Yoshitaka Amano, born 1952 in Shizuka, Japan, is one of Japan’s most-renowned artists and illustrators. He also began his career as a character designer for early anime shows like Speed Racer, Gatchaman and Tekkaman. He would continue to build on his portfolio of unique character designs for anime, video game franchises and Japanese pop culture art.
Amano-san has pointed out Western artists such as comic book artist Neal Adams as an inspiration in his own style which when combined with his knowledge and appreciation of the classic Japanese hard woodblock printing known as Ukiyo-e would lead to one of the most unique character styles in mainstream pop-culture.
Yet, Amano-san will forever be known for and continues to be popular for his work in helping design the characters for the the video game rpg franchise known the world over as Final Fantasy.
Through the Shattered Lens 
Cheers! When I was a kid I thought Amano’s works in the Final Fantasy series were kind of creepy, but they grew on me a lot over time. I consider him one of my favorite artists today.
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Yup, now it’s hard to even think about Final Fantasy without picturing Amano’s work as the original character designs. Shame the characters in the game themselves don’t actually look like how Amano designed them. Now those would be some unique looking games.
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