"Once again, hello."

This time I'll talk about an artist that I am pretty sure you've seen one of his artworks at least. If not, then meet Yoshitaka Amano!

Yoshitaka Amano (天野 喜孝, Amano Yoshitaka; born March 26, 1952) is a Japanese visual artist, character designer, illustrator, a scenic designer for theatre and film, and a costume designer. He began his career in 1967 at Tatsunoko Production working on anime such as Speed Racer and later became the creator of iconic and influential characters from anime such as Gatchaman, Tekkaman, Honeybee Hutch, and Casshern. In 1982 he went independent and became a freelance artist, finding success as an illustrator for numerous authors, and worked on best-selling novel series, such as The Guin Saga and Vampire Hunter D. He is also known for his commissioned illustrations for the popular video game franchise Final Fantasy.

In 1987, Amano joined Square (now known as Square Enix) to work on a role-playing video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System: Final Fantasy. Amano produced conceptual design pieces for the game in both traditional and computer designed artwork. At this time, he also worked for another video game company, Kure Software Koubou, producing box cover illustrations as well as some character designs. This work included designs for Kure's First Queen series. Following Final Fantasy VI in 1994, he stepped down as the conceptual, image, and graphic designer of the series. As of 2025, he continues to provide promotional and character artwork for the following games and to design their title logos.

Amano became the world's highest-earning artist in 1996, earning $40,000,000 (equivalent to $80,000,000 in 2024) that year from sales of silk screens, lithographs and etchings based on his book illustrations. His work began receiving international recognition following the release of Final Fantasy VII in 1997. In 2006, Hironobu Sakaguchi, the former designer and creator of the Final Fantasy series, recruited Amano and composer Nobuo Uematsu to work on video games at Mistwalker.

Source: Wikipedia

"So what makes this legendary artist, well, special? Let me show you."