We’re very proud of our community here at Capcom-Unity, and we strive to get you fans involved with our games as much as possible. Recently we had a contest for you to design weapons exclusively for the western release of Monster Hunter Tri, and the results were fantastic. One of the winners designed the new Switch Axe, Sinister Saints. The artist, Shawn M. Mallette (Shawnzy) , recently took the time to talk to me about his inspiration behind the new weapon:

“Right from the start I wanted to do a Switch Axe. Really like the idea of them. But I actually went through a number of concepts before settling on a sort of light vs. dark theme. I got the idea to try and make a weapon that was a bit more “artsy”. Something that was more like a sculpture. I figured in a setting as rich as the Monster Hunter world, there’d be a good number of artisans and sculptors. So I took the basic idea of a light/dark, good vs. evil concept. Which fit nicely into the dual nature of the Switch Axe. I wanted the “dark” side to be sorta visceral, made from monster skin and bones, while the “light” side would be ores, gold, and prettier materials.

Read the whole interview the jump!

After I had the basic idea for it, I started working out how to piece it together. Since the Switch Axes are a bit more complex, I had to break it down into pieces, and make sure that it would look ok in all forms. A lot of tweaking went in to make sure pieces lined up properly, while at the same time trying to not make it too complex so that it would be too much work for the developers. Which in the end they took some liberties with it, which I’m fine with cause they really made it fit into the world of MH better than my initial concept. I had gotten complaints that it didn’t look like it fit into MH that well, and I understood where they came from. It was funny though, because as soon as I sent my entry in, there seemed to be hundreds of things I wanted to change and make better. In the end, I was thoroughly surprised I won, because I thought I could have done much better on it.

It makes me really happy to hear that the Monster Hunter team loved it, because I’ve been a huge Monster Hunter fan ever since we recieved the first PS2 game here. For me to be able to become even a small piece of that means the world to me.”