The beauty of being an artist and a gamer is that it lets you stretch out your imagination to its limits in order to create something unique and beautiful to the eyes of everyone, whether they are artists or gamers alike.

Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts character designer Tetsuya Nomura picked 3 fan art out of 4000+ entries of Final Fantasy XIII's heroine Lightning Farron.

As a tie-in for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, Square Enix and deviantART collaborated to ask fans to create their own take on Lightning and a total of 4,655 submissions were made between February 11 to 20. Tetsuya Nomura, who created Lightning, recently judged the event and selected his 3 choices and made comments base on his observation.

1) Wilhelmina from KarmaLizzard

"With one look I was hooked. The costume itself is sophisticated, and it's also very well done as an illustration. The background that reminded me of the Japanese flag (Hinomaru) matched well with the piece and was beautiful. As an artist, when I look at different works of art, I think to myself 'If it were up to me, I would do it differently,' but that thought didn't cross my mind once when I saw this picture."

2) Forbidden Gateway by ArisT0te

"At first glance it looks like a CG, and it has a level of quality that makes it look like it was captured as a screenshot. While there were many heroic costumes for Lightning, I was drawn to the femininity of this costume and her hairstyle."

3) Lightning - Mythril Scorpion Armor by randis.

"It's wonderful as an illustration, but in addition to that, the artist drew in both the front and back views, so I felt the artist's clear intent when they created this piece. The red and blue color scheme was very beautiful, too."

Here is the official deviantART page, where you may find more impressive designs of Lightning.