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Doujinshi Review: “Colorful Sweets” by Ame Nochi Yuki

“Colorful Sweets” is a full-color K-on! fanbook by Ame Nochi Yuki, released at C78.

Asuza is the cover girl with her watermelon-on-a-stick. Or perhaps it is only ice cream that looks like a watermelon.

The back cover has previews of the Mio and Mugi illustrations featured inside on little doily-shaped cut-outs.

The inside cover has colorful stripes, doilies, sweets and all the things you’d expect to see at a shop that sells cakes and candies.

Following the mandatory introduction is the first illustration; a “No, Thank You!” version of Mio.

The Azusa illustration used on the cover is next with a two page spread and inset doily. Notice, however, that on the cover she’s wearing a sundress and in the two-page spread she’s wearing her trademark pink swimsuit.

The Mugi waitress illustration might be my favorite in this particular book. To her left is Yui as a maid. For some reason, Yui in a maid outfit seems terribly uncharacteristic. I imagine she lazes around while her imouto does all the housework!

I love Yui x Azusa images, and this one is no exception. Again, Azu-nyan scores a two-page spread. So cute.

The rest few pages aren’t K-On! but rather various other girls (and traps). This page features Hideyoshi (from Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu) and Misaka Mikoto (from To Aru Kagaku no Railgun).

These are some work illustrations of a couple of girls in shimapan-inspired swimsuits.

At the end is this nice little “Making of” section for the Mio illustration on the very first page. As an artist I always enjoy these sections because it helps me to learn new digital coloring techniques!

For the sake of completion, the inside of the back cover. :)

This was a nice little book, albeit short, and a real treat for Azusa fans. The Azu-nyan and Mugi illustrations alone are definitely what made it for me. You can find some nice high quality CG versions of the cover illustration and the Yui x Azu illustration on Ame Nochi Yuki’s website. Rather than posting them here I’d prefer that you just go to the doujin site and get them yourself; they’re not terribly difficult to find. ;)

Tags: c78, doujinshi, reviews

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Categories doujinshi

Doujinshi Review: “Paint or Die” by SOLOIST (Riv)

13 Sep

Riv’s bold graphic style has become a favorite of mine and so I’ve made it a point to get any new doujinshi publications I can. I am happy, for once, to get a SOLOIST doujinshi that isn’t Touhou themed but is Riv’s original work. During Comic Market 78, a 44 page color & monochrome illustration book entitled “Paint or Die” was released. I’m glad to say that it’s a pretty nice little tome.

The cover features a shimapan-clad catgirl with an appetite for chocolate bars. I won’t lie, but female crotch bulge creeps me out a bit. Riv has the original CG version of this image here on Pixiv in a 1024×768 resolution.

The inside of the front cover, of course, treats you to shimapan zoom layer. Always a pleaser. I guess. *female apathy settling in*

The first illustration is a catgirl, with what appears to be meatbuns. Includes thigh-highs and gratuitous panty shot. The page to the right of this image includes an introductory paragraph by Riv in both Chinese and Japanese. According to the Pixiv description for this image, Riv drew it for a CG lecture in a magazine. The picture’s title そんな目で見ないでください (sonna me de minai de kudasai) could be translated as “Don’t look at me with those eyes.” or ” Please don’t look at me like that”. Cute, eh.

Some sort of maid girl character design. I wonder why they often have little heart badges near their waistline. Must be a maid cafe thing.

I am noticing a theme and that theme is shimapan. Also, you can see this book has a crease in the corner. It arrived at my doorstep that way and I’m not too happy about it. I have no idea if it was the doing of Toranoana or Shopping Mall Japan, but it really sucks when you pay 5x the original item cost in deputy fees to acquire it. /endrant

A lovely little dog-eared girl.

A purple-haired elf or demon lady perhaps. I find the anatomy in this illustration particularly well done.

All of these characters are for an original doujin game cover. Riv claimed to be a little worn out after drawing this one. ;) (View on Pixiv)

Another doujin game cover. (View on Pixiv) There’s another version of this image that only features and girl in the foreground, and it’s pretty darn awesome.

This is probably another doujin game. Ren ai, I bet. I was pretty excited to see a drawing of male characters for once.

Here are some typical moe style images that we know and love. The left illustration is also on Pixiv and its title ひまわり笑顔 (himawari egao) means “sunflower smile”.

These are characters illustrated for a Taiwanese novel. (View on Pixiv: The seeker 01 & Girl and Sword) I find that Riv’s bold drawing style really suits strong fantasy female type characters. More so than gentler moe characters, anyway.

Well, it doesn’t get much more moe than two mikos in each other’s laps.

The rest of the book is in monochrome. All of the monochrome artwork is a pleasure to look at, however, I chose to only photograph a few pages as an example. This one features a variety of nekomimi characters.

I think Riv’s sketches are fantastic. I feel in some way like the style of sketching in these is similar to my own. It’s also interesting to see how much different the images feel without their signature coloring. Particularly the eyes. A graphic style is so different when you strip it of the CG.

