Ken Sugimori is best known as Pokémon’s original character designer and art director. He created a large majority of the first 151 Pokémon together with other members of Game Freak’s design team.
Sugimori met Satoshi Tajiri after discovering the Game Freak video-game magazine that Tajiri published. He became the magazine’s illustrator and later helped transform Game Freak into a video-game development company. His watercolor-based presentation became strongly associated with the early visual identity of Pokémon.
Sugimori did not design every original Pokémon alone. Atsuko Nishida designed Pikachu and several other important species, while Motofumi Fujiwara, Shigeki Morimoto, and Satoshi Ota also contributed to the first generation. Sugimori nevertheless served as the central art director and finalized much of the franchise’s early visual language.
This distinction matters because “designed the first 151” is often used as shorthand for Sugimori’s role. It does not mean he was the sole creator of every one of those Pokémon.