How does Sui Ishida draw Tokyo Ghoul?

The covers are paintings first and packaging second, and the evidence is how often the art escapes the books.

Tokyo Ghoul’s shelf appeal starts with a simple fact: Ishida paints his covers as finished colour illustrations, loose, wet-looking portraits rather than inked line art with colour laid over it. Shueisha collected that work early: Zakki, the illustration book published alongside the final volume in October 2014, gathers the promotional images, the volume covers and unreleased concept art, with Ishida’s own commentary.

His illustration work kept reaching past the manga. For the anime’s second season he drew ending-card illustrations for every episode, and a “secret name”, the storyboard draft he drew for √A, was published for the first time in the official anime book in 2015. For Jack Jeanne he supplied not just character designs but the world design, in-game illustrations and insert-song lyrics.

THE PRACTICE, DOCUMENTED

In print

Zakki (2014)

The illustration book is the primary source for his colour method: covers and promotional paintings reproduced at size, with his commentary on them.

The √A ending cards

Twelve episodes, twelve new illustrations, one per ending sequence: a workload Shueisha’s anime book singles out as remarkable.

The secret name

Ishida’s storyboard draft for √A, excerpted in Tokyo Ghoul [anime] (September 18, 2015), is the closest look at how he lays out a story in panels before dialogue.

Jack Jeanne (2021)

A game’s worth of illustrations in a different register entirely: bright stage costumes instead of ghoul horror, same painterly hand.

Choujin X (2021–)

Announcing the series, Ishida wrote that this time he wanted to try drawing the backgrounds and the finishing work himself, the jobs a weekly serial normally hands to assistants.

How does Sui Ishida draw Tokyo Ghoul?

THE PRACTICE, DOCUMENTED

THE FIRST WORD