These two images are just gorgeous. The girl with the leaf is undoubtedly one of my favorite Riv illustrations overall.

Overall, I’m fairly pleased with this book. Of course, I always want the books to be larger and to include more color illustrations, but the monochrome work in this book really is very nice. While not as impressive as Yumeiro Mangekyou in terms of presentation, “Paint or Die” is still a really lovely little compilation of Riv’s work.

Tags: c78, doujinshi, reviews, riv

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Categories art, doujinshi

Late Summer Odds ‘n Ends

30 Aug

I apologize for the length of time between my entries, however I’d like to keep this blog free of filler and stick with stuff that readers will actually find interesting. There’s actually a mish-mash of random things I’d like to discuss, and since none of them currently warrant an entire blog entry, I’ll be mentioning them all here in one collective post.

Pixiv News

A lot has happened with Pixiv as of late; enough that I won’t really cover it all. The most notable is their site re-design, which some people have noticed makes my Pixiv guide posts regrettably obsolete. I will eventually go back and re-write some guides for the new Pixiv, but it’s not high on my current list of priorities as I am busy and it’s just a hobby. On the artbook scene, Pixiv Nenkan 2010 has been released and you can see a preview of it (along with a nice review) over at Pireze. While it isn’t news, there’s also a Pixiv magazine that comes out quarterly, aptly named “Quarterly Pixiv”. You can order volume 1 and volume 2 from Amazon JP, respectively.

Also notable is the fact that Pixiv will be in charge of the next OTACOOL book, which will feature worldwide illustrators. This is an amazing opportunity for artists around the world to become internationally published, but the timeframe during which you can submit artwork is incredibly narrow. For someone like me who spends over a month on a really serious piece of artwork, it might be too much pressure. I imagine will see a lot of the same artists we see in Pixiv nenkan and a bunch of the more popular deviantArt folk who actually know how to sign up at Pixiv in the book. For details, visit Pixiv’s OTACOOL4 Illustration Contest page.

Comiket 78

Many of you are aware that Comic Market 78 happened this month, and lots ‘o lovely new publications were released. Comiket is the best time of year for browsing moe.imouto because of the immense dedication of dovac and his site administrators when it comes to acquiring and scanning new doujinshi. (There are even donations set aside for Comiket scanning in particular.) They put an ungodly amount of time and money into the site and I can’t thank them enough for everything they do to share those acquisitions. You should definitely take the time to browse the pools and see if any of your C78 wishlist items have been scanned. Of course it doesn’t beat owning the original book, but it’s the next best thing if you just can’t win the bid on the newest Tinkle doujinshi. (The incredibly gorgeous Stellato Giada, which has also been reviewed over at Hunting the Elusive.)

As of this moment I’ve ordered a small handful of goods from c78, but I haven’t found everything I’m looking for just yet. Among my purchases are RabbitNet Chronicles, Ame Nochi Yuki’s “Colorful Sweets” K-On! fanbook, “Hurry Up! 2” by Rei’s Room and of course Riv’s new book “Paint or Die”. I’d still like to get QP_Chick Colors #3 and the newest Dmyotic. I have a pipe dream to own the full c78 Tinkle set, but that one is probably outside of my price range. It’s a given that I want all Carnelian doujinshi, but I’m also pretty picky about which ones I buy; I lean towards full color and full page illustrations if possible, with exceptions made here and there. Since Carnelian’s stuff is also very expensive, I want to get the most bang for my buck.

Stamps

Yes, I’m still collecting them. Since my initial posts regarding my stamp collecting obsession, I’ve added a few notable sets. My favorite of which is a set of zenin Vampire Knight greeting card stamps and a Rurouni Kenshin stamp that I’ve literally been looking for for something like 10 years. There’s also this incredibly tiny set of Magic Knight Rayearth clear acrylic stamps and a wooden Lina Inverse one that I purchased from a good friend.

For more photos of my stamps, you can just shimmy over to my Flickr album. :)

… and other Miscellaneous Geekery

I hope to visit Little Tokyo in L.A. again next month and then I’ll post a bit about my adventures here. Unfortunately, L.A. is pretty darn ugly and so I never take many pictures when I go there. (On the other hand, San Francisco is fairly pleasing to the eye and so I wrote a lengthy entry about it after going there.) Store managers also tend to have explosive hissy fits at you if you take photographs in their shops, which often leaves me limited to photos of storefronts and parking garages. Anyways, I’ll be sure to enjoy some good ramen and weigh down my backpack with more artbook purchases from Kinokuniya. In addition to L.A. I’ll be visiting Anaheim to meet up with my WoW guild mates for dinner outside of Blizzcon. I think I might have to do some Yelp!ing to find out if Anaheim has any secret hidden Japanese gems. (I wonder if my guildies like sushi restaurants…) Also, because I can, DISNEYLAND!