I really want to thank you for taking the time to interview us, the crazy people over at Crisis. ^^
Something I wanted to mention that might have gotten lost in the hubbub following Ceres's departure is this: Validus is going to be taking on the role as character designer (he drew the lineart for the Xavier picture in the interview), and I'll be taking on the duties of cel shade artist to color said pictures. We've set a goal of ourselves to balance the artwork with our separate tiling/spriting duties, but we hope that the result will be a cast of characters as colorful and diverse as those in the past two games. ^^
Also, if anyone reading this happens to be a very talented spriter/tile artist, we can always use help. ^^ I'd really LOVE someone who could help me do walking graphics--I have about 75 NPCs designed right now and have to wade through them, making walking graphics. It's quite tedious work. XD