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[neptunes]

This is only a fraction of the information that could be found at this site.
HERE (it even goes over ff7 and ffx)

Right when FF7 was finished, talk about FF8 between the developing staff had already begun. Nomura was in L.A. at the time and busy exchanging emails with Yoshinori Kitase (Director). The idea for a school-type story eventually came up. FF6 and FF7 were both dark games and they agreed that a happy/lighter story would be nice for once. From there, they decided that they would make a storyline which starts off in a 'school days' genre.

Nomura actually designed the school uniforms and SeeD uniforms with several overlooked details (like the Garden mark on the links). Aside from having character portraits drawn at this time, the character personality is thought up as well. Nomura had put some traits and habits to his designs before he handed it to Kazushige Nojima (Scenerio).

The inital character that was designed was Squall. Nomura had a hard time with Squall. When he first drew Squall, Squall had much longer hair and appeared more girlish (you see this now in Squall's older self, which looks like Laguna in Kingdom Hearts). Kitase didn't think this looked right, so Nomura redrew Squall to the present Squall. Nomura doesn't remember why he created the scar, just that it was something spur of the moment. Like Cloud's distinguishable hair, he wanted something that set Squall apart and made him more recognizable. The scar was there before establishing the character's history, and this left things up to the story planner's imagination. Nomura also added the collar on Squall's jacket because he felt it would be a challenge to show in the FMV movies.

Zell was drawn with the "main character of a shonen-manga" image. Beforehand, Nomura saw a music clip on MTV featuring a man with an all-over body tattoo. Remembering how cool it looked, he decided to add a large tattoo on Zell's face.

Kitase suggested to Nomura that he would like to use a character Nomura created 3 years prior, before they even started work on FF7. The image of the Witch had been up for a while, and was based on the images of Amano Yoshitaka's illustrations. To him, Amano's image is strong in the FF series... almost like the origin of FF. He wanted to create a character similar to those in Amano's images and from this got the design for "the Witch". There's something different from the previous FFs in the Witch parade, something heavy. In watching it, he felt that the Witch had a powerful existence.

he was actually inspired by Amano

Nomura had to redraw Irvine many times, and didn't have anything set until the last minute. At first he made him very handsome, but was afraid that it will overlap with Squall, so he figured he should make someone relatively good-looking. When he thought about that, he came up with the conclusion that if that was the case (where he was relatively good looking), they wouldn't let him into the main party. So he created Irvine's character as one that was cool looking, but wasn't too serious personality wise. This made him a little less desirable. At first, Nomura had him wearing goggles, but that made him seem too similar to FF7's Cid. Out of that, he came up with the idea to give him an American style cowboy hat. His personality and dialogue seemed to easily draw from there: "BANG!"

The idea that there should be two main characters had been there since the beginning. Due to this, Squall and Laguna were drawn around the same time. Laguna was different from Squall in a sense that Squall was a character unique from the main characters of the previous Final Fantasy games. This is the reason why they made Laguna the opposite of Squall. They made Laguna a character that doesn't worry much and moves ahead, much like that in previous Final Fantasy games.

Nomura had Laguna's face decided, but he had a hard time thinking of what to make him wear. Nomura was the one who suggested that Laguna be a soldier for contrast. If Squall's side is based on a school life, then Laguna's should be based on battle and war. The Laguna party members were designed to be very different individuals, so that they woudn't be overpowered by the main characters. The way Laguna's friends talk with each other is also based on the way the staff working in the Squaresoft offices spoke.

For Cid, he felt that there would be a Cid as in the previous FFs, but he didn't think he would end up being the head of the school. There were 7 Cids prior to this one and he felt that although the players already had an image of what Cid should be like, he didn't want to create something similar to the ones in the past. Kitase already had specific directions as to what Cid should be like, and from that he was able to draw Cid of FF8. He was someone that was nice to people, who knew everything Squall and the party didn't. Cid would be watching over the Squall team, yet would never join the party, so he felt perhaps his friendly looking design would be okay.

Nomura also came up with the idea for the characters Fuujin and Raijin at this time. Since FF7 already had the Turks which are similar types of characters, the pair would not be included in FF7. When he drew Fuujin and Raijin, he imagined them to be characters most likely found in shonen-manga of the past. They ended up fitting much better into FF8's cast.

Along with other battle animation sequences (like the impressive Limit Breaks), Nomura was in charge of the GF summoning sequences in FF8. The summoning in FF7 had such an impact on players, that he wanted to create something even greater. The only problem with that was that the summoning scenes in FF7 were very hard work and it almost seemed excessive during the days when FF7 was being created.

Leviathan was the first GF they created as a test, and it was included in the demo version of the game. He was worried as to whether or not it was good enough, but the responses from the players were good ones. From there, he decided to create the other GF summoning scenes in a similar fashion. But, there is always a limit since they couldn't make the battle sequences too long. They still ended up with something which would rival the Knights of Round sequence of FF7.

 

[BuddyC]

how the hell was FF8 lighter/happier?

 

[RevenantKioku]

Who was the seventh Cid prior to 8's?

 

[neptunes]

The setting seemed more up lifting than 6 and 7.

 

[SolidSnakex]

"how Nomura comes up with his designs (ff8)"

He got it from Gackt, atleast for Squall.

 

[Bizarro Sun Yat-sen]

UK PSM: Another change from previous Final Fantasies is the look of the in-game visuals. Why have you made the big change?

Naora (art director Yusuke Naora): As for the general imagery, FFVII was dark, weird... All sorts of darkness! [Laughs.] We wanted to leave that because we already did the darkest of darkest with the previous game! Thus for FFVIII, we intentionally chose a very bright style. Considering most of the FFVIII staff were involved in FFVII, it was quite a conscious group decision to move to this very bright side.

Kind of an amusing exchange as I suspect that wasn't really what the PSM interviewer had in mind.

 

[Grizzlyjin]

Who was the seventh Cid prior to 8's?

Ummm Cid in FFVII. Im sorry I don't fully understand your question, but the Cid before FFVIII Cid was FFVII Cid.

I always liked Zell's design the most.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Ummm Cid in FFVII. Im sorry I don't fully understand your question, but the Cid before FFVIII Cid was FFVII Cid.

RevenantKioku is probably referring to the fact that there was no Cid in the original Final Fantasy, thus there would only be 6 Cids in FF I-VII. So this could either be a mistake of the article, or they're counting T.G. Cid of FF Tactics as the seventh.

 

[mrkapawutzis]

Thank god they didn't go for the androngynous effeminate look for Squall. His character would have been much less interesting if I had to play it as a brooding misanthropic girlie-man.

 

[SolidSnakex]

I thought Squall was the first character people accused of being too girly?

 

[Thaedolus]

I never realized until now how incredibley long Squall's neck is in that pic

 

[Rei_Toei]

Zell's neck is good runner-up

 

[SantaC]

final heaven with Zell was nice.

 

[AssMan]

Is it me or does the Ragnarok/overworld theme sound very SIMILIAR to the Neverending Story song where Sabastian rides the white dog or whatever the fack it is.