Masahiro Ito

Masahiro Ito (伊藤 暢達 Itō Masahiro) is a designer and illustrator best known for his work as monster designer for the three first games in the Silent Hill series.

Biography
Ito was born in Saitama, Japan in 1972, and graduated from the graphic design department of Tama Art University. He joined Konami in 1997 and became part of Team Silent, where he worked as background and creature designer of Silent Hill, art director and creature designer in Silent Hill 2, and art director, creature and background designer in Silent Hill 3.

After the split of Team Silent, Ito did a few more contributions to the Silent Hill series, being credited with a "special thanks" for Silent Hill 4: The Room, drawing one of the alternate covers of Dying Inside volume 3, the art for the comics Cage of Cradle and Double Under Dusk, creating the cover art and the comic White Hunter for the Silent Hill: Origins soundtrack, and drew the covers for the Japanese versions of Silent Hill: Homecoming and Silent Hill: Downpour.

Non-Silent Hill related work includes drawing art for KIBA, a Japanese trading card game, and Metal Gear Solid 4. He has released an art book titled The 2nd Wild Pig, which is only available in Japan.

Ito cites Francis Bacon, Horst Janssen and Magdalena Abakanowicz as his artistic inspirations.

Twitter usage
Ito is a prominent user of Twitter and can speak English, and as a result, he is essentially the only member of Team Silent who has kept in contact with the series' Western fanbase (apart from the voice actors such as Guy Cihi). As a result, he has provided insight into the series, mainly the first three games due to his involvement in them, such as what monsters symbolize, their inspirations, and occasionally plot details.

Trivia

 * As the creator of Pyramid Head, Ito is happy about Pyramid Head's popularity, although he is displeased with Pyramid Head's inclusion in the later games, believing that Pyramid Head strayed too far from his original purpose regarding James. With the addition of Silent Hill: Homecoming, the canon seems to have been changed so that anyone with intense guilt may conjure up a monster resembling Pyramid Head as an entity (e.g. the Bogeyman), possibly due to the Valtiel sect's role as executioners in Toluca Prison. It is unclear if the Bogeyman can be considered Pyramid Head, however. When Tomm Hulett became involved with the series, he protested against Pyramid Head's usage in the game, but the other developers did so anyway. In Silent Hill: Downpour, Murphy was given the Bogeyman as a haunter instead.
 * Ito stated on Twitter that he had been contacted for work on Silent Hill: Revelation, but that he turned it down due to being busy. When director M.J. Bassett was asked about this, Bassett said she hadn't commissioned Ito, and surmised it was likely for an earlier incarnation of the film.
 * Ito drew inspiration in his work from his favorite artist, Francis Bacon.
 * Masahiro Ito has stated that when it came to designing monsters in the Silent Hill games, he tended to remain astray from the orthodox beasts resembling demons, etc. Instead, he preferred to make the enemies mostly human, but distort each in a unique manner to only make their symbolism more morbid and repulsive, rooted in the idea of turning what human beings are so accustomed to into monsters.
 * Ito enjoys the manga Abara and Blame!.
 * Ito enjoys World War II tanks: "Strictly speaking, I'm German and Russian tanks/airplanes in Eastern Front of WW2 enthusiast."