page_title: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies
section_title: Visuals and character design
hierarchical_section_title: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies / Development / Visuals and character design
caption_attribution_description: Print by Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865) of Father and Son Members of the Forty-Seven Rônin from Chûshingura, the Treasury of Loyal Retainers: The People Involved in the Night Attack (Kanadehon chûshingura: youchi ninzû no uchi), ca. 1845-1860. Color woodblock print, ôban, original c. 15 in. x 10 in. Pictured are Horibe Yahei and his adopted son, Horibe Yasubei, in black-and-white patterned firefighter's disguises and bearing a pike and a wooden sledgehammer.
context_page_description: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney − Dual Destinies is a visual novel adventure video game developed and published by Capcom. It is the fifth main entry in the Ace Attorney series, and was originally released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013, with iOS and Android versions following in 2014 and 2017.
  The game is set around a year after the previous game, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, in a time where the court system has entered a dark era of false charges and fabricated evidence, caused in part by the event that led to Phoenix being unjustly disbarred. The player takes the roles of three defense attorneys Phoenix Wright, Apollo Justice and Athena Cykes, who defend their clients in multiple cases and try to restore confidence in the courts. The gameplay is split into investigation sections, where the player searches for evidence and talks to witnesses, and trials, where they search for inconsistencies between witness testimonies and the evidence.
context_section_description: Dual Destinies was the first game in the main series to be developed for the Nintendo 3DS; this move from the Nintendo DS to the Nintendo 3DS was the most difficult part of the development, with the development team being unsure of whether to use 2D graphics like with previous games or to use 3D models. Eventually they decided to use 3D graphics, because of the stereoscopic 3D effect being a selling point for the Nintendo 3DS system. Because of the move to 3D, the in-house artist Takuro Fuse was in charge of the art direction, rather than the series regular Tatsuro Iwamoto, so that they could have meetings about the art more often. This was Fuse's first work on the main series, so he initially had problems with making character designs that fit the series, and had to get a lot of feedback from Eshiro. According to Eshiro and Yamazaki, they put effort into the graphics, wanting to ensure that Dual Destinies' graphics looked better than those of Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.
  The first thing Fuse and his art team had to do was figuring out how to create 3D models that preserve the look and feel of the previous games' 2D sprites, even when viewed in stereoscopic 3D. Some of the artists on the team created a concept trailer for how the game's visuals would work, featuring a 3D model of Phoenix. Looking back at it, Fuse called the model "cringe-worthy", but it was able to be used as a base. Everyone on the development team gave feedback on the model, and it was continuously refined until everyone was satisfied with its look; this process alone took six months. The art team also wanted to preserve the "lively" style of animation used in the 2D sprites. To do this, they used "various tricks" such as using different character models for different angles. They also took advantage of the increased capabilities of the Nintendo 3DS hardware, and added camera movements and connecting animations to give the character animation further fluidity.
  Fuse found Athena difficult to design, due to her being both an assistant to Phoenix and Apollo, and a strong-willed attorney who wants to prove her capabilities in court. He designed her hairstyle based on how she would be standing on the left of Phoenix or Apollo when assisting them, making sure that it looked good from that perspective. He also created the hairstyle to be able to convey Athena's enthusiasm and energy through its movements. He gave Athena the little gadget named Widget, that hangs around her neck, to visually represent the mood matrix. As they wanted other characters to be able to see the mood matrix, it was decided to make Widget project the mood matrix as a hologram. The mood matrix itself, which needed to represent people's mental state visually, was a challenge for the art team. They eventually decided to use the vastness of outer space and the Earth in the design, and ended up using a portable planetarium as the base motif. This also influenced the mood matrix background music, which Fuse described as having an "outer space feel".
  When designing Simon Blackquill, the new rival prosecutor character, Fuse initially intended to make him different from all previous Ace Attorney prosecutors and focusing almost entirely on the convict aspect of Blackquill, making him look like a "total criminal". At this point in development, Blackquill was intended to be the character who could analyze emotions based on voices, so he was given a headgear to wear. Next, Fuse put more focus on the prosecutor aspect, but ended up with a design that he described as "just another prosecutor"; he realized that the prosecutor and convict aspects were opposites, with one decreasing as the other increases.
  The black-and-white stripes on the prisoner's uniform in the first design reminded Fuse of the Forty-seven Ronin, who wore black and white; this led him to incorporate traditional Japanese clothing into the design. He called this the key to solving the problem, but still had further issues with the design: if he made the outfit too Japanese, Blackquill would not look like an Ace 
caption: Blackquill's black-and-white prison uniform reminded Fuse of the 47 Ronin, leading him to use Japanese clothing in the design.
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