Igusa Matsuyama shares incredible artifact: Original Clay Sculpture used for Harvest Moon 64 box art!
I don't usually share every little happening on Igusa Matsuyama's instagram, besides sharing that it was opened, since if I did I'd mostly just be re-posting their incredible artwork and you should really go see it for yourself on their account, but today they posted something really incredible:
Look familiar? It's a copy of the clay model used for the Japanese box art for Harvest Moon 64! A similar image was also used as the player character/narrator's portrait during certain event scenes.
In the post, Igusa explains that they made two of these models in case something happened during production. Amazingly, nothing did, so they just ended up having an extra copy! One of them was sent along to Victor Interactive Software and photographed to be used as the game's box art while the other was kept by Igusa. If you look really closely, you can spot a few differences between the two, like the ladybug facing the other way and the wood frame having different places where the branches were cut off and such. For reference, an image of the box art's version is appended to the end of this post.
A lot of Igusa Matsuyama's artwork, including the other clay model that was photographed for the purpose of this box art, was lost a long time ago. Many important things, like the artwork of the SNES characters have been completely lost to time, but, thanks to Igusa making an extra and keeping it preserved, this amazing artifact still exists today.