Tetsuya Nomura (野村 哲也 Nomura Tetsuya) is a Japanese video game director and character designer working for Square Enix (formerly Square). He first started working designing few parts from Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI and has also been the character designer from various games, debuting in Final Fantasy VII. Additionally, Nomura debuted as video game director for the Kingdom Hearts series starting in 2002 and was also the director from the CGI film Final Fantasy VII Advent Children. Nomura received the "Excellence in Visual Arts" award by the International Game Developers Association for his work in the first Kingdom Hearts game, alongside Shinji Hashimoto.[3] In IGN's "The Top 100 Video Game Creators of all Time" Nomura was listed at number 84.