Contemplating from afar

Released last month, Pixiv Fantasia III ( ISBN: 978-4047261549 ) is the third installment in the series. The first two though didn’t have any publication and were only distributed on the Internet. As the name suggest, it’s a book with fantasy themed illustrations, ranging from humans to mythical beasts, to heaven from hell. I must say that this artbook is a departure from my usual collection, meaning bishoujo, moe… Quite a lot of new artists are featured, but none really stroke me so I will skip that part; I just focused a little bit more on my favorite illustration. At the end of the review, I will talk about their upcoming artbook, Pixiv Girls Collection 2010 which I hope will redeem the 2 previous Pixiv book I got.

The book start with some texts , 4 pages, then, here start the fantasy. Pixiv Fantasia suffer from the Pixiv syndrome, as I would like to call it. There are no page spread illustration at all in this book, and this is a bad point in general for artbook in my opinion. The size of the illustration is comparable to the full size of the digital images on my 15″ 1440×900 screen. Of course this doesn’t mean anything, as the illustration are in higher resolution in the book.

Compared to Pixiv Artist 2009, there are less illustration per pages. It’s mostly 2 to 4 illustrations per pages, so while it’s not page spread, it isn’t small either. I’m not sure how was planned Pixiv Fantasia III, but considering the format of most images, it couldn’t be page spread. I wonder if it wasn’t first supposed to be available on the Internet.

The illustrations are organized… certainly. Well, there must be an history behind it, so it’s my guess that there are 3 sides to a certain war, just looking at the cover. But most double pages of the artbook seems to be first grouped by color. You must have noticed by now but all illustration are on a black background which certainly gives a different feeling to all these illustrations. I think that’s one point which they got right, as it puts forward the color.

In term of content, lots of warrior, magic, golem, dragon, armies for around 100 pages. There are more than 60 pages which is mainly text at the end by the way. If you expect bishoujo, this is clearly not the book for you. As for the artist, I will have to say that the styles looks about the same, even though they are all different. In fact, I’m a disappointed on this end as an artist enthusiast. I would only advise to get this book if you want a good themed fantasy illustration book. Here are my favorite illustration of the book.

Now after this mixed bag, what about the anticipated Pixiv Girl Collection 2010? The previous Girl Collection is still the best artbook they have published, as we got very good artist, page spread illustration and it’s almost as thick as two normal books for the same price. Pixiv Girl Collection 2010 was announced last month and this time, it’s a themed artbook. It’s about girl drawing and having seen some of the best artwork submitted, I can’t wait to get this artbook. The submission from the start are supposed to have a minimum resolution of 350 DPI for a A4 printing. Judging by the format of most submissions, chance are a good part will be page spread! ( Or it’s going to be an epic fail with 4 per pages >.> ) Some though are still in landscape, so maybe there will be two per pages, or you will have to turn. I just hope it won’t be another collection of small illustrations. I’m eagerly waiting for Nardack, Aruya, and a lot more but sadly, there won’t be any tearfish as she didn’t submit anything.