【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/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

【Touhou PV】 Bad Apple!! 影絵 (Bad Apple!! Shadow Art PV)

I try my best to avoid posting insubstantial material, but this is far too incredible.

Posted on October 27th, 2009 by an anonymous uploader (with an account name of あにら/anira), this is an entirely black and white PV with the silhouettes of moving 3D models choreographed to Alstroemeria Records’ Bad Apple!! Touhou vocal arrange song, sung by nomico. The PV maker used the storyboard drawn on MS Paint by someone called MMM, who posted his story board video in June 2008, and fully fleshed out the whole video, making incredible sense of a mostly poorly-drawn, vague plan. The video is currently 1st on the hourly rankings at the time of posting.

The fluidity of this PV is nothing short of impeccable, and might as well have been a professional work, though I guess that’s what Touhou seems to elicit a lot from its super large fanbase. I’ve watched this about 3 times now, and I will probably keep watching it a few more times. I’ve embedded a Youtube video on the bottom of this post, but don’t forget to take a look at the comparison as well if you have a niconico account. (Links below)

【東方】Bad Apple!!　ＰＶ【影絵】
Nico | Youtube
Original Storyboard | Comparison (Both are niconico only)

【Singer】UmiNeko

I don’t usually listen to male singers for unknown reasons, but this person is far too great.

UmiNeko is an amateur singer from niconico who is becoming more well-known recently for his unique voice and consistently high quality works. His most popular works are his renditions of DixieFlatline’s Just Be Friends, with 1906 Mylists, and におP’s (nioP) 蜜蜂 (Mitsubachi/Honeybee) with 1536 Mylists. He almost always provides MP3 downloads of his songs, and the majority of his songs are mixed by madamxx and encoded by various people. In addition to singing, he also has a radio show hosted on niconico live stream sometimes.

UmiNeko’s voice is, to put it in one word, soulful. It is mature, emotional, and has weight as he retains all his notes completely and fully, which makes him extremely suitable for songs of the Soul genre. Despite having a pretty specialized voice, he sings many songs from different genres, including Jazz, R&B, and Pop, to name a few. UmiNeko usually sings in a relatively low voice, but he has absolutely no trouble transitioning to really high notes quickly and smoothly. He also likes to do a lot of really well-done scat singing. Lastly, UmiNeko also songs quite a bit of English songs (which I think he is best suited for), and his English pronounciation is quite good.

Please give his songs a listen! His voice might take a bit of getting used to at first, but it is absolutely incredible from his first songs to the most recent ones. I had a hard time picking only 6 songs to list here.

Essential Works – Vocaloid Covers:
1. 蜜蜂 (Mitsubachi/Honeybee) (niconico link) **Representative Work & Highly Recommended**
2. 少年銀河 (Shounen Ginga/Boy Galaxy) (niconico link) →Recommended
3. つよがり (Tsuyogari/Bluff) (niconico link) →First work

Essential Works – Original/English:
1. Losing game (niconico link) (Original song; Collaboration with におP (nioP)
2. You Give Me Something (niconico link) (English song; James Morrison) →Recommended
3. What’s Going On (niconico link) (English song; Marvin Gaye)

Mylist: http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/9247970
niconico Community: http://ch.nicovideo.jp/community/co71841
Youtube Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=7EA54D231EF07449

【Illustrator】唖采弦二 / 輪くすさが (ASAI Genji/Rin KUSUSAGA)

Original illustration from website. Click to enlarge.

唖采弦二 (ASAI Genji), which is the alias of 輪くすさが (Rin KUSUSAGA), is a professional game CG designer and illustrator, and is best known for his official, ZUN-affiliated Touhou contributions, providing artwork for the 東方香霖堂 (Touhou Kourindou) ～ Curiosities of Lotus Asia stories, two official fanbooks (Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red and The Grimoire of Marisa), and for the Touhou Project Tribute Arts book cover, which was reviewed by icie at Pireze. In terms of commercial works, Asai Genji has worked on both Sword World 2.0 (character designs and guidebook cover illust.) and the now defunct Druaga Online -The Story of Aon- with friend 鴉丸忠次 (KARASUMA Chuuji, sometimes 真嶋杏次), and a few novels, such as the novel adaptation of Nitro+’s 刃鳴散らす (Hanachirasu) and the two ネザーワールド (Netherworld) novels by 東佐紀 (AZUMA Saki). In contrast to illustration, little is known about his/her works in CG design. Asai Genji was born on July 27th, 1974 with an O blood type, lives in Suginami, Tokyo, Japan, has an older sister, has a history of working as a programmer for 3 years, and loves Gradius, spiders, and 大江健三郎’s (OUE Kenzaburou) works. He is also ZUN’s childhood friend.

Asai Genji’s illustrations are of the fantasy-realism style, with lots of detailed strands in the hair, plausible poses and hairstyles, and very accurate colouring and lighting, but accented by lack of facial details in noses and mouths, as well as large glassy eyes on his usually-female characters. Asai’s colouring style is the defining characterstic of his illustrations, which is usually oil painting-like. He uses many different levels of one colour for shading, giving gradual and realisitic shadows, which is most apparent in the hair. Asai also uses moderately illuminated spots and highlights to add extra shine and give off more of a fantasy feel, and he also blends a lot of colours together to make everything look smooth and natural. As well, he never uses solid pen outlines, and prefers instead to use pencil-like lines of varying thickness and pressure, making everything blend together more softly. Colour coordination is based mostly on muted shades of colour, but when he wants to, can coordinate many different colours coherently and exceptionally, and even meld an opposing colour into a single-colour dominated scheme. (In this case, the blue of the armour.)

As for CG design, Asai is quite good at rendering mecha, landscape, and skies. As with illustration, Asai also learnt 3D modeling mostly on his own.

