I would have far prefer FFXIII like that

Amano came to Toronto for Fan Expo over the weekend, I got him to sign my Final Fantasy 6 instructional manual; he was kinda enough to redraw the moogle on the page for me :).

I almost went just to see him. That is pretty cool.

I thought the faces in Amano's paintings looked weird.

I looked at the back of the FFIX manual when I said:

"What the fuck is wrong with Zidane's face!?"

So Nomura is the guy who designed Zell's appearance and Amano is the one who did Zidane's appearance......

I'm gonna need a minute here.

I think Isamu Kamikokuryou handled the art direction for both FF12 and 13, Nomura did the character design, and i think Ammo did a few concept and promotional sketchs. but Kamikokuryou is incredible imo, his art direction in both games is inspiring. especially in FF13 where the HD engine really makes his work come alive. but as to the OPs point, i also think Amano would be great for the next one.

So who did the art direction for older FF's?

Are we talking about art direction here?

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Anyway its been my dream to have Amano's artwork come to life like artwork came to life in Valkyria Chronicles.

But you  think that a appropiate Cell-Shading can replicate this artwork in graphics of the game?

This picture may be cool, but IMO it's only a picture, and the dark and deformed style would not fit the game very well. And more importanly, how is possible to make a game like this? CGI is very different from hand-drawn.

Amano's style worked in the past because we were supossed to use our imagination to believe that their shit 2d icons are people.

In a word, Yes.  Something like Okami's cell shading would work very well with this game.  Though I could see how it could upset many fans who started with VII onwards, so it might be better suited to a game not disimilar to the Last Story.  Get Sakaguchi, Amano and Uematsu working on another game together, not only will it be kick arse, it will be like a 'Class of 8/16bit Final Fantasy Reunion'

FFXIII began development as a cell shaded game on PS2

http://kotaku.com/5460183/final-fantasy-xiii-on-the-ps2/gallery/

Yuna/Riku models were used as placeholders.

a cel-shading engine would work best, plus stuff like Okami and Madworld shows you can do some interesting things with the style. However, Amano's style for backgrounds and landscapes is just surreal, so that might make some complications (though they probably would be worth slogging through)