The art of Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood | Artist Ayumi Namae on the inspirations and designs behind the video game

Next year, Square Enix, the developers behind the Final Fantasy series, will be releasing an art book for Final Fantasy XIV's expansion Stormblood. The art of Final Fantasy games has changed drastically in its history, originally with limited colours and pixels in each character and monster, with it now being lavish, realistic renders of modern and fantasy environments.

Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood takes on more Western designs and fashions, and it's going to be shown off in Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood | Art of the Revolution - Western Memories in 2018 with concept art and character renders. Ahead of its release, we’ve got some exclusive shots of the art from the book, and some context on Final Fantasy XIV’s art direction from character concept artist Ayumi Namae.

Final Fantasy XIV itself is an online role-playing game, where players can play with each other in populated, online cities, completing quests and advancing characters together. It’s a fantasy world, inspired by many real-world cultures but with fantasy creatures and monsters.

Namae works specifically on designing the characters’ outfits, from the non-player characters who make up the story as computer-controlled people to the many options for a player’s armour and attire. When starting out on a design, there’s three main points Namae takes into consideration.

• We aim to create a design with catchy and iconic aspects, such as you may see in manga or anime.

• It doesn’t matter whether it’s the actual design, the structure, or the silhouette, but obviously we prize originality and inventive aspects very highly! There are two reasons for this. The first being that we want to create an original sense of the world of Eorzea and have the fans able to enjoy the fantasy world itself. The second being that we have a responsibility to ensure that we avoid using anything that inspires us too directly, as we need to make sure our finished designs do not contain any real-world religious motifs or ethnic references. For example, of course we develop ideas inspired by ethnic clothing or motifs based on various religious symbols, but Final Fantasy XIV is a game that is played the world over and therefore there are some depictions that are ok in Japan, but not ok in certain other countries. We take that point very seriously.

For example, when designing the Paladin, a symbol on the chest is similar to the Rod of Asclepius, a Greek symbol of healing, but has been changed to fit the fantasy world.

The most recent expansion to Final Fantasy XIV was called Stormblood, and focused heavily on two characters that Namae worked on: Lyse Hext and Yotsuyu. In Lyse, Namae wanted to represent her nationality in some way, meaning both her original and ‘adventuring’ outfits are adorned with feather-like metal, to represent the griffin that sits upon her national flag.

In Yotsuyu, an evil antagonist, Namae took the approach of designing her as “the kind of woman that would make her enemies underestimate her by using her looks.” A small detail on the character is an incense powder case off to one side, inspired by the 19th century European style of chatelaines.

They were a status symbol, a woman wearing a chatelaine with keys was seen as the leader of the house, and in Yotsuyu, she wears one with an incense box adorning a military symbol. Yotsuyu is an unarmed character, using her status as a weapon, as the leader of a totalitarian state.

On top of designing outfits for characters in Final Fantasy XIV’s story, Namae designs armour and gear for players to wear in the game. Split into five pieces, of the head, body, feet, waist, and wrist, players mix and match, and players can then mix and match pieces. It’s become a whole game in itself, to make your character look as good as possible, and the extent to which fans took to it surprised even Namae.

There is even a website made by a player in which people post their glamour outfits, it’s like a street snap special feature from a fashion magazine. Also, there are player sites with features on each item, like shoes and accessories. The web design is really stylish and I find myself looking forward to the updates.

When I learned of this site, and how it featured the fashion articles, I was so surprised by the player’s passion and detail. I myself look at it daily, and look at what is easy to match with and analyze what is in demand. I then use all that as a reference for my future designs. 

While many characters in Final Fantasy XIV do typically start life as a part of the story, with Namae working with known backgrounds (such as in Yotsuyu and Lyse) to create a unique design, some characters can be made in reverse.

For characters that are joining the story halfway through, more often than not the costume design and character design takes place at the same time, and we complete the design with the costume against the face, hair, eye colour and skin tone. After that there have been plenty of times when new designs have been incorporated that weren’t in the original plans.   

In fact, it’s often the case that design begins at the very early stage when the main brief of the character is determined (like gender and position in the story). I’ve heard that when the scenario writer thinks up the story, they stick the finished concept art of the wall and come up with the script whilst using the character’s image as a form of inspiration. The character design becomes the character’s personality, so you could say it does indeed have a large impact on things.

The art book, featuring Namae's art and the work of other artists on Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood, focuses on how the expansion took elements from Western design and fashion and interpreted it. It's unique, in that regard, a fantasy world that didn't just sit on the clichés of poor, dirty peasants and rich upper classes. For Namae, it's important to be truly inspired.

“Whatever the element, look at things that move your heart. Touch them. And it’s not just about creating something that looks similar to whatever does this, because once it moves your heart you will begin to understand it better. It is by seeing these new things that I open up my own little world and I feel that this is reflected in my designs.”

The art book is available to pre-order now, and will be released next year.