Contemplating from afar

Misakura Nankotsu is an artist I’m not too familiar with. I didn’t see a lot of artwork from him/her, before the recent scans. On the 1st of July, 2 artbooks were released, Last Resort (ISBN: 978-4-86252-653-3) and Shoujo Planetarium ( ISBN: 978-4-7577-5010-4 ).I don’t want to comment on the content of Last Resort, but be warned if you didn’t see them yet that it contains hentai, futanari and I find it rather gross, so I didn’t get the artbook. Shoujo Planetarium, is safer, though it features some pantsu shot and sexy illustrations. I decided to review it by photo, and I will comment it, and some color issue and the format of these review at the end of the article.

The book open with a nice folded poster of the cover. Now I wonder if anyone try to remove the poster from their artbook. I never did it with my artbooks, only with magazines.

The book is full of page spread illustration, with comments at the bottom, and a margin for your thumb. There is no small illustration. Artstyle wise, Misakura Nankotsu is not that particular, it’s quite generic moe, not that I dislike it much. One good point would be the color, which are really vibrant.

These illustration from what I gathered are from the Famitsu PS, the famous weekly video game magazine in Japan. Judging from the information in the artbook, Misakura Nankotsu put one illustration every 2 weeks. Chance are no one has ever seen them except Japanese who get the magazine. I don’t think anyone get a video game magazine to scan one artwork; there are video game news in it.

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I think it must have already striking for people that it’s rather ecchi. Pantsu here and there, girls cleaning your car… One thing I like in the artbook are the theme of the images. They are all from every day life, with all sort of girl’s in different uniform doing different jobs. There is no particular image to disturb this flow. I like fantastic one, but having a focus on every day life is equally as good in my opinion.

The book conclude with an interview of the artist. All in all, it’s a nice artbook, if you kind of like generic moe. The artstyle, while not being overly original, is clean… and ecchi. It also reminds me a little bit of the Uniform Moe Encyclopedia is similar in visual theme, except the artstyle is consistent, which is really a plus compared to the randomness of the encyclopedia.

Now concerning the article; it was my plan to use the scanner instead of the camera. But for big book, it’s very hard to flatten the book, and I usually lose 1/3 of the page. I also had some people telling me that my icon. 02 has color problem, which is true when I compare the images. However, in the current situation it seems hard for me to address this. My scanner is only on 8bits per channel, meaning that in term of color accuracy, it’s not very good. I might invest in a new scanner in the future, so if people has any recommendation for scanner, I’m opened ^^. I just scanned the cover, and tried some new processing. I would like to point out that there is no GreyCstoration Photoshop plugin for Mac, so I guess I will have to compile it one day.

Meanwhile, I had to use my camera. Using camera is a bit tricky, as the paper is the reflective kind, meaning I have to avoid projecting any hard light. I was surprised to see that my room lamp did make some reflection even though it’s quite a diffused light, so I switched it off. I had to use my lamp desk instead. Pointing it directly at the book proved to be inefficient even with a diffuser. My solution in the end was to point upward, and have some reflection diffuse the light. I think I can improve it a little bit again; I just though about being in front of a wall, since the light is coming from the bottom, and the top the page is less lighted than the rest. The photos reflect this different change of lighting. I will try to improve it over time.

PS: Twitter Tool seems to spam again my database…