refeia

As GELATIN enters its third year, this original color comics magazine has prepared a lively collection for its Winter 2011 issue, complete with a bonus calendar and a subtle increase in price. The artists featured are increasingly more familar after the past year, combining older favorites like Usatsuka Eiji (Zero no Tsukaima), toi8, and mebae with the likes of Shihou, Sime, and TNSK.

HIME-CHARA ☆ DESIGNERS FILE is a directory of fairly well-known commercial illustrators that design the anime, game, and manga characters we've all come to know and love. The art book features a remarkable 111 artists, but much like last years 100 Masters of Bishojo Painting each artist gets two pages, one full page illustration and one with smaller tiled art works.

Moeru Classic Heroine Collection is a compilation of illustrations featuring girls from famous, and sometimes not so famous literary works. I found myself at a loss in recognizing many of these characters on sight, but at least I can recognize the artists! Moeru Classic Heroine Collection actually features a lot of the same artists from last year's Moeru Japanese Sword Girls and has a very similar layout and style.

No doubt from reading the title, some of you are thinking, "Wait, you've already reviewed this one!" Well, I assure you I'm not that forgetful, and as it turns out, good things come in twos. Girls With Cameras/A Pictorial Book is the second art book to come out on the cameras theme this year. And though it's a hard fought battle, I think this new Megami Magazine production is the better of the two pictorial books.

Even though Toranoana's ALL SEASON MIX BEST is really about the music, I had to get it for the accompanying art book full of all new original illustrations from artists like You Shiina, refeia, H2SO4, Tiv, Kuroboshi Kouhaku and many more. There are 39 illustrations in total from 27 artists, so in some cases you may get to see a new illustration from a favorite artist more than once ^^

AKABEi SOFT2 Illustration Collection is an art book much in the same vein as previous memorial illustration books to have come out over the past year like MOONSTONE Complete and Circus 10th Visual Album. The major difference with this one is that AKABEi SOFT2 hasn't really been around anywhere near long enough to bring out this kind of memorial collection. I think they just jumped onto the recent trend with this one ^^;