【Illustrator/Manga Artist】前嶋重機 (MAESHIMA Shigeki)

Part Six. The more I write about this artist the more I love his work, which is why I guess I wrote so much. Sorry.

Sara from Dragon Fly. Click for full version. (Ages 16+!)

前嶋重機 (MAESHIMA Shigeki) is a professional illustrator and manga artist best known for his artwork and character designs in the 戦う司書 (Tatakau Shisho/Armed Librarians) series of light novels, as well as for his full-colour manga, Dragon Fly, serialized in the Robot and Gelatin full colour comic magazines. Maeshima is married to manga artist 伊藤悠 (ITOU Yuu), was born on February 6th, 1974, and usually draws his artwork by hand then colours and finishes it on a PC. He is also part of an illustrator+publishing unit called 42, along with three other professional artists.

Maeshima’s style is mature, slick, super-sexy, and kind of violent. All his female characters exude womanly vibes, with narrow eyes, thick eyelashes, actual lips and mouths, and very generously proportioned bodies clothed by provocative, well-designed attire. As well, they all give off a high sense of strength and independance, and most look as though they’re not to be messed with. His male characters number few when compared to his female characters, but they are also just as mature and strong, and all seem to have quite a bit of muscles. His character designs are unique, recognizable, and distinctly Maeshima-esque, thanks to how incredibly creative he is with hairstyles and costumes, but even though they all look like his work, they don’t look repetitive or recycled at all. There’s so much variation that they all look truly individualistic. As well, facial expressions usually quite varied in his manga since Maeshima knows how subtleties, like wrinkles, in the human face works to express emotion, but in his illustrations, his characters just usually pose for the picture and put on a pretty face. Another part that makes me love Maeshima’s work is how he actually draws noses and lips, and colours them realistically. Most of the lips on his female characters are luscious and full, a feature that I very much appreciate. Vague lines for mouths just doesn’t cut it sometimes, and even his teenage female characters have actual lips and nose.

Artwork from the novel 蟲忍 (Mushinin). Click for full version.

His colouring style also significantly adds to the cool nature of his artwork, but is slightly hard to describe. Although at first it looks like he lays his colours on thickly, he actually only has sharp, deep shading in the hair (Which gives it a thick, solid look) and some types of clothing, but for everything else, he does quite a bit of blending to make the shine look natural and more realistic. The lighting in most of his pictures is dark and muted, and the overall effect is somewhat similar to taking a photo without using flash in a softly lit environment. He is also very good at colouring skin, especially on faces, and they always have a shine that is similar to an actual person’s face under differently lit settings. He can even make faces look practically realistic as well. The colours he usually uses are whites, dark greys, cold blues, deep browns, and soft purples, but he can definitely do lighter colours as well. Another thing to add is that his work is really detailed, even in his full-colour manga, and his compositions and planning in both individual illustrations and a full manga is action-packed, well coordinated, and fully completed.

In short, Maeshima Shigeki is a superb illustrator and manga artist who solidly defines his own style and shows a real grasp of all the fundamentals of art (depths of field, anatomical proportions, lighting, cropping, etc) not seen enough in the highly stylized world of anime-type art, and the few, low-quality example pictures I provided above really, really don’t do justice at all to Maeshima, whose work (especially the manga Dragon Fly) is best seen on paper and at the highest quality. I understand that his style isn’t to everyone’s preference, but Maeshima is the real deal, in my opinion.

Maeshima Shigeki at Wikipedia: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/前嶋重機 (Japanese)
Interview with Sync Future: http://p2.pixiv.net/2009/05/13/1582.html (Japanese)
Brief profile at Sync Future: http://www.lpei.co.jp/sync_future/profile/#creator19 (Japanese)

【Illustrator】ゆーげん (yuugen)

Part Five. This marathon unintentionally turned into a moé fest or something. Don’t worry, that’ll end soon.

Original illustration. Click for full version.

