Itaru Hinoue

Hinoue entered a vocational school to become a professional artist due to the influence of the popular adult visual novel Dōkyūsei by ELF.

Her first work for a visual novel was as one of many artists for Tamago Ryōri by Bon Bin Pompon in 1996, but shortly after transferred to the software company Tactics under the publisher Nexton.

[1] There, she was the art director of three games: Dōsei, Moon, and One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e. After the completion of One, Hinoue and much of the staff who made both Moon and One, including Jun Maeda, Shinji Orito, Naoki Hisaya, and OdiakeS, left Tactics to work under the video game publishing company VisualArt's where they formed the company Key.

At Key, Hinoue was the sole art director for their first three titles, Kanon, Air, and Clannad, but did not contribute for the two games that followed, Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet, and Tomoyo After: It's a Wonderful Life.

Outside of Key in 2006, Hinoue was the art director for the yaoi visual novel Bokura wa Minna, Koi o suru by the company Pekoe, also under VisualArt's.

[3] Hinoue worked on Key's ninth game Rewrite by heading the project's planning, and acting as the sole art director and character designer.

The book was the single-most expensive item sold at the event, and contains over 170 illustrations of mainly heroines featured in Key's visual novels, but also contains other works by Hinoue such as One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e.[13] Upon release, it was later discovered that there were some problems with some of the books, such as missing or out-of-order pages, or small dark specks on some of the illustrations.