Last year, Dark Horse Comics released The Sky, a limited-edition box set of books collecting Amano's illustrations for the last 25 years of Final Fantasy games, which quickly sold out. "I was in charge of making the master art piece that people would keep in their mind, and people would remember this art because of these symbols in the game." The full illustrations would be printed in the game's packaging, instruction manuals, strategy guides and other promotional materials. "I looked at the sprites as just a symbol of my art," Amano told 1up.com in 2006. His artistic signature, quite different from the big-eyed, primary-hued anime style that had come to define postwar Japanese aesthetic, lent a truly otherworldly feel to the covers of the sci-fi and fantasy novels his work appeared on.Īpproached by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi to design the look of the nascent RPG series for the 8-bit Nintendo Famicom circa 1987, Amano brought a uniquely graceful and artistic touch to a medium that was at that point still dominated by rough and utilitarian "programmer art." The worldwide success of the Final Fantasy series of role-playing games is due in great part to the contributions of graphic artist Yoshitaka Amano.īorn in 1952, Amano began his career as an animator for seminal Japanese animation series like Speed Racer and Gatchaman, before turning freelance in the 1980s and concentrating on illustrations.
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