Naomi Iwata is a Japanese illustrator, character designer, and film director born on April 4, 1960, in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. He is best known as the original creator behind several distinctive CGI anime television series produced by the studio Milky Cartoon.

Iwata created the Gregory Horror Show franchise, a series of 3D CGI anime that first aired on TV Asahi starting in October 1999. The series consists of multiple storylines: the first season titled The Nightmare Begins, followed by The Second Guest, The Last Train, and The Bloody Karte. Gregory Horror Show is noted as being among Japan's first full-CG animated television series. The series follows the mysterious Gregory, an old mouse who runs an eerie hotel where lost souls become trapped, and is recognized for its unusual papercraft-inspired art style and surreal tone.

In addition to Gregory Horror Show, Iwata created the anime series Midnight Horror School, which aired from October 2003 to March 2004 on the satellite network Animax and Fuji TV. The series features cube-shaped students whose names each begin with a letter of the alphabet and focuses on a school populated by ghosts of discarded everyday items such as pencils, erasers, and keyboards.

Iwata is also the original creator of Pecola, a 3D CGI animated series featuring a young penguin living in Cube Town. Pecola won the award for Outstanding TV Series in the TV Film category at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 2001. His other works include Ride on Explet's, a story about traveling trains set in a pop-up book world, which was nominated in the TV Film category at the Annecy Animated Film Festival in 2003. He also created Net Ghost PiPoPa and served as the original creator for Pingu in the City.

Iwata's artistic identity is characterized by a unique 3D CGI style that often employs cubic, papercraft-like character designs with flat colors and minimal shading, creating a distinctive visual aesthetic that blends whimsical and eerie elements. His works frequently explore themes of horror blended with comedy, as evidenced by both Gregory Horror Show and Midnight Horror School. Midnight Horror School was nominated in the TV Film category at the Annecy Animated Film Festival in 2004.

Iwata is currently represented by Polygon Pictures, which launched an official English website for his characters in March 2016. He has also written picture books, including the Hoshikuzu Boya no Boken Ryoko series published by Kadokawa Shoten.