This Final Fantasy XI Amano interview delves into the history of the entire series

destructoid.com:

If someone says the name “Yoshitaka Amano” in any gaming context, people are going to know who that is. The man is an absolute legend in the art industry, providing inspiration for people all over the world with numerous drawings of fantastical settings and characters. They’ve worked primarily within the Final Fantasy series, but have since branched off into many different projects, including a Vogue cover and Magic: The Gathering. This new Final Fantasy XI Amano interview with director Koichi Ishii (who handled the game from 1999 to 2003), while XI-centric, dabbles throughout the entire history of the series in a fascinating way.

Ishii, in an adorable fashion, recalls Amano coming in and telling other members of the team to “not act like a groupie,” given that Amano had already reached a high level of fame at that point through a decade of work within the company. Ishii started as a fan, even asking Amano to autograph his works, then became a colleague. He also sums up why, collectively, Amano’s work is so impactful:

“His illustrations exude a sense of ‘space’ in some shape or form. The other thing is that, even though the illustrations look beautiful at first glance, they are subtly filled with evil-looking beings and other dark imagery. The coexistence of beauty and the eerie was in line with the image of fantasy I had in my mind.”

Amano then recalls his trepidation on getting into the gaming industry in general, noting:

“Rather than it being a matter of whether I recognized Square, I was still unsure what it’d be like to work for a video game. Back then, most people’s perception of games were those tennis-type games where you hit a ball and forth, or invader games, and very few of them had actual stories or music.