Before working for Square as character designer, Tetsuya Nomura was at a vocational school creating art for advertisements. In 1992, Square hired him to work on the battle graphics of Final Fantasy V and then as graphic director in 1994 for Final Fantasy VI. In 1996, a game project called Silent Chaos (which was originally the sequel of Dark Earth, a PC adventure game) was stopped after several months of development, and became a PlayStation game, developed in collaboration with Square. The characters, designed by François Rimasson at the beginning, were totally designed again by Tetsuya Nomura; but the project never ended and Silent Chaos was definitively stopped in November 1999, after 2 years and a half of development.

Being almost five years in the shadow, Tetsuya Nomura didn't know recognition. It's only later in 1997 that Square asked him to become character designer for their new opus Final Fantasy VII. As you all know, it was a total success. In 1998, he worked on both Parasite Eve & Brave Fencer Musashiden. The following year was another complete success for him with Final Fantasy VIII; he deeply impressed his superiors with his super-real characters! He was given not only the job of character designer but also of battle visual director.

Square then asked him to work on several other projects (Ehrgeiz, Parasite Eve II) and decided to choose him to be character designer for their first game on PlayStation 2 (The Bouncer) and then for their first Final Fantasy on PS2 too, which is Final Fantasy X. His most recent works go to Kingdom Hearts (director, concept design, character design), Final Fantasy XI (character design) and Final Fantasy X-2 (character design).