Latest Final Fantasy XI We are interviewing Vana’diel now online and in it Tetsuya Nomura and Akihiko Matsui talked about Nomura’s art and design, especially about FFV. The interview talks about how Nomura got started with Square Enix. While it all started with his first day on the job FFIVit also goes into his work on characters like Gilgamesh from FFV. One common thread that comes up is discussing how he makes the characters look “cool”.
This was offered as an explanation for why Tetsuya Nomura’s monster design gave FFV too big. He mentions “without any guidance” when starting out as a designer. He said the following.
I am less than half my current age and am just illustrating without any professional knowledge. When I draw monsters for FFV, a senior colleague from the graphics team guided me to make my designs smaller because they are larger than the specified size. I pouted, “Okay, but it would look cooler if it was bigger”, which angered them.
Matsui also gave his thoughts on how Tetsuya Nomura will try to create “cool” designs while working. Final Fantasy games like FFV.
In addition, Tetsu’s illustrations have had a profound influence on my idea of the fantasy genre. Before that, I was more of a traditionalist when it came to fantasy. However, Tetsu’s attitude is, “Anything is fine, as long as it’s great” and he is always eager to incorporate innovative designs. For example, characters like Gilgamesh from FFV, or Setzer and Shadow from FFVI won’t really belong in what is considered high fantasy*, but they look really cool. Seeing them made me think, “So ‘fantasy’ can be like this too!” and changed my perception.
While Tetsuya Nomura started FFIV and design the monsters for FFV, he influenced the looks of characters in many Square Enix games. For example, most recently he worked on games like FFVII remake, Kingdom Hearts III, NEO The world ends for you, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Originand Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
