KEI

KEI continues to be an unstoppable force, releasing yet another all color volume of his illustration series, GA (画) Vol 07. Like with previous volumes, GA Vol. 07 includes a mixture of fan arts and originals, and this time around many of the characters from the Summer 2010 volume have found their way into the Winter 2010 as well.

E☆2's Comiket 79 original illustration collection once again featured a variety of well-known artists drawing this time on the theme of the classic school uniforms, the sailor fuku. In E☆2 Original Sailor Fuku to Chome Chome some artists experiment more than others to create a very memorable and unique collection of works.

HIME-CHARA ☆ DESIGNERS FILE is a directory of fairly well-known commercial illustrators that design the anime, game, and manga characters we've all come to know and love. The art book features a remarkable 111 artists, but much like last years 100 Masters of Bishojo Painting each artist gets two pages, one full page illustration and one with smaller tiled art works.

The sixth volume of KEI's illustration series, Ga (画) was released during Comiket 78, continuing KEI's tradition of full-color illustration releases. The usual content is present in this volume; a little from Vocaloid, a little from Touhou, some original works and various fan arts from popular shows and games. KEI's painterly style continues to impress, although a slightly more anime-style is appearing in these volumes more and more.

The Winter 2009 edition of KEI's gallery paid tribute to Vocaloids and Voiceroids, both young and old alike. And though that's kind of expected from KEI at this point, there were still tidbits from other popular games and series like Toradora and Love Plus all done in the artist's very recognizable style.

KEI, probably most known for his character design of Hatsune Miku, quite regularly puts out a full-color collection called 画 (Ga) at Comiket events. But with the Summer 2009 Comiket, he started to release a smaller collection of monochrome ink illustrations titled 画 Mini Vol. 01, and it looks like it will be a continuing series as one was released with the Comiket 77 edition of 画 (Ga) Vol. 05.

The newest pretty girls collection from E☆2 (Etsu), Girls Girls Girls!4 Illustrations was just released a few days ago in Japan, and it continues to be what we expect from the Girls Girls Girls! series of art books. It features a great assortment of artists ranging from the well known to the virtually unknown.

Occasionally, I like to pick up monochrome doujinshi from certain artists. Sometimes, I do it on accident. But fortunately, KEI aptly titles his doujinshi with names like MONO 02 so I don't have to guess about it being in color. This one is a surprisingly thick 50 pages long. Would you buy a black and white doujinshi from your favorite artist, or is it just not worth it unless it's in color?