ゆーげん (yuugen) is the artist name of a professional illustrator best known for his artwork in the light novel グリモワールの契約者 (Grimoire no Keiyakusha/Grimoire Contractor). yuugen currently lives in Tokyo, Japan, his birthday is on March 8th, his blood type is A, he uses a Wacom Intuos 3 (A5 Wide), and he likes coffee, black tea, and reading books. His website name is Castleton, which comes from the name of the area that produces a black tea he frequently drinks, although lately he has been drinking only coffee.

yuugen’s style is polished, glassy, and has a very high degree of completion. Everything, even down to the smallest details, is meticulously coloured, giving yuugen’s artwork an extremely professional and detailed look. Just one piece of his fully completed artwork should take someone more than 5 minutes to look at all the details. As for characters, yuugen’s are most definitely of the moe style, and is impeccable at drawing attractive and cute female characters. His characters’ eyes are not overly large and have a glassy look to them, and he is also great at detailing the folds in the well-designed clothing. He usually draws hair with the general outline then shaded with deeper colours to indicate depth, and adds shiny stray strands to make it look lighter. In addition to drawing people, he’s also impeccable at drawing colourful skies for his backgrounds and coordinating colours. He seems to like using lots of gradated and blended colours, and using near-white spots to add shine. Even though his characters are usually in static poses with standard expressions, he is more than capable of making his artwork look lively. His analog (non-CG) work seems to stays true to his colouring style too. Really looking forward to seeing more from this artist!

Website: http://yuugen.hiyamugi.com/
Pixiv: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=806502

【Illustrator】凪良 / 名木良 (nagi / NAGI Ryou)

Part Four. I got a suggestion saying that I should add more pictures, but this is a difficult request to implement. Hopefully I did it okay. If you liked the old post format better, please tell me, because I liked it too.

Aurica Nestmile from Ar Tonelico I. Click to enlarge.

名木良 (NAGI Ryou) is a professional illustrator who is more widely known under the artist name of 凪良 (nagi). His representative works include providing the character designs and artwork for the Ar Tonelico video game series and doing the illustrations for the light novel series 風水学園 (Fuusui Gakuen/Feng Shui Academy). nagi’s doujin circle name is S.E.C., which he says stands for “Stylish”"Erotic”"Cool”, or “少し””エロいけど””クール” (“Sukoshi”"Eroi kedo”"Cool”/”A little”"erotic but”"cool”), and although he usually goes by the kanji 凪良, which normally reads as “nagiryou”, it’s always read as “nagi” when used as his name. (However, it is sometimes subtitled on the credits as “nagiryo” in English on the cover of light novels.)

Click on the pictures for the full size, and footnotes for each pictures are on the bottom of the post. These pictures are also included in the links in the paragraph below.

True to the words used in the acronym of S.E.C., his style really is “stylish”, “erotic”, and “cool”, though the word “sleek” should be included as well, plus most of his work aren’t overly erotic, and instead seem more tastefully sexy. nagi’s characters are probably in the moé category, with almost exclusively female characters, large, glassy eyes, odd-coloured hair, and quite a bit of fanservice. Poses are always varied, but expressions seem to number only a handful, most of them being cool gazes and sweet smiles. What sets nagi’s artwork apart from the other more standard moe styles, though, is that he frequently designs very unique, sleek, and streamlined outfits for them, adding a bit of acceessories here and there. This mechanical look is reinforced by his incredibly clean, nearly sterile, colouring style, where he uses a small selection of usually light pastel colours for everything from shading to the outline. This gives less contrast and depth, but really makes everything look smooth and clear. His older works have significantly more dark shades and depth, but his current colouring style is absolutely top-notch, and his latest works sport lots of gradients that makes it look even cleaner. The fact that nagi almost never draws actual strands of hair enhances this too, and in fact almost all of his characters have a head of hair with only the ends marked by darker shading. Another thing that makes nagi’s works so popular are his character and costume designs, which are beautiful, unique, and memorable.

