YOSHITAKA AMANO-

Yoshitaka Amano is one of my top favorite artists of all time! He is responsible for such character designs as Cloud and Tifa from the top selling game Final Fantasy 7, Zidane, Dagger, and Kuja from Final Fantasy 9. In truth he has worked on almost all of the FF series although he is often overlooked. He has also designed characters for Gatchaman and many famous Japanese video games. Another of his major works is the very popular Vampire Hunter D, and the second one, Bloodlust. Amano considers himself a painter before an illustrator, if you are familiar with any of his works you could see why. The vibrant poses, colors, and emotion put into his paintings set him apart from all other artist without a doubt! He was born in Shizuoka, Japan in 1952 and was placed in an art dormitory at the age of 15, by the next year was designing characters professionally! Amano later moved to New York City and an exhibition was held for him in 1997 called “Think like Amano”. He is currently working on many things that will shove him back into the spotlight, some of them involving 3-d animation. I salute Yoshitaka Amano and his hard-hitting impact on the anime culture! Please visit Amanosworld.com and search for galleries of his paintings. Please tell me if they impact you in anyway!