【Illustrator】シオミヤイルカ (SHIOMIYA Iruka)

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)

【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)

【Illustrator】nayu

This picture speaks for itself. Click to enlarge.

nayu is an amateur illustrator who is quite famous on Pixiv for her hilarious and high quality illustrations. Her artwork is mostly of Vocaloid, and the character she draws (and likes) the most is KAITO. nayu’s chair is white, her computer is black, and she has a dog.

nayu’s illustration style is for the most part in the anime-style, with lots of exaggerated expressions and poses, as well as a colouring style kind of reminiscent of modern visual novels, but she draws almost all of her characters with small, slightly almond-shaped eyes and realistic body proportions ←(Warning: Half-naked men). Her works also have an insanely high level of completion, with superclean lines, accurate shading, organized compositions, and a really good eye for matching up a lot of different colours. nayu usually uses pastel colours with nearly no black lines, and same-colour-but-darker colours for shading. The overwhelming majority of her work are Vocaloid-themed, and it is apparent that her favourite out of all of them is KAITO, as she seems to like making (good) fun of him the most. What sets nayu’s Vocaloid art apart from the rest is that her pictures are either extremely silly and hilarious, with unfathomable poses and themes, or really pretty and cool. It also helps that nayu is really good at drawing different facial expressions, and all of them are expressed very well and really brings the characters to life. Besides drawing Vocaloid characters, she also has an original, unnamed character who she likes to draw. Also worth mentioning is that nayu does not seem to know what the definition of a “doodle” is at all.

Pixiv: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=268443
Blog: http://pixiv.cc/nayu3/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/nayu03
Piapro: http://piapro.jp/nayu3

【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