Website: http://www.sec.or.tv/ (Japanese)
Pixiv: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=773040
nagi at Wikipedia: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/凪良 (Japanese)

- Cover artwork from his doujinshi S.E.C.-influence of Ayanami Rei and Asuka Langley from Evangelion. Cool gazes and great mechanical detail.
- Cover artwork for the light novel Heavy Object. Unique costume, glassy eyes, and undetailed hair.

【Illustrator】シオミヤイルカ (SHIOMIYA Iruka)

Part Three.

Haruka and Chihaya from The IDOLM@STER. Click to enlarge.

シオミヤイルカ (SHIOMIYA Iruka) is a professional illustrator who also releases independant doujinshi. He is best known for illustrating the covers of the two 戦姫 (Senhime/Battle Princess) light novels, and also for contributing this ED sequence artwork of Senjougahara Hitagi from Bakemonogatari. However, most of his non-commercial artwork are of The IDOLM@STER characters. Shiomiya owns a Mystic Silver PSP, listens to NAKAJIMA Miyuki and The Carpenters while drawing, uses Photoshop CS4 with a Wacom Intuos 4 on a Mac, and his favourite movies lately are Roman Holiday and Ratatouille.

Shiomiya’s not-really-anime style is marked by realistic shading, and the themes of his artwork are usually non-fantastical. His characters all have large round (sometimes oval-ish) eyes, but they usually have plausible poses, hairstyles, and clothing. Faces are wonderfully expressive, with many different emotions. Hair is probably one of his strongest points, since it always looks like it has weight and actual strands. However, Shiomiya’s colouring style is what makes his artwork stand out. Shading is sharp and accurate, and even though uses a lot of different colours, they’re always skillfully coordinated and never clash. He also has a good grasp on lighting, and knows how to integrate his beautiful backgrounds with the characters in the setting. Incredibly, his rough drafts are almost equally awesome as his coloured artwork.

Website: http://www.geocities.jp/shiomid/ (Downloads of his artwork+sketches for each year are posted here)
Blog: http://yaplog.jp/shiomid/
Pixiv: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=9769

【Illustrator】タケシマサトシ (TAKESHI MASATOSHI)

Part Two of the Illustrator Marathon. The next few posts will be in this category as well. The juvenile reason for this is because I want the Illustrator tag to surpass all other tags by a bigger margin. I don’t want the Music tag to” catch up”.

舞野咲 (MAINO Saki) from the cover of “不思議”取り扱います 付喪堂骨董店 (Tsukumodou Antique Shop) Volume 6.

タケシマサトシ (TAKESHI MASATOSHI) is the artist name of a Japanese illustrator best known for his artwork in 御堂彰彦 (ODO Akihiko)’s light novel series, “不思議”取り扱います 付喪堂骨董店 (“Fushigi” Tori atsukaimasu – Tsukumodou Kottouten/We handle “Curiosities” – Tsukumodou Antique Shop). He has also provided artwork for an H-game called 天ツ澪 (Amatsumiyo) as well as for Square Enix’s Eternal Wheel TCG, and did the mecha designs for a PS2 game called バルドバレットイクリブリアム (Baldr Bullet Equilibrium).

Takeshi Masatoshi’s style is sophisticated and slightly dark. He’s capable of drawing pretty and smart-looking girls and moderately frilly outfits, and seems to draws eyes in a pretty typical style. Although his characters look nice, I think the one thing that really drew me to his covers for Tsukumodou was how he set the mood of the picture. There were always different detailed backgrounds that accompanied the character, and this atmosphere is impeccable. Takeshi Masatoshi’s colouring style is lovely too, with mostly muted colours and gradated shading in the hair that reminds me a bit of pako’s artwork, and it’s nice how he can make even the folds in dull black clothes easily distinguishable. He sometimes also blends different slightly shades together when colouring a large area, which gives it a slight pearl-like sheen. He’s come a long way from the colouring techniques he used to use. Of course, he’s also capable of producing vibrant pictures as well as something totally different from his usual style.

