Games - Tetsuya Nomura

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	Games - Tetsuya Nomura

Tetsuya Nomura (野村哲也; Nomura Tetsuya, born October 8, 1970), is a game and character designer at Square Enix. He speaks fluent Japanese and English. Before working for Square Enix, formerly Squaresoft, Nomura was at a vocational school creating art for advertisements. In 1992, Squaresoft hired him to work on the battle graphics of Final Fantasy V and then as graphic director in 1994 for Final Fantasy VI. In 1996, a game project called Silent Chaos (which was originally the sequel of Dark Earth, a PC adventure game) was stopped after several months of development, and became a PlayStation game, developed in collaboration with Squaresoft. The characters, designed by François Rimasson at first, were totally redesigned by Tetsuya Nomura; but the project never ended and Silent Chaos was definitively stopped in November 1999, after two and a half years of development.

Tetsuya Nomura did not gain recognition until 1995, when Squaresoft asked him to be the character designer for their new opus, Final Fantasy VII. The game was a commercial success. In 1998, he worked on both Parasite Eve & Brave Fencer Musashi. The following year, Nomura worked on another game that achieved commercial success—Final Fantasy VIII—where he acted as the lead character designer and the battle visual director.

Afterwards, Nomura worked on several other miscellaneous projects such as Ehrgeiz and Parasite Eve II for the PlayStation. He continued on to design characters for Squaresoft's first PlayStation 2 venture, The Bouncer, before returning to character designing for the Final Fantasy
series with Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, and Final Fantasy XI. More recently, he has acted as the director, concept artist, and character designer for Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II.

Nomura directed the FMV movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children which was released in 2005 in Japan and to be released in America, and also wrote some of the lyrics that appear on the soundtrack, except for the final track of the movie's soundtrack: "CALLING".

His most recent works was the hit-seller, Kingdom Hearts 2.

Criticism

While his artwork and style was praised by many fans of Final Fantasy, especially the legions of new fans that joined the series with the release of Final Fantasy VII, Tetsuya Nomura has been criticized by fans of the original character designer Yoshitaka Amano. His critics have described Nomura's designs as too juvenile when compared to Amano's work. Fans of Nomura point out how deeply involved he was with Final Fantasy titles before Final Fantasy VII, especially his involvement in the creation of popular characters Shadow and Setzer Gabbiani for Final Fantasy VI, which were both redesigned by Amano for the game itself. His fans have also noted that Amano has still produced promotional art for other entries in the series and that Nomura was very cautious about using Final Fantasy IX's Vivi (as well as Setzer, whose designer Nomura recognizes as Amano's) as a character in Kingdom Hearts II because Nomura himself was not the character's designer.

Controversial Acts

In 2000, Nomura stated in a magazine interview that he would like to work with Nintendo, which caused some controversy since during that time Square was openly not working with Nintendo. Square issued a statement that Nomura's comments did not represent the company's plans and policies. Ironically, Nintendo and Square reconciled a few years later which led to the release of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles as well as numerous Square RPGs on Nintendo handhelds.

Games Credited

Final Fantasy IV (1991)
Final Fantasy V (1992)
Live A Live (1994)
Final Fantasy VI (1994)
Chrono Trigger (1995)
Super Mario RPG (1996)
Final Fantasy VII (1997)
Parasite Eve (1998)
Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring (1998)
Brave Fencer Musashi (1998)
Parasite Eve II (1999)
Final Fantasy VIII (1999)
The Bouncer (2000)
Final Fantasy X (2001)
Kingdom Hearts (2002)
Final Fantasy X-2 (2003)
Final Fantasy XI (2003)
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (2004)
Musashi: Samurai Legend (2005)
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005)
Kingdom Hearts II (2005-2006)
Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII (2006)

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Tetsuya Nomura ]

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