Character designs were cooperatively handled by Kunihiko Tanaka and Kouichi Mugitani, while mecha designs were handled by Mugitani and Junya Ishigaki. Mugitani also worked on the game as production designer. The art director was Yasuyuki Honne, who had previously worked on both "Xenogears" and "Chrono Cross", while character motion was handled by Norihiro Takami. Honne collaborated with Takami in creating the character motions for cutscenes. When creating the designs, Tanaka was given an outline of a character by Takahashi in addition to comparisons with real-life actors, and then created the designs from that. Tanaka's art style—which gave characters large eyes dominating their faces—provided a challenge for the team as Takahashi wanted to be as close to the original artwork as possible, but the expressive power of the large-eyed facial design could easily be "destroyed" by the wrong lighting. Takami worked hard on character models to make sure the large eye styling was preserved without upsetting the model's balance. Mugitani and Ishigaki respectively handled the designs for Vector staff and the Federation. KOS-MOS was initially designed by Tanaka, but he had considerable trouble finalizing her design. Mugitani then contributed, creating something close to KOS-MOS's final design, which was then polished by Tanaka. Tanaka also had difficulty creating Shion's design, giving her glasses as an easy way of showing her personality.