The Breathtaking Final Fantasy Art of Yoshitaka Amano

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.

Born 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. 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.

Approached 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.”

“I looked at the sprites as just a symbol of my art,” Amano told 1up.com in 2006. “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.

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. On July 19, it will release a “Slipcase Edition” of the collection, without some of the limited-edition inclusions but with all of the artwork presented in three hardcover volumes.

Here are some of the pieces that will be included — plus a look at how the characters depicted ended up looking in the game itself. Do the game sprite characters make you think of Amano’s art, or the other way around?

Above:

Final Fantasy: ‘Ochu vs. the Warriors of Light’

This early illustration from the first Final Fantasy game clearly illustrates the divide between Amano’s conceptions of the characters and how they had to be rendered on the low-powered gaming hardware. The enemy “Ochu” (“Ocho” in the first English version of the game) was represented by a sprite only as tall as the player’s characters, but in reality it was supposed to be a hundred times larger than the nameless protagonists, two of whom are seen attacking the creature in this piece.

Final Fantasy: ‘Behemoth vs. the Warriors of Light’

This second Amano illustration from Final Fantasy is something of an oddity — here, the Warriors of Light are attacking an enemy character called Behemoth, but this character didn’t make it into the actual game itself. However, this Behemoth design did make it intoFinal Fantasy II a year later, and in fact became one of the few enemy designs to become a series mainstay, appearing in every single game since (and letting the player know that they were in for a major fight).

Final Fantasy IV: ‘Phase’

The “Phase” enemy from Final Fantasy IV, alternately called “Evil Mask” or “Deathmask” in English translations, has a curious manner of attacking you: He casts “Reflect” magic on himself, then casts devastating magical attacks on himself, which bounce off him and hit you. He appears in the final dungeon of the game, shortly before your party tackles the final foe.

Final Fantasy IV:: ‘Leshy’

“Leshy,” sometimes called “Weeper” or “Lacy” in English translations, is another enemy character from Final Fantasy IV. Bare-breasted female forms, snake-ladies and the like were common in Japanese fantasy games of this era and often had to be censored for overseas releases; in Leshy’s case the sprite’s arms were positioned so as to make such censorship unnecessary. (Amano evinced no such concern in his original character design.)

Final Fantasy VII promotional image

After the release of Final Fantasy VI in 1994, Amano stepped away from doing the character designs for the series. As Final Fantasy went high-tech with the Sony PlayStation and moved from sprites to more realistic polygonal models, the promotional artwork shifted from Amano’s ethereal illustrations to slick, glossy 3-D computer art. But Amano was still closely identified with the more-popular-than-ever series, and Square retained his services for a few occasional promotional illustrations, like this one featuring the game’s main character, Cloud.

Final Fantasy VII: ‘Matataki’ (‘An Instant’)

Another illustration from Final Fantasy VII, featuring the characters Cloud and Red XIII (game version pictured right).

Final Fantasy VII: ‘Idomu’ (‘Challenge’)

A final illustration of a grouping of Final Fantasy VII characters.