Kōji Ishikawa (石川 浩二, Ishikawa Kōji, pen name: いしかわ こうじ, born October 4, 1963) is a Japanese children's book author and illustrator. His work includes advertisements, magazine illustration, web, character design and book design. In recent years he has made children's books. He lives in Tokyo with his wife and two children.
Kōji Ishikawa was born in Chiba Prefecture Japan in 1963.[1] As a child he loved painting, handicraft and origami. Ishikawa attended Musashino Art University, and studied visual communication design. He was awarded Kodansha picture for children Grand Prix, while in university. From that time, he began work as illustrator.
He has appeared on television programs and in magazines, and has lectured on digital art. He is one of the pioneers of digital illustration. His main painting tools are Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop. He has also written a book on the technique of the digital illustration using Corel Painter ("Happy Painter Life"). In 1999 he developed "Paper Dog" (ペーパーわんこ; (Pēpāwanko), and "Paper Cat" (ペーパーにゃんこ; (Pēpānyanko). These are small dogs and cats made from paper. The picture-book of Paper Dogs "Living with 100 dogs" were announced in 2002.[citation needed] The Italy Bologna international picture-book original picture exhibition accepted the paper dog photo story "Kotaro's trip" in 2004. It is extolled by the French judge Xavier Pingaud. Picture-books "Colorful Animals hide and seek" and "Colorful Vehicles hide and seek" were announced in 2006. Translations of This series appeared in France, South Korea and China. The number of copies is over 1550,000 copies in the whole series. In 2008, Ishikawa released three picture-books, "Colorful Fruits hide and seek", "Patterned Animals hide and seek" and "The trip of the little ship". In 2009, Ishikawa released five picture-books, "Baby smile", "Baby hello", "Tsumiki-kun", "Panda's ONIGIRI" and "Book of Eggs".[citation needed]