.: About :.

I discovered Yoshitaka Amano in the mid-1990s, when for the first time I gave in to the temptation of trying a console RPG. Not just any RPG — it was Final Fantasy 6. I was immediately struck by the quality of the graphics and the expressiveness of the characters, which would undoubtedly never have been the same had the design been signed by anyone other than Amano.

The years went by, and I discovered more of his work through the various Final Fantasy titles he contributed to. Thanks to the Internet, I was able to uncover more of his genius by surfing from site to site, collecting information and, of course, images.

The first version of this site dates back to 2002. At the time, with my limited knowledge of computing, the work was laborious and the design was minimal at best, and above all difficult to manage. Unfortunately the site barely evolved in terms of content from the start — I added a few images here and there, but being on a free host, space was an issue. I was planning to move to a paid host in the near future to significantly expand the number of drawings available.

In 2003–2004, I started working with PHP. A rocky start, and this Amano site quickly fell by the wayside for easily a year and a half. At least it was easy to navigate, since all the images were there, albeit only accessible through text links.

But I always wanted to give a better face to this site, which I'm particularly fond of (if only because I'm very proud of its ranking on Google, both in French and international results). So I buckled down, and after two weeks of work, the site was finally fully built in PHP with a much more refined design. I could still do better, but that would have to wait a few more months.

Next step: paid hosting, with a proper domain name and storage space.

Update 05/09/2006: It's been a while since I should have updated this text — it's been out of date for several months now.

Done with Lycos and its free hosting; I've since moved all my sites to a proper host. The site has seen quite a few changes since then, all listed in the "updates" section. The PHP version is finally up and running smoothly, and as I write these lines I'm working hard on improving the site's management, automating as many tasks as possible to make my life easier.

The design has been revised and improved — it's now more practical, easier to use, and more complete. I'm still working on the content little by little, and it will probably never truly be finished. On top of that, I also have to deal with SEO. Statistics show between 40 and 50 visits per day, which is good, but it could be so much better.

Update 25/12/2016: For the first time in nearly 10 years, I've redesigned the site. Because it was starting to need it, and besides, with Google ranking non-responsive sites lower, it had to happen sooner or later...

And there's still so much left to do.

A few words about me:

Last name: REGNIEZ
First name: Mathieu
Date of birth: 05/08/1980
Location: Fréjus, Var
Occupation: making do.
Education: Master of Science in E-Commerce, University of Coventry (England)
Likes: video games (RPGs in particular: Final Fantasy, Xeno, Breath of Fire, Wild Arms...), manga (Tsukasa Hojo, Masakazu Katsura) and Japanese animation (Studio Ghibli, Leiji Matsumoto...), the beach in summer, music (pretty much everything except see below), spending hours tinkering at a computer...
Dislikes: grey skies, rap and techno (to each their own), towns in the middle of nowhere with no Fnac for miles around...