Comic Review: Yoshitaka Amano Illustrated Biography – Beyond the Fantasy (Dark Horse)

Dark Horse Comics brings you the life and imagery of Japan’s master of fantasy and sci-fi art of the illustrated biography – beyond the fantasy of Yoshitaka Amano.

From the art of Final Fantasy and Vampire Hunter D, this book gives a lot of the encyclopedia of the life of an illustrator from his youth to a veteran artist. I admire the art that he does on his illustrations of Final Fantasy, even though, I merely studied his art style, not the drawing, but supposedly tends to have a dream like imagery to paint his illustrations which would make more influenced to all the other artists in the world. I like Tetsuya Nomura’s character designs, but the art kind of shows some flaws for the character designs for each game that the developers are working, but Amano’s art is actually a legend. Somehow, this book celebrates his 66th birthday and the time when he worked as an artist over 50 years ago, and it takes you back to the past when Amano has spent his childhood.

It’s kind of like this, this book is describing this biography and his life as an illustrator, rather than someone is putting an art portfolio, along with its bio and the artwork with it just to find a job for themselves. But his life just happened a long time ago, right in the 60s or 70s. Amano should have announced his interviews at Japan Society and have the fans buy the tickets just to introduce him in person. During his childhood, he started to doodle and draw stuff during the classroom because sometimes school can be tough and he needs his mind to create a universe around him by drawing the stuff that he loves, just until he discovered some magazines of some illustrated covers from professional artists which made him happy. Even though the art isn’t enough, he also discovered fantasy, science fiction and samurai fights that actually admire him. Before he started drawing illustrations for every Final Fantasy game, Amano started working as an illustrator at Tatsunoko Production, well, if you don’t know what it is, then you haven’t played Tatsunoko vs. Capcom on the Wii or watched Gatchaman, the twin brother of Kamen Rider, and the older brother of Super Sentai series. He just spent his years working at Tatsunoko, until he’s older and quit his job just to become an independent artist.

His life just goes on ever since he started making his illustrations for Vampire Hunter D and Final Fantasy, all it stands to know that he’s doing his own projects and grew his popularity much later, and unlike any other art that he made, Final Fantasy is the one that represents one of Amano’s actual creations, because of his inspirations of fantasy, sci-fi and samurai fights when he discovered those art magazines on his youth. Learning the story of an artist is actually a legend, to any other artist who wishes to be independent. Ever since I got “The Sky- The Art of Final Fantasy” art book, it gave me some great ideas to draw from inspiration from Amano’s character designs.

The last thing, that I want to go for is his life as an artist, or should I say being Yoshitaka Amano. Ever since his childhood to teenage years, and now to an adult, he wondered about his life, even as a father with his wife and three children. He almost describes living in real life as a normal adult would do. It also shows some pictures of every studio that he worked on and expecting to go for a tour while reading his bio. Perhaps if I could have taken some pictures of my personal art studio, maybe anyone would understand how I work like this, well maybe someday if I could get a decent studio with an amount of space, I’ll be happy. What his art made it so appealing is that Amano has a few connections around the world, like Paris and New York. In fact, his art made it into a world phenomenon and set on exhibitions for him and his work. And on top of that, he wasn’t taught from an art teacher at a normal school or art school, he was a self-taught man, his lessons to improve his drawing and painting skills have some advantages even making his art in progress, even so in this time, he’s actually more amazing, to begin with.

The book also has some finished illustrations between projects and experiences during his lifetime. And it was stunning by not just seeing the Final Fantasy illustrations but other kinds of artist methods that he took. Yoshitaka Amano’s Illustrated biography is actually perfect for aspiring artists to learn from his experience of becoming an artist of a profession.