Yamada was born on February 10, 1957, in KÃ Âchi, Japan and attended Kochi Nishi High School. He entered Osaka University to study economics and published his debut comic, Padan Padan ('), in 1981 in the magazine Monthly OUT. He published Mermaid Changer (') the following year. Prior to finishing his degree, he left university to pursue a career in illustration.
Yamada has produced art and character design for a wide range of media, including manga, video games, novels, and anime. Among his best known works are the art for Fuyumi Ono's The Twelve Kingdoms series and Mizuno Ryo's Record of Lodoss War. He has worked on anime such as RahXephon and the adaptation of The Twelve Kingdoms. He designed for PlayStation games ' and Front Mission 3; various Might and Magic and Wizardry titles on PC Engine; and Mystic Ark and ' on Super Famicom.
Yamada worked on concept design for the live-action film ' and was art director for Koga Ninjutsu. He has also created covers for English-to-Japanese translations, including for The Dark Tower by Stephen King. Additionally, he did costume and set design for the theatre show GEAR. In 1996, he won the Seiun Award for Best Artist. In the 2010s, he was a visiting professor in Kyoto Seika University's manga department. Yumi Tamura has cited Yamada's work as one of her inspirations.
Yadama's style is heavily influenced by Chinese gongbi and by the chivalry of medieval European artwork. Phoenix Television pointed out that his work contains elements from Gustave Doré's print lines and Alphonse Mucha's "decorative images" and describes his style as combining European swords and magic and the "delicacy of Eastern culture." In 2018, Sohu echoed many of these sentiments and described him as having a "unique fantasy style... with delicate brushstrokes."