story

We're telling the Tekken story, we're telling our story, and we're just clashing both worlds together. My name is Juan Huerta, Footwear Graphics Designer.

"My name is Katsuhiro Harada, executive game director and the game producer.
I'm Michael Murray, Tekken series producer. 
Tekken has this beautiful story of father and son from the beginning, from one to eight. Our job was to tell that story through two shoes, the Kazuya and the Jin."

Being a sneaker fan, I was a little short-sighted, and I thought, "Okay, is it going to be Dunks? Is it going to be Jordans? What is it going to be?"

"And then I saw them come back with Foamposites and I was like, ""Wow, that's a blast from the past.""
We try to do a few things that's never been done on a Foam. You start designing something for the physical, but then you could just imagine it in the digital world."

There's where the reflectivity came in, there's where the thunder came in. It's like, "How do we create a shoe that changes?" Because in the digital world, things change. 

We wanted to really tell the story of Kazuya. We saw the jacket and that was our main inspo. And then it's how do we take that video game element and bring it into real life, into the footwear?

"And then how do you flip it on its head and do the same thing for gen? How do we make two shoes that are completely different, but tell the same story?
I was so blown away by the cues, the various visual fine details that the Nike team had added"

for both colorways of the shoes. But all of the different details that they had come up with on their own were spot on. My favorite thing that blew me away when I saw it was I thought you just open up a normal Nike box, there's the shoes.

But they showed me this box where when you open it up, the sneakers elevate out the box, and I'd never seen anything like that. When I met Juan at Evo, I found out he actually 

"was a Tekken-head and had grown up with the franchise. So I was quite happy to see that.
This was a unique design process, to take something 2D to 3D. When we got the physical samples, we sent those samples over to Tekken, and Tekken was able"

to 3D scan them to actually get the best representation of the design into the game. When they showed us the sneak peek, it's just like, "Oh, I can't believe you see something again that you're holding your hand on screen."

The key point is making sure that when the character wears the shoes in the game, it doesn’t look out of place.

Not unnatural, it should feel like Kazuya or Jin could be wearing them in the game.

Not just when they’re fighting, but even in their everyday life, like it’s something totally natural for them. 

Behind the Design

Air Foamposite One / TEKKEN