Website: http://www20.big.or.jp/~a-fun/ (Last updated in 2006)
Asai Genji tag at moe.imouto: http://moe.imouto.org/wiki/show?title=asai_genji (Worksafe)
東方香霖堂 ～ Curiosities of Lotus Asia Video Mylist: http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/1973680 (Unofficial)
Asai Genji entry at NicoNicoPedia: http://dic.nicovideo.jp/a/唖采弦二 (Japanese)

【Vocaloid Composer】DATEKEN

Artwork drawn specially for Tsumugi Uta. Click to enlarge.(Illust: ホルダー@Piapro)

DATEKEN is a relatively well-known Vocaloid composer who submitted his first song onto niconico in October 2008, and prior to that he had experience in composing instrumental songs since 2005, which he uploaded onto his muzie account. DATEKEN’s most well-known song is 紡唄 -つむぎうた- (Tsumugi Uta/Spinning Song), which currently has over 11,000+ mylists and 190,000+ views. DATEKEN is actually a graduate student from Hokkaido and his hobbies include playing the piano, doing karate, and reciting poems.

DATEKEN uses only Kagamine Rin and Len to sing his songs, and at this point has not used any of the other Vocaloids yet. Each of his Vocaloid songs have a different genre assigned to them, ranging from ethnic (Jutenija), technopop (Ur-Style), R&B (イマジネイション/Imagination), and even waltz (schwarz waltz), which really show his high level of versatility as a composer. However, most of his songs generally belong to the electronic music genre, such as techno, trance, 2-step, and house. All his songs are extremely high quality, and give a really good representation of their respective genres. Song themes are really varied, which makes all of them impressionable and easy to remember, and the large majority of songs are quite catchy. His vocal tuning for the Kagamine twins are also impeccable, and in my opinion ranks among the best as they are consistently natural and easy to listen to. (Definitely not a small feat considering that Kagamine Rin and Len are among the harder Vocaloids to tune.) He also changes their voices according to the song, and as a result they always sound fitting and different. As a one-man composer, DATEKEN does everything himself: writes and arranges the song, writes the lyrics, and makes his own videos, which are usually well-subtitled and with a nice static layout and picture, the latter of which he borrows from royalty-free artists on Piapro.

In addition to composing Vocaloid songs, he has also composed intrumental tracks also to the theme of widely varying genres, and has also released a Touhou arrange doujin album called 当方暇軍団 under the circle name of 暇軍団. He creates songs with a keyboard controller for the most part.

All in all, super-good and incredibly composer. Please listen to all his songs! I especially recommend his works if you want to explore different musical genres.

Essential Works:
1. 紡唄 -つむぎうた- + ENG Subs (Tsumugi Uta/Spinning Song) (niconico link)
2. Never! + ENG Subs (niconico link) **Especially Recommended**
3. なまえのないうた (Namae no Nai Uta/A Song without a Name) (niconico link)

Website: http://www14.plala.or.jp/dateken/
Mylist: http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/10109173
Piapro: http://piapro.jp/dateken
Twitter: http://twitter.com/dateken
muzie: http://www.muzie.co.jp/artist/a014791/
Blog: http://blog.livedoor.jp/vit_dat/
Youtube Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=896975BF8D8151E4&search_query=dateken
DATE tunes (digital album) page: http://piapro.jp/karent/?view=album&id=43

【Illustrator】uturo

Original character. Click to enlarge.

uturo is an amateur illustrator from Pixiv whose distinctively styled artwork appears on the daily rankings relatively often. Little is known about uturo as he does not have a website. uturo is a university student, his birthday is on January 28th, and is from Okayama Prefecture in Japan.

uturo’s illustration style is definitely on the realistic side. Much of his artwork depict young girls with large eyes and smooth skin, and with actual noses. Skin shading is impeccable and natural, and even in rough drawings they are shaded accurately. As well, a lot of his drawings include unique mechanical components, and are always well incorporated with the “organic” humans. However, uturo’s most distinctive feature are the very slick and modern colour palettes, usually defined with a grey background and neon-like shades (usually cyan, yellow, and purple) as highlights. To make the contrast more apparent, skin and clothing are usually of muted shades. uturo is also very good at defining shadows with opposite shades (instead of the same shade but darker), and almost all of his artwork are devoid of black outlines, making everything seem less 2D and more blended and smooth. Also, there are a lot of parts in his illustrations that look kind of unfinished, but instead of looking out of place, it fits in extremely well with his style. Lastly, most of uturo’s characters are in static poses, and usually have a sort of subdued expression on their faces, and these two things make his illustrations give off a mature and stylish feel.

uturo is fast becoming one of my favourite artists on Pixiv, and certainly deserves more attention. Please check out his artwork if you like cool, futuristic artwork with a slight Murata Range-like feel!

Pixiv: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=23908
drawr: http://drawr.net/miyuki128
Twitter: https://twitter.com/uturo
uturo’s OekakiChat Room: http://www.takamin.com/oekakichat/user/oekakichat3.php?userid=389349
niconico Community: http://ch.nicovideo.jp/community/co51534
Stickam: http://www.stickam.jp/profile/uturo128

【Lyrics】 蜜蜂 (Honeybee)

There are no words to describe how moving this song is.

This post consists of four parts:
1. Recommended covers
2. Original lyrics
3. Transliteration (by viridian_lights@Livejournal)
4. Translation

蜜蜂 (Mitsubachi/Honeybee)
Lyrics: 裏花火 (Urahanabi)
Compose: におP (NioP)
Arrange: におP (NioP)
Vocals: Kagamine Len

Nico | Youtube
MP3 | Instrumental

A picture from the PV. (Illust: 裏花火)