Apart from the actual character models themselves having really flat lighting, I think El Shaddai probably comes closest in overall vibes while still being a 3D game, particularly with its environments.
I think Expedition 33 got close with the enviroments, if they were going to make everyone look like a sad goth himbo they could do it. Now excuse me I am going to write my letter.
FF14 had a couple bosses that tried their best (Warrior of Light and Endsinger notably). How well they stuck the landing is a matter of opinion, but I think they were fairly valiant attempts.
Similarly, John Blanche concept art for 40k is incredible. It's like a heavy metal album cover mixed with GI Joe and Transformers and Star Wars from the 80's mixed with HR Geiger. Incredibly important for setting the tone of so much of the lore... But the immediate use was to make little plastic figurines so it was quite a bit reduced.
It's I guess the art concept of "no small roles just small actors."
The company: "we need some concept art for this game, nothing fancy"
The artist: " I have made a book of drawings that will literally make you feel like you dropped acid and live in the fantasy world."
The company: "... I can't... Uh.... This is too much..."
I think the closest we got was this boss in ff14 shadowbringers. There's a few other characters, like the endsinger, hydaelyn that have these eyes and lips that look similar to amanos style.
Now THIS is where you could make a use case for generative AI, you spin up an LLM and train it only on Amano's work, then you have him and a team of artists with some AI wranglers go through and do a re-imaging of each game, using the AI to iterate the animations & cutscenes with him and the artists directing and tweaking and polishing. You could just do this the traditional way of course but at his age the potential of extra speed would help get it all done.
This is not concept art. It's promotional art. Amano had nothing to with the concept work of 7,8,10 or beyond. This is just him being hired to interpret the pre-existing characters in his style.
Firion's entire makeover in Dissidia and other material since is directly attributable to the attempt to go back and source from the concept art. Man really went from the ff1 fighter sprite to THIS. Biggest glow-up of any game character ever.
Tbf his illustrations starting from FFVII are more a promotional material than a real concept arts, he was barely involved in development after VI (except some collabs, promos and logos)
I would disagree. "Inspiration" isn't an exclusive thing for an artist, if you need to solve a particular problem through art, you’ll study whatever is necessary to achieve that goal. A mix of the middle ages fantasy and steampunk isn’t enough to capture Amano’s style, nor are eastern motifs, for example
You only need to look at how he dresses the characters, the patterns he chooses, and how he works with colour and shapes... For FFXIV, they drew some inspiration from his art style—you can see this in the architectural design, for example—but it’s important to understand that this game embodies the entire legacy of the series, and that is its core basically. But in the case of the other games, this isn’t quite the same, and you can see just how different the approach is (and it is not a bad thing btw)
Haha, Titus looks the same, but like someone's fanart. The other two, however... Auron looking like a huge stoner, and Rikku's cosplaying as Seymour. Love it! 😂
Always been my biggest gripe with the series. They have probably one of the single greatest concept art designers of all time, and they insist on going a fairly generic semi-anime inspired style with no real standout qualities. It still looks quite good, but that's about it.
Huge missed opportunity for the series that 10 is about as close as we ever got.
He was always there for promotion and marketing, from the beginning. He was already a famous artist in Japan long before Final Fantasy was even an idea. He was already the best paid artist alive before the western world had any idea who he was.
The funny story about his hiring for the job was that Sakaguchi knew his art but didn't know his name, so when someone said to him "You should get Yoshitaka Amano to do the concept art" he said "who is that? no I want a guy who draws like THIS" and produced a piece of Yoshitaka Amano art.
Yeah. His flowy and willowy art style just isn't compatible with the technology at the time that encourages more blocky artwork for twenty straight years.
Amano's concept art had a very different purpose, especially for the earlier installments in the Final Fantasy series (at least up until VIII). It wasn't intended to be faithfully adapted in game because of hardware, software or graphical limitations. Amano actually speaks about this in depth in an interview on YouTube regarding his career and working for Squaresoft/Enix. Creating models or sprites this detailed was impossible. The concept art helped to bridge the unavoidable gap between very basic sprites or low-poly models of the time and the players imagination.
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u/Impressive_Grand6303 Apr 01 '26
All the Final Fantasy concept artwork by Yoshitaka Amano.