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Haruhiko Shono (庄野晴彦, Shōno Haruhiko, born 1960) is a Japanese computer graphics artist for films as well as a video game director. He has served as director for numerous computer games and has provided CG work for motion pictures with Will, Ltd. (有限会社ウイル), where he serves as corporate representative. He is best known to Western audiences for his steampunk-inspired visual novel, Gadget, and for his work on the 2004 film, Casshern.
Shono's creative career began in 1985 with the formation of Radical TV. Shono was hired as a member of the visual performance unit, and here he gained an interest in the visual aspects of the film industry. With evidence of visual artistry talent already apparent, Shono was entrusted with the responsibility to act as lead visual display artist in Radical TV's audio-visual display showcase at Expo '85 entitled TV War. The display would be recognized as one of the most significant affirmations of the Japanese IDM subculture.
Shono's first solo-work came in the form of Alice (1991), a highly stylistic visual novel based on the Alice in Wonderland stories. This game won Shono the Multimedia Grand Prix MITI Minister's Prize. In 1992 Shono would again win the MITI Prize for his game L-Zone, which would remain on Japan's list of best-selling CD-ROMs for several years. In 1993, Shono was again awarded the MITI Prize as well as the Multimedia Association Chairman's Prize for his game, Gadget.
For his striking visual style and his mastery of lavish computer graphics at the dawn of the point-and-click adventure game genre, Newsweek named him one of the "most influential people to watch in Cyberspace," and coined the term "cybergames" to describe his highly-realistic visual games whose visual style have been compared to those of Cyan's 1993 best-seller, Myst.