Yoshitaka Amano - Anime Convention Personality of the Week - November 5, 2006
Final
Fantasy was supposed to be Square Soft's last Nintendo video game.
Instead, it's turned into a powerful, 20-year gaming franchise that
rivals anything else in the entertainment world. Yoshitaka Amano is the
artist whose designs got the franchise started and carried it through
its early years. Amano already had been acclaimed for his illustrations
for the Vampire Hunter D novel that inspired the look of the anime that
followed, but his Final Fantasy work took his work to new audiences
worldwide, and his popularity grew. His art has been so successful that
American fans insisted on inviting him to two U.S. conventions on
consecutive weekends, and one of those conventions was named in his
honor. "I just like to draw. You know how kids like to draw? I never
grew up from that point," Amano said a few years earlier when he was a
guest of honor at Katsucon. At one point, Amano admitted he was a lazy
type who barely went to work, but he discovered American comics around
that time and his career changed because of that inspiration.
Final
Fantasy was supposed to be Square Soft's last Nintendo video game.
Instead, it's turned into a powerful, 20-year gaming franchise that
rivals anything else in the entertainment world. Yoshitaka Amano is the
artist whose designs got the franchise started and carried it through
its early years. Amano already had been acclaimed for his illustrations
for the Vampire Hunter D novel that inspired the look of the anime that
followed, but his Final Fantasy work took his work to new audiences
worldwide, and his popularity grew. His art has been so successful that
American fans insisted on inviting him to two U.S. conventions on
consecutive weekends, and one of those conventions was named in his
honor. "I just like to draw. You know how kids like to draw? I never
grew up from that point," Amano said a few years earlier when he was a
guest of honor at Katsucon. At one point, Amano admitted he was a lazy
type who barely went to work, but he discovered American comics around
that time and his career changed because of that inspiration. 