Vanillesose Marchen is a doujin released by Tohru Adumi, under the circle name Kotobukikei during C77. I have a love/hate relationship with her, because I like her art very much, but she draws quite a number of bishounen, with sometimes an entire doujinshi dedicated to them. Well, the worst must have been the doujinshi for a very popular shounen with ninja inside ( Not telling the title, I don’t want to be referenced for it lol ). Vanillesose Marchen is the first and unique doujinshi I have from her. It’s a 25 pages, B5 sized doujinshi, with a thin cardboard cover, with a frilly cutting for the front, and the rest is a standard plastic paper. Full Size PNG

Why did I get this doujin… well, it was just on wimp; the last doujin you bid on because you need to wrap up your package. I also try to get some new artist each time, aside of the one I always get.

The promotional picture was the pink middle one. If I remember correctly, back at that time the artist had her pink period, hence this very nice illustration. I really like the way she draws hair and eyes. I don’t remember her using a lot of highly saturated colors. There are more desaturated color, and in some drawing, there are few colors, giving the illustration some sense of tradition and age, which is soothing. This is complemented by the design of the clothes.

I particularly like these fantasy themed illustrations. It makes you dream and become a child again. The image in the archive is leveled because it looks a little bit too green here.

The brown one also reminds me of the cover of Byakuya Chakai. The pose is almost the same, and it follows the same contrast scheme, saturation. The difference is the eyes which here, fits the general color set, unlike Tinkle’s green eyes which are attracting in the sea of pink. Nevertheless, both are lovingly mesmerizing.

I already liked Tohru Adumi before, and I’m glad I got this doujin. It’s not expensive to get her publication since she isn’t as camped as some other high profile artist. She has a particular style which reminds of old fashion, and some German touch, with the text and design.There are also some English poem inside to complement the illustration. For once, it’s not really Engrish.

Concerning the scans, I didn’t debind the doujin since I have only one copy like most of my doujinshi anyway. I had to flatten it quite a lot on scanner bed, but I think it’s good enough. I didn’t scan the pages without illustration, so that my copy doesn’t get too damaged over time. In the archive, the two page spread illustrations are already stitched, and I didn’t put one illustration in this article, because it’s mainly made of bishounen. Lastly, I added the lightbox to WordPress so that there is no need to load the image in another page. I hope it works.

edit: It doesn’t work, and Twitters Tools brings me some issue, so I will disable it temporally >.<

Since I’m stuck at home. Here is a doujin that I scanned 2 weeks ago, but didn’t have time to process. icon. 01 was released in summer 2006, certainly during a Comiket. Back then, I didn’t even know Ryokha , and in fact, I didn’t start my collection of artbook. Download here

I think the first real contact I had with the artist was an issue of Dengeki Moeoh, April 2008, which had a nice collection of art. Then there was some CG back, with Akane Iro ni Somaru Saka, and now the doujinshi. icon. 01 ( because there is 02 too ), is a rare SFW illustration doujinshi, in full color.

The artstyle must have quite evolved between 2006 and today. It’s a little bit less polished, and it lacks one thing that define his art today, the eyes. It looks a little bit more generic in this doujinshi, but generic doesn’t mean not cute. I do like seeing how an artist evolve over time.

2006 is also that year, with Suzumiya Haruhi, hence the fanart. This was really a good year for otaku with all the video. ( Note: I’m stuck at Endless Eighth’s fourth episode )

Some artwork of Aozora no Mieru Oka. I have always thought that the game was illustrated by Izumi Tsubasu, but at that time, their artstyle were pretty close. Nowadays, it’s pretty different, and it’s for the best since I like both of them.

There is also a guest illustration part but it’s less interesting, at least to me. Ryohka’s art, even the old style, is good. icon. 02 features his more polished artstyle, but that’s for some other time.

