A Day in the Life With a Final Fantasy Creator 29
1up has a feature up looking at a day in the life of Yoshitaka Amano. This talented artist has been behind much of the visual appeal of the Final Fantasy series over the years. He's also worked on several anime series, such as Speed Racer, some Macross titles, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. In addition to background information, the article has a piece talking directly with the artist himself. From the article: " Final Fantasy wasn't the first video game-related job I did. So I went to America for a week, which was the first time I went to America, and I don't remember what company it was, but this company asked me to do an illustration similar to Dragon's Lair, the arcade game, and that was the first game-related job I had."
Amano didn't work on Speed Racer, Macross, or Eva (Score:3, Informative)
He's also worked on several anime series, such as Speed Racer, some Macross titles, and Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Interestingly, Yoshitaka Amano worked on none of these. As the first paragraph of 1up.com's article correctly says, his former studio (Tatsunoko Production) worked on those titles, not Amano. Speed Racer (Mach Go Go) was before his time at that studio, and Evangelion was after his time there. Macross did launch a mini-spate of "realistic" transforming robot series, and one of these series inspired by Macross was Genesis Climber Mospeada. Amano did design the Mospeada characters, but not the Macross ones.