Yoshitaka Amano (天野 喜孝 (formerly 天野 嘉孝), Amano Yoshitaka?) (born July 28, 1952) is a Japanese artist known for his illustrations for Vampire Hunter D and for his character designs, image illustrations and title logo designs for the Final Fantasy video game series developed by Square Enix (formerly Square) . In the 1960s, Amano was exposed to Western art styles through comic books and their Japanese Western-influenced counter parts, and believes Western comics to be his artistic roots . He has cited Neal Adams as his favorite comic book artist, noting that he would often purchase used comics based on his cover artwork, only to be disappointed that the interior artist was different . Amano was also fascinated by the art styles of psychedelic art and pop art of the West, particularly the work of American Pop artist Peter Max . In the 1970s, Amano's intrigue led him to the study of the artworks of the late 19th century and early 20th century European movement of Art Nouveau, as well as the ancient Japanese hand woodblock printing work of Ukiyo-e. While concentrating on illustration, he was still at Tatsunoko Productions until he left in 1982. In 1983, he was behind the illustrations for the novel Demon City Shinjuku and the first of Hideyuki Kikuchi's novel series Vampire Hunter D. This was adapted to a movie in 1985 for which Amano worked as character designer. The film was one of the first anime movies to be released outside of Japan. In interviews, however, Amano has stated that he was not pleased with the final product of the movie. More involvement in illustration had led to the creation of collections of his artwork being published, such as "Maten" in 1984. .