Review: Santa Lilio Sangre - Ayami Kojima Art Works

Book Details:

Hardcover
Title: Santa Lilio Sangre
ISBN-10: 4870319233
ISBN-13: 978-4870319233
ASIN: B005C25DN0
Cover Price: 3400 Yen (approx. $40.00 CAD)
# of Pages: 200
Printed In Japan
1st Print - 2010/11/25
3rd Print - 2013/2/26

Dust Cover Jacket

Inner Cover

Front Page

Some coloured artwork

 Each piece presented has a description showing the medium the artwork was done in, dimensions, and its Japanese title. If the artwork also have an English title, that is included as well. Half the book is filled with coloured paintings, the rest are like below, done in traditional ink.

Gorgeous ink, a piece of LOTR fan art on the right

More ink goodness

 There are some explicit pieces that are rated 18+ so I cannot share them here. Amount them also include a fair amount of artistic gore. You can see Ms. Kojima's knack towards dark fantasy, science fiction and horror, and she's damn good at drawing them!

Alucard and others

Book covers

More acrylic goodies

 Larger paintings span two pages. The colours are very vivid and you can see the textures very well.

Castlevania concepts

 This is my favourite section. Ms. Kojima's character portraits are simply amazing. Most of these are from Castlevania and its various games. But other series are also included. From what I can tell, this book does not contain all the art from her collection, but only the selective majority. For example, portraits of Lisa were not included.

More concepts

Drafts and brainstorms

At the end of the book there is a half page thank you note from the artist. This is in both Japanese and English. This is the only reading content in this book. Everything else is full art.

Summary:
"+" Pros: Gorgeous artwork, hard cover, good printing quality, colour, and paper. A fairly large collection, 200 pages and hundreds of pieces. Great readability because content are in English and Japanese.
"-" Con: Doesn't include everything from her collection. Beware of overpricing on the cover price.