Shigefumi Hino
Shigefumi Hino (日野 重文 "Hino Shigefumi", born 1963) is a Japanese graphics designer, game director and planner from Nintendo. He is the creator of Yoshi from the "Yoshi" franchise. Hino later served as the director of the "Pikmin" series, alongside Masamichi Abe. Career. Shigefumi Hino joined Nintendo in 1989, where his first project was designing a sequel to "", which was ultimately unreleased. His first released product was "Super Mario World" in 1990, where he created the game's pixel art, as well as the character Yoshi, based on a rough sketch by Takashi Tezuka. Afterwards, Hino had the  idea for a game with Yoshi as the main character, which would become "Yoshi's Island". He chose a hand-drawn visual style to differentiate it from Rare's "Donkey Kong Country", a game that notably used pre-rendered 3D graphics. Hino then co-directed "Pikmin" and "Pikmin 2" with Masamichi Abe, as well as "Pikmin 3" with Yuji Kando. He has additionally worked as a designer for "Super Mario Maker" and "Super Mario Maker 2".