Tetsuya Nishio

Tetsuya Nishio (西尾 鉄也, Nishio Tetsuya, born 23 June 1968 in Aichi Prefecture) is a Japanese animator and character designer. Tetsuya began his career in 1988 at Studio Pierrot as an in-between animator for the TV series Osomatsu-kun, he was a Pierrot employee until 1996, where he'd then begin a short stint as a freelancer. In 1999, he joined 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) requested Nishio to become 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. 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.