blog:nattoli, tag:AZ PLAY

IGNITION - redjuicegraphics works portfolio 2009-2010 was released during Comiket 78 and includes a full color collection of the artist's illustrations from the past year. While Redjuice's releases have been consistently high quality, and lengthier than the average doujinshi, IGNITION tops them all with a full 56-pages of illustrations on an A4, art book sized presentation.

Growlanser Art Works is a definitive collection of Growlanser illustrations, covering the character illustrations and promotional art works, game covers, and so on from the first game through the sixth. Though there have been a few Growlanser illustration collection released over the years, like the Growlanser Character Collection or game specific materials volumes, Growlanser Art Works is the one to get if you just want the art work.

For Comiket 78, Hato Rami released two illustration doujins, both individually sold. STAR★DUST is the less expensive of the two and is composed entirely of fan art illustrations from past Hato no Tamago releases. Inside, there's a mix of illustrations from Black Rock Shooter, Rozen Maiden, Fate/Stay Night and more, selectively chosen for this compilation.

CUTEG's Girl's Collection 2.0 BREAK is a full color illustration book, featuring fan art illustrations from several recent animations like Bakemonogatari, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, Angel Beats!, Kimi ni Todoke and Macross Frontier, along with several of the girls from the popular iDOLMaSTER game series. There are fewer original girl illustrations than in CUTEG's Winter 2009 Comiket 77 release Sweet Impact, but the art work is all top-notch as usual ^^

If you're a Vocaloid fan, and an even bigger Kozaki Yusuke fan, what could be better than Kozaki Yusuke doing Vocaloid illustrations? My completely impartial answer: NOTHING. Well, if I could change one thing I would have made Kozaki Yusuke's Miki.BLUEPRINT a bit longer. But that's less of a complaint and more about just wanting more ^^

Released by Dengeki Daioh for Comiket 78, Shingettan Tsukihime Illustration Anthology Clair De Lune brings together the works of 30 artists, all illustrating characters from TYPE-MOON's Shingetsutan Tsukihime. These tribute illustrations range from stunning to mediocre, but it's that kind of variety that makes anthology collections worth it in my opinion.

Thinking that H2SO4 had a pretty good Comiket 77 release, I had nearly convinced myself to pass up on the Comiket 78 release, Blonde Blossom. But I'm so glad I didn't! Blonde Blossom is an excellent collection, packed with some of H2SO4's newest works along with prints of several of the hard to get promotional K-Books illustration cards.

Tiv's Comiket 78 release Wireless Lemon is a full color collection of illustrations from her more recent works. As half of a two doujinshi release, this book includes many of the same series as the monochrome rough book Lime Live Louder. But while Lime Live Louder focuses on character illustrations, the works in Wireless Lemon are fleshed out with beautiful backgrounds and fantastic sceneries.

For Comiket 78, Tiv of the circle atelier Tiv artworks released two complimentary illustration doujins, one of which was full of rough (and not so rough) black and white illustrations and called Lime Live Louder. This collection reminds me most of CUTEG's Oishii Seikatsu, another well-presented monochrome collection released earlier this year.

Higurashi - When They Cry... Art Record collects illustrations from the manga version of the series, which includes the works of seven different artists. From casual observations, I'd always noticed that the illustrations for the series tended to fluctuate between quality and quality, but it's only now having this art book in front of me that I can see there was actually some order to it all.

Much has changed since the first issue of Quarterly Pixiv Magazine. For one, the lovely poster is gone, replaced by nothing. On the other hand, the magazine is now much more "how to" art focused, with just about every artist featured doing an illustration walkthrough or presenting tips and tricks for Photoshop or SAI. The artists' interviews are much shorter than in the first volume as well, leaving space for longer art tutorials.

Earlier this year I reviewed one part of Ukke's Comiket 77 release, Girl's Illustrations Winter 2009, with the intention of reviewing Megpoid Crosslight shortly after. I have the "after" part right, anyway. Megpoid Crosslight is essentially a printed version of the art from the Crosslight Project PV which features music by Yuuki Masame and kz from livetune. The Crosslight promotional video where this art work is used can be seen here via the official site, or here on Youtube.