Website: http://members.at.infoseek.co.jp/scene11/ (Unavailable)

【Illustrator】芳住和之 (YOSHIZUMI Kazuyuki)

Seems like I’ve been neglecting this category as of late…Sorry!

Artwork for an MMORPG called Bell Isle. Click to enlarge.

芳住和之 (YOSHIZUMI Kazuyuki) is a professional freelance illustrator best known for his work on the Mana Khemia video game series. He was also the original character designer and illustrator for the 宇宙をかける少女 (Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo/Sora Kake Girl) light novel, which was adapted into an anime. Yoshizumi was born in 1977, lives in Saitama Prefecture, his hobbies include taking photos of scenery with his Nikon D70 while taking a walk, and likes to make coffee. His favourite games are the Ogre Battle series and the Panzer Dragoon series, and his favourite artists are Frank Frazetta and Norman Rockwell. Yoshizumi has most recently contributed to the character designs for the 闘神伝 (Toshinden) Wii remake, which is probably my favourite work of his.

Yoshizumi’s style is of the anime style but with a fantasy twist. Most of his female character sport round eyes and uniquely designed costumes, and his male characters have narrow eyes and range from manly men to effeminate guys. Both genders seem to sport a lot of thick, shiny hair. The accessories, costumes and weapons he designs are astoundingly elaborate and elegant, and he always adds a lot of different, super-detailed motifs to them. Yoshizumi uses a lot of deep-coloured shading that makes everything look like it has substantial weight, and uses white spots to give things a touch of shine. His colouring usually uses moderate but varying shades of colour, and uses more vibrant colours for highlighting, but I think that his black and white artwork are most lovely. His overall style is pretty similar to Hyung-tae Kim’s.

Website: http://www12.big.jp/~s03tk/
Yoshizumi Kazuyuki at moe.imouto: http://moe.imouto.org/wiki/show?title=yoshizumi_kazuyuki

【Illustrator/PV Animator】高村真耶/MAYA (TAKAMURA Maya)

Artwork of the main characters from Zektbach's Blind Justice～Torn souls, Hurt Faiths ～. Click to enlarge.

高村真耶 (TAKAMURA Maya), also known as VJ MAYA, is a professional illustrator who also does video work, and is best known for her animated videos in Konami’s beatmania IIDX games, such as PVs for Zektbach’s Ristaccia and kors k’s smooooch・∀・. She resigned from Konami in 2008 and now works as a freelance illustrator, though she has recently made two videos for beatmania IIDX 17 SIRIUS. Takamura’s birthday is on March 30th and is a graduate of Osaka University of Arts.

Takamura’s artwork is of quite the anime/manga style, with many large eyed characters, undetailed faces, and beautiful, almost extravagant clothing designs. However, her artwork, even outside of the fantasy-themed Zektbach videos, seems to be influenced by things such as 17th century fashion(?), Middle Eastern costumes, and other western clothing in general (dresses, ribbons, jewelled hairpieces). Of course, Takamura is also capable of executing many other styles and themes skillfully as well, outside of the themes mentioned above. Her artwork is mainly drawn with impeccably clean black and white line art and then coloured in, and she usually shades parts of the hair and details with black lines as well, giving them a intricate and solid look. Her colouring style varies a lot depending on what kind of tone she is trying to achieve, but everything that she does colour is very colourful, vibrant, and extremely well-coordinated. She seems to like using bright, almost neon colours if she gets the chance, and her mastery of colour is made apparent by this as they are just bright enough that they don’t look garish or difficult to look at.

