blog:nattoli, tag:AZ PLAY

Yoshizuki Kumichi Picture Collection ~Calendar Film~ gathers more than one hundred illustrations by the artist in this A4 sized, 112-page art book. The art work is clean and polished, and beautifully presented with full page layouts, letting your eyes take in each piece, one at a time.

Miwa Shirow's VVW Vocaloid Visual Works is awesome and you should buy it. This concludes my review.

H2SO4's Tropical Nights doujinshi is a B5 sized collection of color and monochrome art works. And unlike H2SO4's Shiroi Hanabira, there are no guest art works in this one. The illustration above is also the cover illustration, and it's good that it gets re-printed inside since the cover of this glue-bound volume has a shimmering, metallic finish.

The most recent issue of the quarterly magazine GELATIN was just recently released on Christmas Eve of last year. The cover art is newly drawn by Kishida Mel, and inside is a folded poster of that cover art. One of the best things about this full-color comic collection is that each issue welcomes new artists into the fold, keeping the content fresh and relevant to the digital and doujinshi art scene.

As many of you have guessed, Toranoana released another set of New Year's postcards for 2010 as well. And it's really a Tora-year, considering Toranoana's mascot is a tiger. But this time, instead of having only 10 cards like the 2009 set, there were three different sets (A through C) of 10 cards each. So it comes to a grand total of 30 postcards, by 30 different artists.

If you've ever wanted a book filled with anime-styled girls in frilly lolita dresses, well, this one's for you. Nouvelle Vague: Yukiwo Art Work Collection sticks firmly to the path of lolita dresses, with a smattering of the Melonbooks mascot Melon-chan, and the immortal Alice in Wonderland. Though the art book came out in July 2006, it is currently out of print so you'll have to find it second hand.

Out with the old, and in with the new! Last year, Toranoana sold a set of New Year's postcards (which also doubled as lottery tickets) illustrated by 10 different artists, with the likes of Shimada Humikane and CARNELIAN among them. In this set, the girls are all dressed as the Chinese zodiac animal for the year, the Ox. Though... since they're girls, they're cows!

After reviewing so many art books and magazines recently, I'm in need of something short and sweet, and CUTEG's Comiket 76 doujinshi Vacation fits perfectly. At just 16 pages---a number that includes both the front and back covers---this full color illustration doujinshi is still a joy to look through. K-ON! is heavily featured, with appearances from CLANNAD, AIR, Touhou, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Toradora!

Ashiato ~Kantoku Art Works~ (あしあと~カントクアートワークス~) turns out to be as colorful and vibrant as expected, filled with 144-pages of beautiful girls ranging from original creations to copyright characters. The book is B5 sized, so it's smaller than most art books, but about the size of the average doujinshi.

The newest issue of Megami Magazine Creators, volume 18, came out December 19th, 2009 and features a cover by Huke with new art from STEINS;GATE. It's still one of the smallest magazines I get, weighing in at 94 pages in total, but there's still plenty of art to keep me happy.

So that we all start on the same page, NOCCHI is a pen name for Oyari Ashito. It's interesting that he would use his pen name on the October 17th, 2009 release of 「北へ。」NOCCHI ART WORKS, but will be using his real name for the December 22nd release of Oyari Ashito Illustrations Chronicle (大槍葦人画集 Chronicle). I suspect the reason is a reflection on the contents of the book; the vast majority of 「北へ。」NOCCHI ART WORKS is identical to the earlier release, LITTLE WHITE—「北へ。」Fashion Book NOCCHI. I would guess that for all intents and purposes, he was better known as NOCCHI when he was working on 「北へ。」and felt it should be published that way.

Naoto Tenhiro is undoubtedly best known for his Sister Princess character designs and illustrations, so his style is very recognizable. When I spotted the Yoru ha Koneko de Isogashi (夜は子猫で忙しい) Illustrations as a Comiket 76 release, I didn't hesitate to get it because it was full color, and I'd already seem many of the illustrations in the visual drama that ran in Animage Magazine from 2005 to 2006. And as we all know, it's good to know what you're getting before you buy it!