If you’ve ever played a Final Fantasy game and been impressed with either the character or pixel art on display—which I’m going to assume is all of you—then there are way worse things you could spend part of your Monday night doing than watching this short documentary.
Made by the always-wonderful Archipel, in collaboration with Japanese site Game*Spark, it consists of interviews with both Yoshitaka Amano and Kazuko Shibuya, talking about their work on the series, how they got started, how they met and how the visuals of the Final Fantasy series evolved as the pair continued to work together over the years, Amano producing the series’ iconic character and cover art, Shibuya responsible for so much of the pre-FFVII pixel art.
It’s fascinating for all the insights and memories they share, but also, it’s just a joy getting to kick back and see them both at work, Amano effortlessly sketching up a storm, Shibuya pointing out the intricacies and unseen details packed into every single pixel.
While the 12-minute video is obviously entirely in Japanese, official English subtitles are available as well.
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And if this has got you in the mood to check out more of Amano’s works, he was one of the very first subjects of our Fine Art series.