Shinji Higuchi
The storyboard editor, Shinji Higuchi, made the decision that the main environment, the Ozymandias, would be capable of transforming, being a long-time fan of mecha. Such ideas for the setting came from science fiction films, with the Jupiter orbit setting coming from the film, "Sayonara Jupiter!", which Higuchi served on as a production assistant. Several designs for the ship were also made ahead of the Xbox Conference Summer 2002 and, according to producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi, a competition was held within the development team to pick the design to use for the game. Due to this fascination with mecha, 3CGI paid particular attention to making the cutscenes of Ozymandias' transformation seem more realistic, with moving parts being locked in place. The characters were also designed based on Japanese science-fiction tropes, and attention was made to the SOAR team uniforms. For example, a transformation sequence of Patrick's helmet was carefully drawn to show how it could be stored within his suit. Distinct from the space suits of the other cast members, Caren's mini-dress was designed to echo Japanese "race queen" idols, and Shinji Mikami had her purple tights removed to better match that concept. 3DCGI also made sure to put focus in her animations, so that her breast and dress movements would appear more realistic in cutscenes. The creatures that populate the "Ozymandias" are revealed in the story to be genetically-engineered human-dinosaur hybrids. As such the creature designers were free to create the creatures how they wanted; this was liberating for the designers, as the "Dino Crisis" and "Dino Crisis 2" teams had problems with making the Therapods unique. A common theme in the dinosaurs was that they would have exposed skin and could release electricity as a form of attack.