Dmyo is a cute Korean artist, with megane and a cute cat. She recently gained some popularity with her doujinshi, Dmyotic which scans got spread on the internet. Otherwise, I have never heard of her, but it’s more or less the same for all Korean artist. Artstyle wise, it remind me a little bit of Nardack, another Korean artist. I guess it’s the lighting on the skin which makes it shiny, and the eyes.

First illustration start with a dark tone. Contrary to other illustration, the choice of color seems small, without much lighting. It’s so depressing that it’s fascinating, with the torn cloth and mate skin. Judging by the copyright, it might be a fanart of Shikabane Hime. ( sorry, can’t read japanese )

Then we get again the cover girl, with the back cover pose as well. Better said that the cover was what made me buy this doujin. Girls drinking water at a fountain is kinda sexy. The setting and simple design of the seifuku really puts forward her beauty. Also, a detail which is rarely drawn ( at lest to me ), the pink lips. I guess it’s because I usually don’t like the artstyle of the artist who usually draw lips. It just looks too real, and not moe. But here, it’s a must a have since the focus is on the face, and it looks so soft… hmm better stop and not talk about the legs because I might look like an obsessed ^^;.

There are still seifuku, more lips, and books which seems to be a love story between an octopus and a cat. That concludes the two pages illustration. I will try to remove the creases latter. It’s a time consuming process.

Then some fanart. I can easily recognise Higurashi and Aria, then the grey haired girl seems from an eroge but I’m clueless for the teddy bear one. And Aria shachou got blue lol.

And to finish, a two piece! I wish it was a stick poster. I really like it, but I guess I will have to do with this. I really like her choice of color. It’s contrasted and soft at the same time, with nice lighting. Also, the hair is not overly detailed, and have a nice flowing, which is fitting with the rest of the images. Oh and lastly, lips…

For a first contact with Dmyo, I’m really pleased with the doujin. I already liked the art based on scans of icie, but was rather hesitant to get the doujin. Now I wonder if I should get the older one…

As for the scan, it should be a lot better than the Pixiv one. It was binded by staples and I used a resolution of 1200dpi. It was processed at college for one whole hour while listening to the class xD. Some scan which are not in this post are in the archive, and there is a NSFW one.

Here it’s, the 1kg, 2cm thick artbook from Pixiv, and I guess anticipated by artbook collector. I was expecting the same format as the Pixiv Girls Collection, but it’s not, and in fact, I’m a little bit dissapointed.

Pixiv Girls Collection was an artbook which emphasized more on illustration. There were a page spread section at the beginning, with wonderful art from chosen artist, and the rest was mostly half pages illustration, but still enjoyable.  The printing quality was also high, making it the thickest artbook I have ever owned until now.

Huke got a 4 pages treatment

Pixiv Official Book 2009, maintain this quality, but the focus is in my opinion, more on artist.
There is in fact, 1 to 4 pages per artist ( mostly 1 ) in alphabetical order. Unlike compilation book where every artist get a page spread illustration, there can be several illustration per pages, up to 7. Also notable, is the lack of tearfish. It’s now a cover with avatars from the artist featured.

I wish Koto had more pages

Same for RYO

The result is that illustration are sometime too small. The book presents 122 artists, with a little banner on top, to get their PIxiv ID, and their website. It feels more like some sort of index to browse Pixiv even more since I don’t browse Pixiv on a regular basis. There are lots of them, but here they choose some good one, and the book is a good way to discover them.

But let’s move to the content. Scan are not good, but most of the illustration are in fact already available on Pixiv. It’s also why I only link to Pixiv. Nevertheless, I will try to improve for other release, starting to prevent book from moving <.<

Tatetsu Keto

I usually don’t like Vocaloid. I don’t search for it in particular, but sometimes, when it’s different from the usual Vocaloid art, I appreaciate. It’s too bad the art was too large for scanning, so there is the binding discoloration. Hopefully, it’s on Pixiv, and in quite good resolution.  The resolution of the picture on Pixiv is in fact high enough for a 300dpi printing as large as the one in this book. Also, that cow hat is fun.

