese influences like Gunnm, led him through illustration, art direction, and finally to running a company that made its console debut with Stellar Blade.
Reporting from 1 source: Game Spark.
Game Spark traces Kim Hyung-tae's career from a boy who dreamed of being a manga artist to the founder of SHIFT UP and director of Stellar Blade. The profile covers his early rejection, his work on Magna Carta and Blade & Soul, and his decision to leave NCsoft to found SHIFT UP in 2013.
Kim Hyung-tae was born in 1978 and spent his childhood drawing, even sketching subway wheels and straps. He entered Chung-Ang University in 1996 to study visual design, but a self-made manga drawn with a felt-tip pen won a public contest, and he took a leave of absence to pursue comics. His violent school-themed work ran into censorship, so he turned to computer graphics.
He joined MANTRA in 1997, then SOFTMAX in 1998 after an initial rejection. His work on the Magna Carta series built an overseas following, and his art book OXIDE drew attention. At NCsoft he served as art director on Blade & Soul, a project that took about seven years. In December 2013 he founded SHIFT UP, starting with the mobile game Destiny Child.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.