As for her videos, they are, to put it in one word, incomparable, especially for the heavily animated Zektbach videos. All animations were drawn by Takamura alone, and the fluidity of everything is incredible. I can’t even begin to imagine how many pictures she had to draw for each video (or even every few seconds) in order to show that kind of detailed motion. Composition of videos are perfect as well, with a lot of creative effects for both changing scenes and connecting objects. Despite being obviously 2D, videos like Turii ～Panta Rhei～ have animation that include panning and zooming, making the videos even more immersive. Takamura’s video work is probably the pinnacle of hand drawn PVs. Please watch them.

Essential Works – beatmania IIDX videos:
1. Ristaccia
2. smooooch・∀・
3. Turii ～Panta Rhei～ **Personal Favourite**

Website: http://maya.vc/ (Japanese)
Wikipedia Entry: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/高村真耶 (Japanese)
RemyWiki Entry: http://vjarmy.com/wiki/index.php/Maya_Takamura
Youtube Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=9C16845C60947851

【Illustrator】政尾翼 (MASAO Tsubasa)

So I acquired Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner the other day…

Main visual for Metal Gear Acid. Click to enlarge.

政尾翼 (MASAO Tsubasa) is a professional illustrator and game animator. He is best known for character designs in Kojima Productions games such as ANUBIS ZONE OF THE ENDERS (Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner in the US) and the two Metal Gear Acid games. He has also provided 2D animations for Konami’s Bemani division games such as KEYBOARDMANIA and GUITARFREAKS and was the design manager of the mobile version of BEATMANIA. In addition to providing artwork for games, he is also part of an illustration group called “fde”, for which he has produced original pieces of artwork based on a theme. Masao was born on May 5th, 1974 in Saitama, has blood type A, and currently lives in Kanagawa. Masao is also an avid baseball fan, and supports Fukuoka’s Hawks team. His most current work is providing artwork for Square Enix’s DS game, 光の4戦士 -ファイナルファンタジー外伝- (Hikari no 4 Senshi: Final Fantasy Gaiden).

Since Masao is a pretty versatile artist, he has a few different styles depending on the genre of artwork he is trying to draw.

In his usual pseudo-anime style (as seen in his illustrations for Metal Gear Acid), female characters have have slightly big, round foreheads and head shape, very thin arms, and pointy noses and eyes when drawn in profile. All his character have small squarish eyes and undetailed faces, and hair is drawn with light, thin lines and appear very wisp-like, which contrasts with the thick outlines that frame the character. He is also capable of completely diverging from this style when he draws characters in a super-deformed style. As well, his artwork uses a lot of vivid and solid colours marked with gradients and versatile and fluid poses for the characters. Character design is probably Masao’s forte, as all the characters look unique, stylish, fashionable, and just plain awesome. (Ken Marinaris illust. by NISHIMURA Nobuyoshi[?])

Original artwork for an art event. Click to enlarge.

As for his realism style, all the people represented in them are drawn so accurately that they seem almost like shots cut from a movie. As with his pseudo-anime style, he also uses lots of dramatic lighting, gradients, and vivid colours. There is less posing, and in turn mainly focuses on facial expressions and on emphasizing the atmosphere.

Masao’s last style has a trace of the anime style, but it is more similar to the artwork found in children’s books. Characters’ faces are extremely round and cartoon-like, but with tiny eyes and very thin limbs. The vivid colours and wispy lines are again used, but there seems to be less use of gradients and instead more solidly shaded.

Website: http://www.omega-press.com/
Blog: http://blog.omega-press.com/
Mixi: http://mixi.jp/show_friend.pl?id=3176625 (Japanese, must have Mixi account to access)
Metal Gear AciD 1&2 Gallery: http://www.konami.jp/gs/game/mga2/america/deep_gallery_00.html
Metal Gear Acid 1 Wallpaper Gallery: http://www.konami.jp/gs/game/mga/english/downloads.html
Metal Gear Wiki stub: http://metalgear.wikia.com/wiki/Tsubasa_Masao
Wikipedia entry: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/政尾翼 (Japanese)