Ken Sugimori

Ken Sugimori was born in Tokyo, Japan and is a Japanese games designer as well as a illustrator and manga artist. He is famous for his work on the Pokemon series which is where most people found out about him but he also worked on other titles.

I like his work because it is bright and colorful, I like his style where his artwork looks like a painting and is so unique, his artwork looks like watercolor with the white to show shade and lighting that works very well, He uses a range of colors in his work which makes his artwork stand out.

For my storyboard I think I could use this style to get the old manga feeling with no solid colors and a massive range of colors. This means that I could work with almost any medium and this art style will still be successful.


Here is the Pokemon venusaur which is a plant based creature based on a variety of reptiles and possible dinosaurs. Here Ken uses a calm blue for the body as it goes well with the green leaves on its back, the massive pink flower gives a sense of caution as its so bright and abstract compared to the blue and green shade.

Here is another creature from the Pokemon called charizard it is based on a dragon and a salamander. It has a flame on its tale to show it is a fire dragon and to show how powerful and aggressive it is, Ken used a dark shade of red for the flame and a slightly lower orange for the body, Ken then added a cool blue for the wings that still manages to come off powerful while not taking away from the rage and raw power displayed by the dark red and orange.

Here is some old work that Ken Sugimori did for an early videogame called pulseman, you can see here a change from something like charizard but you can still see the same style that looks dated but still has those watercolor effects with shading, I don't like this as much as previous but it shows progression while still keeping a distinct style