Tetsuya Nomura
Tetsuya Nomura (野村 哲也, Nomura Tetsuya?) (born October 8, 1970) is a Japanese video game director and character designer working for Square Enix (formerly Square). He has been rated by the website Next Generation as the 7th most important and anticipated video game developer of 2007.[2]
[edit] Biography
[edit] Time Before Square
Nomura was born in Kochi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. When he was a young man, he worked at a vocational school creating art for advertisements.
[edit] Time at Square
In the early 1990s, Square hired him to work as monster designer for Final Fantasy V and then as graphic director and minor character designer for Final Fantasy VI.
Nomura didn't gain recognition until 1995, when Square asked him to be the character designer for Final Fantasy VII to replace Yoshitaka Amano, the series' original character designer. It was a huge critical and commercial success and became the definitive role playing game for the PlayStation. In 1998, he worked on both Parasite Eve & Brave Fencer Musashi. In 1997, Nomura worked on 1999's Final Fantasy VIII, a game that achieved commercial success, where he returned as the character designer.
Afterwards, Nomura worked on several other different projects such as Ehrgeiz for the PlayStation. He continued on to design characters for Square's first PlayStation 2 game, The Bouncer, before returning to character designing for the Final Fantasy series with Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2 and Final Fantasy XI [3]. More recently, he has acted as the director, concept artist, and character designer for the Kingdom Hearts series, which currently includes the title game, the Game Boy Advance sequel Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, and the PlayStation 2 sequel Kingdom Hearts II.
Nomura directed the CGI animated film Final Fantasy VII Advent Children which was released on September 14, 2005 in Japan and in North America on April 25, 2006, and also wrote some of the lyrics that appear on the soundtrack. This was also Nomura's film debut.
[edit] Current Work at Square Enix
Nomura is currently working on the Fabula Nova Crystallis: Final Fantasy XIII projects. He is the character designer of all three games and the director of Final Fantasy Versus XIII, as well as the character designer of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII and Dissidia: Final Fantasy for the Playstation Portable (PSP). His character designs are praised for being more vibrant and realistic than those of former Final Fantasys, but criticized for males looking overly feminine and clothing designs using inordinate numbers of belts, chains, straps, and zippers.[citation needed]
Nomura also confirmed that he will be working on multiple projects related to the Kingdom Hearts series - Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, and Kingdom Hearts: Coded. These were revealed to be additional projects in the Kingdom Hearts series at the 2007 Tokyo Game Show. One of the showcased titles will focus on events outside the scope of the current storyline and characters featured in the previous games.
[edit] Works credited
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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