Tetsuya Nishio

Biography: Tetsuya Nishio (西尾 鉄也, Nishio Tetsuya, born 23 June 1968 in Aichi Prefecture) is a Japanese animator and character designer. He began his career in 1988 at Studio Pierrot as an in-between animator for the TV series Osomatsu-kun, and remained at Pierrot until 1999 where he'd then join Production I.G at the behest of Hiroyuki Okiura, who previously invited him to work in a leading capacity on his film adapation of Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, and where he remains in an official capacity. Prior to the final decisions regarding Naruto's anime adapation, mangaka Masashi Kishimoto (being a fan of his prior work on Ninku) approached Nishio in person about becoming the character designer for Naruto, for which Nishio obliged. Nishio has since remained the franchise's lead character designer and overall senior staff for over two decades, despite belonging to a different studio. He is considered one of the "Three Gods of IG" along with Hiroyuki Okiura and Kazuchika Kise and was rewarded the Best Character Design Award at the 8th Tokyo Anime Awards in 2009 for his outstanding work on Sky Crawlers, where he designed the characters and was key animation supervisor.