QuickNavigation - FF Odyssey Editorials Squaresoft Legends (Part III) - Yoshitaka Amano (Last updated on 11/14/2007)

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Part III - Yoshitaka Amano

Biography

Name: Yoshitaka Amano
Birthdate: July 28th, 1952
Birthplace: Shizuoka city, Japan
Occupation: Artist

Information

     Yoshitaka Amano started his career in 1967, working in the animation department of a small Japanese production company. He was introduced to the Japanese anime scene and designed various anime characters for the Time Bokan and Honey Bee series in particular. Throughout the 1970’s, Amano became influenced by late 19th and early 20th century European art as well as the traditional Japanese woodblock printing. Amano concentrated mostly on drawings for science fiction and fantasy.

     His best-known works in the 1980’s was his character design from the popular novel series Vampire Hunter D. It became one of the first anime films released outside of Japan. In 1987, he worked on the Final Fantasy project for what was expected to be Squaresoft’s last game. This opened up a whole new world for Amano’s work. With video game technology still rather primitive, Amano produced very impressive designs in his artwork. Amano began producing his character artwork for the Final Fantasy series as it grew in popularity. Amano stopped becoming the main artist of the series after 1994 but began to improve his popularity overseas. He established the “Think like Amano” exhibition in New York city in 1997. This followed several other exhibitions opened in New York. Amano also had a brief appearance in the movie “New Rose Hotel” in which he plays the character Hiroshi. In recent years, other projects of Amano include character designs from other video games as well as his character designs being used in the anime movie Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.

     Presently, Amano has joined Hironobu Sakaguchi and his team at Mistwalker. According to an interview with a French magazine, Amano is currently working on the character designs to Final Fantasy XIII.

Projects (Various roles; source: Wikipedia)

Final Fantasy I (1987)
Final Fantasy II (1988)
First Queen (1988)
Duel (1989)
Duel98 (1989)
Final Fantasy III (1990)
First Queen 2
Final Fantasy IV (1991)
Final Fantasy V (1992)
Kawanakajima Izuroku
First Queen 3 (1993)
Final Fantasy VI (1994)
Front Mission (1995)
Front Mission: Gun Hazard (1996)
Final Fantasy VII (1997)
Kartia: World of Fate (1998)
Final Fantasy VIII (1999)
Final Fantasy IX (2000)
Final Fantasy X (2001)
Final Fantasy XI (2002)
Final Fantasy XII (2006)
Final Fantasy XIII