Tetsuya Nomura Illustrator - Final Fantasy
Tetsuya Nomura is a Japanese video game designer, artist, and director employed by Square Enix and most famous for his creative involvement in the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts game series. Following his work on Kingdom Hearts, he worked on film and was instrumental in the production of the movie that came to be known as Final Fantasy Advent Children.
Nomura’s career started with humble beginnings at Square as a debugger, but he eventually found himself leading a development team for a popular game series Kingdom Hearts, a successful collaboration between Square and Disney. Nomura also went on to take on leading character design roles for other successful Square Enix titles like Final Fantasy XIII. Tetsuya Nomura is known for using traditional Japanese animation styles in his works, which includes western influences as well. Through his work, he has been an influential figure among many young and eager game developers and artists.
Early Life
Early in life, Testuya Nomura’s father sparked his interest in games and art, leading to Nomura producing small drawings and decorating sugoroku board games when he was still at an incredibly young age. At the early age of three, Nomura was already drawing and went on to design sugoroku boards during his elementary school years. He was involved with sports and played baseball, swam, and was involved in other outdoor activities like fishing.
After entering middle school, his father gave him his first computer, where he played Legends of Star Arthur: Planet Mephius, which inspired him to begin programming and producing his own video games. He went on to develop a strong interest in video games, playing games like tennis in ping-pong using Nintendo’s color TV game console. In high school, Nomura obtained a Famicon (Nintendo Entertainment System in America). He became a big fan of the Dragon Quest series and was eventually introduced to Final Fantasy and other works by Yoshitaka Amano. He also became interested in manga and even considered pursuing it as a career, but instead went to a vocational school to pursue advertisement and magazine work. Despite all of this, however, Nomura ended up applying to Square. During his time at Square, Nomura would eventually come to create some of the series’ most well-known titles and went on to fill incredibly important roles within the company.
Career
Nomura started out as a humble uncredited debugger for Final Fantasy IV, but later ended up taking more responsibility later in development. He received training and designed the enemies of Final Fantasy V. In his proposals to the game director, Nomura hand wrote his ideas and included pictures and illustrations, unlike many other members on the team. This ended up impressing director Hironobu Sakaguchi and designer Yoshinori Kitase. He went on to become a graphics designer for Final Fantasy VI and the principal character designer for Final Fantasy VII. Nomura was also the one responsible for creating the idea of Limit Break attacks for the game, while also contributing to plot details as well. He created Final Fantasy VIII characters that aligned more with his personal style of drawing and took a more realistic approach to the game’s graphics. He went on to work on Final Fantasy X as well, where he attempted to design the character’s clothing to resemble what was seen in full-motion pictures. Nomura also worked as the director of Kingdom Hearts, directing a team of many people from February 2000 on. After working on other high profile projects and releases in the Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy series, Nomura’s most recent work is focused on the Final Fantasy VII Remake, a much-anticipated title that will bring back some of Final Fantasy’s most iconic characters, such as Cloud Strife and Sephiroth.
Style
Some of Nomura’s biggest influences are Hironobu Sakaguchi, Yoshinori Kitase, Hiroyuki Ito, and Tetsuya Takahashi. Nomura often designs Final Fantasy games with darker storylines and more science-fiction and futuristic feel to them when compared to other games in the series. He also takes a lot of inspiration from the natural world in his work and uses traditional anime styles of drawing, while also drawing upon Western influences as well. He has been criticized for creating characters that are too androgynous. Some fans also believe that the outfits he designed for his characters in the past used too many zippers, belts, and buckles as well. Recently, however, Nomura has started to use a variety of other types of accessories when designing characters’ outfits, like ribbons and unique jackets, among other things. In more recent games, he has abandoned some traditional anime styles for a more realistic depiction of characters. Over the years, Nomura’s style has evolved and continues to grow.