lolita media library: Sakizo (早紀蔵)

Front and back covers of Ranunculus featuring Terra/Tina

General information

Sakizo (早紀蔵) is an illustrator, clothing designer, and character designer based in Okayama, Japan. She primarily uses watercolors to color her drawings, though she does occasionally also make digital art. Her illustrations are very detailed and usually feature female characters and very ornate clothing. Also flowers. Lots and lots of flowers.
Official website || Twitter || Instagram || Pixiv || Official web shop @ AliceBooks

How she’s related to lolita

She has collaborated with independent lolita brands to design prints (Baroque x Sakizo is perhaps the most relevant example) and clothing items based on her illustrations.

Comments

Her social media accounts are pretty active, so it’s neat to see the progress of what she’s working on every few days. She also takes lots of pictures of food and flowers, and captures the simple beauty of these everyday and natural things to channel into her art. I love the incredibly detailed and decorative style of her artwork.

Someday I’d like to have something from the Rapunzel, Imprisoned Princess collaboration with Baroque.

(source: Baroque’s blog on Naver)

The first JSK release is likely the only dress that will fit, and it’s hard to find so I’ll probably be looking a while. She is good at making things girly, cute, and a little sexy but not explicitly adult.

Table of contents pages in Ranunculus

I also really like that she draws a lot of doujinshi/fan art and the characters she draws are often from series I also know and like! I have one of her illustration books, Ranunculus. It was published in 2008 and is filled exclusively with Final Fantasy 6 character portraits. Several of my closest friends dearly love this game because playing it was a deeply influential experience in their childhoods, and while I didn’t play it until I was an adult, I immediately fell in love with it too. To have Sakizo’s lovely renditions of these characters is really special for me. Final Fantasy characters also pop up in quite a few of her other illustration books (especially illustrations of Terra/Tina). Equally fascinating are the cosplays people make based on her illustrations.