I was first introduced to Ein's art work through the art book The New Generation of Manga Artists Vol. 4: The Omnibus Collection, a publication I'm sure many other anime fans ran into at some point. While Ein's signature style is beautiful girls in hi-tech scenery, it's not always in demand and his art work outside of light novel covers can be hard to find, so I was delighted to see his Long-Cake Pico Pixels doujinshi release for Comiket 78.

I'm pretty sure that Long-Cake Pico Pixels is Ein's first illustration doujinshi, and inside this B5-sized, staple-bound book are several years of art work. It's not too long---just 20-pages when counting the covers---but a lot of illustrations are fit into it by sharing pages. Fair warning though, if you keep up with Ein's website or Pixiv account, you'll have seen many of the works before.

Even though it's not very long, every page is used for illustrations, even the inside covers and front and back covers have different illustrations on them. None of the illustrations are repeated either. Ein illustrates in several different styles; when drawing scenic pieces, the characters are small in relation to their backgrounds and are drawn without outlines. They look a lot like story board or concept arts. Ein also has a rougher style, with a thick-brush painted style and thin line art that appears several times throughout this collection.

Ein's more commercial style, with thicker outlines and more cel-shaded coloring appears the most in Long-Cake Pico Pixels. All the styles come together though under the rainbow palette that each illustration seems to include. The colorful look is what got me interested in the first place, so I'm glad that aspect of Ein's illustrations is here to stay. Though it sold out on Toranoana, it's still available on Melonbooks for anyone interested ^^

• Title: Long-Cake Pico Pixels
• タイトル: Long-Cake Pico Pixels
• Release Date: 08/15/2010
• Pages: 20 (including covers)
• Buy: Melonbooks