Hunting the Elusive

Have been a  bit tardy in terms of scans going into this blog due to various commitments and activities IRL, some of which you can see photographic evidence of on Pixels. Anyway, “Remains ~ Gensou Kaikyou ~” was released at Comiket 76, serial number MMPD0007. It is a doujin music CD, but it came with a great little booklet. Why is this booklet worth a look at? Firstly, we have illustrations by An2A (Windmail), but that’s not all. These illustrations are combined with photography by haLRu of Monomind, resulting in an effect which is mind-blowing in its beauty. The packaging too, which was designed by An2A, is something to behold for a doujin release, with ribbons and symbols such as eyes which correspond to the unifying Yukari Yakumo theme. [Review] [PNG]

The packaging (not in the archives): Ribbons which look really nice but can be a bit of a pain to put back together. Very nicely textured casing with a lot of eyes.

The front cover (and back) of the book. As mentioned before, Yukari Yakumo is the main theme.

After the landing page, we get the same illustration as the cover.

And then we start, with Yukari waiting by a train track. Again, keep in mind that these are actual photos being used, with the illustrations superimposed on top.

What this basically means is they have extremely detailed backgrounding, while retaining the character illustration capabilities of the artist. Now, I think An2A has pretty good background illustration skills, but the combination of photography with doujin art, while not a mind-blowing concept, is executed extremely well in this book.

So it turns out haLRu is a pretty good photographer as well. I think all the concepts for each of the pictures were planned, so he took shots accordingly. An interesting thing is, they seem to have kept in mind the depth of field rules of photography. So in the second picture above, the fairy things are in softer (out of-) focus since the camera has focused on the temple roof.

Of course, given the amount of image manipulation involved in compositing photos with illustrations, we should also be expecting effect addition, such as the rays of light here. The extremely natural blending of the two elements of the picture is quite astounding.

Marisa is already one of my favourite characters, but wow! The combination of the mist, the lighting effects, etc just puts her into a convincingly mystical atmosphere.

Wheeee Reimu, with background photo at shrine! These guys are geniuses, the way the pictures are put together, the lighting effects on the illustration itself, etc.

Simply put, Windmail and haLRu have done what is what a lot of outdoor (or green-screen) figure photographers have aimed to do for a long time, which is to put the 2D characters into the context of settings in real life. Given, it is easier when you have planned and custom illustrations ready to put into the photos, but this is an indication of what is possible.

Since the photos in this book cover winter and other seasons, I think haLRu must have been planning and executing the project for a long time, or he simply took photos from his archive to use. I really love the winter part of the book though.

Alice in winter!

I am especially fond of the fact that most of the pictures are of solitary figures, showing how the characters relate to the setting in a very realistic manner. It’s an elegant study in solitude, and the stark colours of winter serve to further promote this.

We come to the end of the book with a somewhat more festive atmosphere, contrasting with the quietude of earlier images.

As you can see below, the photos were taken between 2007 to 2009 (mostly 2007 to 2008, one from 2009). I’d give much to get the original resolution digital images as listed here!

Note in this post I have skipped a few pages here, but the review archive contains everything. We close with Yukarin warping out of the landscape.

What can I say? I am blown away by the beauty of the images in this book. While An2A is a powerful and very high quality illustrator already, combining those illustrations with photos and post-processing really made them pop. It’s a pity the book+CD set wasn’t more widely available – in fact there were only a few auctions of these after C76, but hopefully this review gave you an idea of how absolutely awesome they were.