K,Kanehira

Other than character, there are also some landscape  featured, or even some photo or male images which won’t appeal to moe fan. But they are really rare.

Nardack

Nardack fill the hole left by tearfish as a Korean artist. I like that chubby  style and the color. It’s like Hyung Tae Kim making moe art. This is even more visible on this image ( it’s on the other page )which seems to be from Magna Carta.

Aruya

Aruya presents us with two different style. I already knew the soft style, used on the right; with little to no outline, mostly with contrast of saturation. On the left, I just discovered a more contrasted style, with defined outline, which is a change.

But if there is not enough soft style, there is still Shimeko and Onineko who are more well known I guess. They are quite similar in style, so I like them both.

Mirunai

On another note, Mirunai is an artist I have overlooked. I quite like the blue haired girl there.

In the end, it’s a nice book, but still my main gripe is the size of some illustration. I would have prefered less images per pages, maximum 2 like it was mostly in the Pixiv Girl Collection. But there some full pages one and some aren’t too small. But as I said, for me it’s a browsing guide for Pixiv. Some art are in higher resolution on the website or were printed elsewhere. If you are a regular Pixiv lurker, I think this artbook would  be less less interesting unless you like paper since chance are you have already seen the artwork.

Before sending me to Arkham Asylum because I’m a crazy person who use a trackpad for Photoshop, I will just say that it’s more precise for me than a laser mouse. I have been using an Apple trackpad, multitouch one and one large button covering the bottom. In fact, it’s the best trackpad I have ever tried, other being sometimes a little bit too sticky due to shiny plastic, or too smooth thus being not accurate enough.

First of all, it’s a laptop, so aside of the trackpad which might seems absurd, I have been cleaning scans in my bed  ( quite fitting for my scanlation team ). Multitouch bring something new which is unequaled with a mouse, side scrolling. I’m not so used to using the spacebar for moving around a picture. Also, I don’t use any tap to click function, but the large button under my thumb so that, the cursor doesn’t move and I can still move the cursor with my middle finger without lifting it.

Apple trackpad

However, these last few days I have been a little bit annoyed. For most of my job I have been using the clone stamp of Photoshop. It’s usually really good and the trackpad is enough, until you get to do gradient, or whole redrawing. Yesterday text removal was heavy work. The doujinshi had half transparent bubble, so I decided to redraw the bubble so as to make a high quality job since it’s very good art. But some text were on ribbon… Maybe one of the hardest things to redraw with frills not too far. While I can use the pen tool, I feel that what I did isn’t good. Well you shouldn’t worry about the upcoming release which will be downsized, making many of my mistake invisible unless looking for them with a magnifier, but redrawing ribbons is hard, and I didn’t manage to make it look as good as the art. Well, chance are it’s also a problem with a mouse.

Another issue is reproducing gradient and correcting color discrepancy between pages. I think some scanner auto adjust their color between each pages, so color aren’t always the same between two pages. The problem is that when cloning from one page, the color doesn’t match the other pages. There is two methods to bypass this problem; either color match the two pages, which I never managed to do perfectly, or make a small gradient which makes the transition easy to the eyes. I usually use both solution, but making gradient is time consuming. In my current workflow, it requires at least 2 pass, one with the Clone Stamp with an opacity of 100%, another with at least 50% or less.

Color Discrepancy

So while I can do my jobs fine, it is quite hard with a trackpad, or even a mouse. That’s why I have been looking at graphics tablet for a while. A pen is much more precise than other device, and what I would really like is the pressure level which would greatly help for gradient. I have also some other things to do since it’s part of my course, but I’m still on the edge. Graphics tablet are rather expensive. I fear that Wacom Bamboo’s tablet wont be enough, so I aim for the professional line, Intuos4, but I also don’t know how I would perform with it, since my drawing skill are not very high… So investing in one is something I have been asking myself a lot, and C76 didn’t do too much good to my wallet. Chance are I will try to get one before the end of the year, or earlier if I need one for college… but the fear that it might end as a shiny shitajiki is quite high ^^;