Review: Pixiv Fantasia III

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.
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Review: Misakura Nankotsu’s Shoujo Planetarium

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.
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Scan: Ryohka’s icon. 02

Continuing from the previous release of icon. 01, here is icon. 02, released during summer in 2007, which should correspond with C72. There is one year difference between the 2 doujinshi.However, adverted eyes will easily see a huge improvement in artstyle.

A side note concerning the previews, they are all watermarked because of direct linking. The archive remains non watermarked of course; I hate watermark with a passion. Also, it’s quite an ecchi doujin, you are warned. Not every scan will be featured in this post. [PNG]

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Road to printing: Color space

Second step on the road, color space. Short article, and this time it’s not easy to illustrate with examples. To do this, you would need both the digital version and printed version. At least, I can provide a page from one booklet I got from Tinkle.
After sketching and inking, there is the coloring, in SAI, openCanvas, CG-illust, or Photoshop. What will interest us here, is not the software, but the screen on which the artist are drawing.

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Road to printing: Image resolution

Today, most artist use computer to create their artwork. Artbooks are, as much as it might seems derogative, an industrial product, printed in a certain quantity. Quality is affected as soon as it’s printed, and I will explain how in this article. There are several steps on the road to printing, but the major two are the drawing and the printing itself which I will try to explain in-depth, though I can’t guarantee the accuracy of my information. I will also provide several reference to artists and artbooks to illustrate the technical aspect. This is the first article in a serie of 4, as it’s a bit too long for one post.

The road start from the white paper, and I will go until it get digitalized. Second article will be about colors on screen, then colors in printing, and finally paper and screening. I’m also introducing the Shadowbox on the blog since the Lightbox didn’t work. To get the full size of an image, you will have first to click on it, then save the image on your computer.

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