Hunting the Elusive

So at long last I get to review the Pixiv Girls Collection artbook. What this extremely thick volume is, is a compilation of pictures from the art community of Pixiv, collecting some of the best of creations into one book. Full colour, it is 162 pages thick, released officially 14 March 2009 for 2100 yen (2000 ex tax), ISBN:978-4-86252-531-4. Partly responsible for the thickness of the artbook (approximately 2 to 2.5 times that of a "”normal” artbook, 2/3 the thickness of a typical Etsu mag) is the grade of paper, which is pretty thick. The whole thing screams “quality”. Highly recommend the JPG download, BTW, due to the large volume of pictures in this review. [Download JPG][PNG]

While I am not very familiar with the art community of Pixiv, given the large number of artists currently residing there, Pixiv Girls Collection works well as a discovery artbook. It covers a big range of artists and styles, all in stunning colour.

The colour cover is by tearfish, who is an excellent Korean artist. Like most Korean artists, stuff is hard to get. Beneath the colour jacket, the monochrome cover is surprisingly detailed.

You can study the sections and chapters by which this artbook is organised yourself. But basically, it’s based on the themes of the pictures.

Many landscape orientation pictures are just slapped on. I haven’t rotated them in this review just so you can see how they look like in the book. Gotta love the girl doing a sound recording of the train!

Shimeko makes an appearance (on the right), with her very ephemeral and cute style. BTW, due to the thickness of the book, you may notice shadows in the scans. It got better as the scanning session went on, but it’s basically because the book won’t lie naturally on the scanbed without applying a lot of force.

We are noticing a kind of Gothic/Xmassy theme here. The illustration on the right is quite weird, as it appears the girl is a melting candle, but it has the Tony Taka feel to it.

Given the amount of stuff in Pixiv Girls Collection (and the thickness of the thing), it quickly became a pain to scan, so I became more and more selective of what I chose to highlight. Suffice to say there was a large section on fantasy as well.

Very familiar style on the left. I forgot the name of the artist this reminds me of, but he’s fairly famous.

I love the PET bottle picture on the left. It really stands out as being unusual.

The creativity of the Pixiv community is quite astounding. To think that these featured here are only a small part of what’s available on the site… (though of course artbooks have high resolution sources).

A much more gothic-lolita theme here than previously. I mean, if there is an Alice dress, I’m there. The contrast of the apple with the blue is also very nicely done.

The picture on the left reminds me quite a bit of rco wada. And then you see a quick transition to the Japonesque style.

The right picture really strikes me too, with the contrasting theme of the electric guitar, the Torii, and the kimono. A very nice atmos with the sea and moon-lit night sky too!

A bit of a Chinois style, and then we have a huke. Yes, huke is part of the Pixiv community (as are a lot of other more well-known artists, including many featured here at Hunting the Elusive).

The complexity of these pictures is really stunning. The natural colours and rendering of the lighting is also very well-done in conveying the atmosphere within a forest.

I’m not sure if the character on the left hand side picture is a guy or a girl, but the colours, the lighting, the traces of patterns on the background…it’s crazy, and I’m running out of adjectives to describe the admiration I have for the obscure artists featured in Pixiv Girls Collection.

Very range Murata Style on the left. The left hand girl in the right scan is by Puchi Devil. This artist does the chibi-looking style very well, with fluorescent colours against dark backgrounds.

Colourful eyepatches = always a plus. I was attracted to Venus Versus Virus due to this reason as well, but I think I was pretty disappointed with the anime.

Oh look, another huke. And then we are in a session where artists pay tribute to Pixiv with happy birthday wishes pictures.

Followed by a section on renderings of Hatsune Miku.

We’ve all seen some of this art before, I think. I used the upper left picture in the right image in the Vocaloid essay post for example. AND IS THAT ONINEKO?

The right hand image was an album art, I believe for Alice’s Emotion’s Funny Princess (stylistically, I don’t think the music really worked for me).

What you see is many artists who have gained notoriety from the Vocaloid phenomena came from the Pixiv community. For example, this work here on the left is for Aku no Musume (which is a work prior to the famous Aku no Meshitsukai).

The last section is the artists’ depictions of their craft. You know, falling asleep in front of screens, using Cintiqs, etc. Just from browsing the Pixiv Girls Collection artbook, one really gets a sense of the care and affection that the Pixiv community puts into their work.

The depictions become steadily more fantastic and conceptual.

This review only contains a very small proportion of the art in this artbook. While I have picked the cream of the crop, there are a large number of very good pictures which I did not cover due to the sheer size of the book.

The Pixiv Girls Collection artbook is a truly outstanding collection of images from a range of artists heretofore unknown. Based on the quantity AND quality of the contents, versus the price (2100 yen), this is a high-value and much-recommended purchase. It’d take months for anyone to seriously do research on all the artists they like in this book.

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