Yoshitaka Amano

Artworks

Swordsman in Sable, 1985, colored ink

Lord of Dreams, 2000, ink and watercolor

Cloud and Aeris, 1997, Pencil and colored inks

Aloft Serina in the Light,1989, colored ink

Honey Blood Shishi-o, 1990, litho print

Elric the Vanishing Tower, 1999, colored ink

Final Fantasy VII, 1997, litho print

Biography

Yoshitaka Amano was born July 8, 1952 in the Shizuoka Perfecture of Shizuoka City, Japan. He was interested in art even at a young age. He began his artwork with character designs for the early Japanese anime movement. Through the years he has been a part of many famous anime, comic books, and video games. His artwork field is mostly in printmaking, but also inks, watercolors, and sculpture. Most recently he has created a stained glass window and even a kimono design.

• Five Fun Facts:
• His first project was with the anime franchise for the well known anime Speed Racer in 1967.
• He was very interested in by Western art. He was a fan of the Psychadelic and Pop Art styles and was influenced by the artist Peter Max.
• He has published a volume in the famous Sandman comic by Neil Gaiman and won many awards, including the Hugo Award.
• It was in the 1980's that his true and recognizable style emerged. While creating mostly fantasy and science fiction works, he would continue to use modern techniques and realistic drawings. This style used modern surrealism with realism created the flowing dream-like quality of Amano's artwork.
• In the 1970's Amano was swept into the Art Nouveau style. His own technique used the Art Nouveau influence with the old Japanese hand woodblock printing technique of Ukiyo-e.

Theme and Style

As mentioned before, Yoshitaka Amano's style is realism combined with surrealism. His figures are usually simple, lithe and pale. Their eyes are thin and Japanese-looking with long lashes. His technique of choice is printmaking that includes woodblock, lithography, and intaglio. He uses a broad range of colors and mind boggling amount of detail. His style is smooth and flowing with simple curves and line making. His style is compared to animation or comic book.

Analyze

The work of art I'm going to choose to analyse is Swordsman in the Sable. This is one of his famous characters D and it is a full body portrait. The sweeping up of the arms is elegant and smooth, much like most of his art. Gentle curves and soft lines are used. Even though this is a dark work of art, with many dark blacks, the feeling one gets from this artwork is that of mystery. The atmosphere in the negative shapes and the background also contrinutes to the dark and mysterious theme. The whiteness if D's skin and the detail of his outfit draws our eye directly to the figure and holds us.

Personal Response

I have always loved Amano's artwork. His imagination and creativity never limits him and he can create so many different fantastic worlds with his art. I am envious of how he can put so much atmosphere into one work of art. His attention to detail is also amazing, and it is present in all of his works of art. Even the design on the clothing is detailed and riddled with design and jewels. My concentration for Fine Arts is printmaking, so I am delighted to see how he is able to push the technique. I love to draw and the technique of printmaking, and looking at his art always gives me ideas and influences me. His figures though, when not donned in elaborate costumes, are very simple. One flowing curved line can make up a leg or a bent arm, and I find those elegant and simple lines beautiful on the human figure. As a big fan of anime and comics, his style is very influential on me, and I have seen and read many examples of his artwork.

Emotionally, whenever I look at his art, I get lost. I could stare at just one piece of art for hours just taking in all the color and detail! It always calms me to see his artwork. Yet it also invigorates me to go and try to create art like his. I don't want to steal his style, but the flowing and surreal, yet lifelike, quality of his figures are so cool! I really wish I could draw like that. I would love to learn how to color in inks like he does, since the softness and the blending of the colors are really amazing.

What I found interesting about his life was how young he started. He was only 15 when he started with Speed Racer! How in the world was he able to do that at such a young age? And I found it interesting how he was influenced by Western Pop Art. He may have been born in Japan, but as a serious artist he was able to research and look at other works of art from around the world. He didn't just limit himself to just Japanese artwork but instead did the extra homework. I like to think that by reading up and discovering these artists from other parts of the world I do not limit myself to just one genre or type of art. I hope that Amano's influence on my art is for the best!

This Just In!!

I have located a video and interview 1UP, a video game reviewer, had with Yoshitaka Amano. You can see it here: http://http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=0&cId=3152237