Of Course Ikumi Nakamura’s Rainbow Six Siege Skins Are Dope

I don’t play Rainbow Six Siege, but Ubisoft’s recent collaboration with Ikumi Nakamura might change my mind.

Nakamura, the creative director who won the gaming world’s heart with her energetic GhostWire: Tokyo presentation at E3 2019, has been bouncing around the industry as a freelancer since leaving ZeniMax Media subsidiary Tango Gameworks later that year. Her latest gig is with Ubisoft, specifically in designing a couple of spooky operator uniforms for Rainbow Six Siege. Much like Nakamura herself, they absolutely rule.

中村育美さん(@nakamura193)がデザインした「ECHO囁きセット」と「DOKKAEBI霊魂セット」が遂に『レインボーシックス シージ』に登場！あなたはどちらを手に入れたいですか？ #レインボーシックスシージ pic.twitter.com/gZXi7QYKWe

— レインボーシックス公式 (@Rainbow6JP) March 3, 2021

These uniforms, which are available for purchase now, also outfit operators Echo and Dokkaebi with matching weapon skins and charms. After a brief perusal of the rest of the skins in the game, I can safely say Nakamura’s contributions are far and away the coolest Rainbow Six Siege has ever seen.

“Since it’s an FPS, I even designed the nails of the female operators with care!” Nakamura wrote on Twitter earlier this week. “Isn’t it nice to get dressed up on the battlefield once in a while?”

Dokkaebi /도깨비(Japanese: Onibi, Hitodama) is a type of atmospheric ghost light in legends of Asia. there is a theory that it is not phosphorus itself, but rather the spontaneous combustion of phosphine, or it is burning methane produced from the decay of the corpse. pic.twitter.com/1Xuk0rfr3X

— Ikumi Nakamura ???? (@nakamura193) March 4, 2021

Nakamura also shared a few concept sketches from her time designing for Rainbow Six Siege. At some point in the process, she even suggested surrounding Dokkaebi’s face in flames due to the origins of the Korean operator’s name in Japanese, but admitted such an effect was probably “overdone.”

With a résumé designing for some of the most stylish video games of all time (Okami, Bayonetta, The Evil Within, et al), it should come as no surprise that Nakamura’s Rainbow Six Siege skins are incredible. Here’s hoping her dream of opening her own studio is realised sooner rather than later.