blog:nattoli, +tag:AZ PLAY

Blue Garnet was released for Comiket 79 and marks the 14th original visual book by Miyu, which is quite a feat for a doujinshi artist. Although, perhaps slightly less of a feat considering some of her books are in the 12-page range. But luckily, Blue Garnet is not one of the shorter ones ^^;

Korean artist Tiv's Comiket 79 release Still the Winter Comes Again (それでもふゆはやってくる) is a beautiful collection of both commercial and original color illustrations. If you've been keeping an eye out for Tiv's work, you'll have even seen some of the illustrations in magazines like Megami Creators and art books like Headphone Girls.

U10 is an artist whose work I find, more often than not, as a guest in the collection of others' works. But this time, U10 is the star with U10folio, a full color doujinshi featuring art works that range from Hatsune Miku to the singing group Perfume.

Since it was clear from the title that Nagi Ryou's newest collection would be a archive of website illustrations, I wasn't expecting much in terms of quality or large illustrations. And no doubt having such moderate expectations about BEGINNING S.E.C Website Illustration Archive helped me to appreciate it more, since it turned out to be better than expected.

Ideolo's new Touhou doujinshi BLACK★ALBUM more or less starts up where his Comiket 78 volume, Carnival Fantasy left off, featuring many of the Touhou girls that weren't included in the previous book. Ideolo's designs are as beautiful as ever, this time combining his colorful palette with sharp black shadows and background designs.

Tsurugi Hagane's first art book came out at the end of January with an usually long title, The Collection of Tsurugi Hagane Pictures Exhibition at Walhalla. The presentation is what I'm beginning to expect from PUSH!! art books; plenty of illustrations, the majority of which are tiled three (or more) to a page with very few full page illustrations. The art work consists largely of Tsurugi Hagane's commercial works under the game studios SkyFish, and F&C FC03 Dreamsoft.

I was very impressed with Kunieda and aka's joint Comiket 79 release Collectors Kunieda & aka Design Works. Though the two artists have released themed books in the past for both Touhou and Vocaloid, this collection includes a variety of detailed, well-finished fan art along with their original creations.

And finally, more than a year after Macross Frontier heroine Sheryl Nome received her own dedicated art book, Macross Frontier Visual Collection Ranka Lee has been released! You might recall that in between, there was another Ranka Lee "art book" that hardly had any art work, but this time, it's the real deal.

I've always wondered what an artist does when she has reached the pinnacle of her style. Does she start over, perfecting a new and unique style, or continue on that same path? Is it about challenging oneself and experimentation or more about guaranteed success? I can't help but think that while looking at Kaori Minakami's newest release, Caprice, which while it is beautiful certainly feels like it lacks inspiration even in comparison to her slim Comiket 78 release.

Fantasia is my first purchase from the artist Sakura Yutsuki, and to be honest, the art style is generally not one I go looking for. So while this was more of a purchase to just pad my order, I actually ended up quite liking all the elaborate use of detail, lace and flowers in every illustration.

KEI continues to be an unstoppable force, releasing yet another all color volume of his illustration series, GA (画) Vol 07. Like with previous volumes, GA Vol. 07 includes a mixture of fan arts and originals, and this time around many of the characters from the Summer 2010 volume have found their way into the Winter 2010 as well.

Alphonse's B&W White Radio & Black Rock Shooter is a sort of two-in-one collection, where depending on which cover you open the doujinshi from, you get a different story. Both sides feature beautifully illustrated stories, much like the color comics we've seen in GELATIN, that place an emphasis on being able to tell a story that anyone could understand through the art work alone.