Hunting the Elusive

If PureGirl wasn’t retro enough for our tastes, here’s one from December 2007: Atelier Tiv’s Botanical Times (植物の時間). As readers might know, this is a fairly rare title (although far from being the rarest of Tiv’’s doujin releases), and the rarity of Tiv’s stuff can be directly traced to the fact that she (I think it’s a she) does not do many releases outside Korea, and also might have something to do with me not discovering her until quite a late date, when all her stuff was sold out. In fact, if you have been following my Twitter, I was raging some time ago over the fact that she released tetramoon vol 5 流星前夜 and a sketchbook called bone button borscht in a Korean convention, with no sign of it being brought over for Comiket 77. Nope, we have to make do with Sneaker stuff instead. [Release][PNG]

Botanical Times, first released at seoul comic world 73, was Atelier Tiv’s most recent release (not counting tetramoon vol 5), and follows tetramoon vol 4 Planet earth, Dress Code, and another 3.5 volumes of tetramoon. It is 20 pages long (18 pages if you do not count the blank inside covers).

Botanical Times is a fairly balanced mix of near-B+W sketch pages and colour illustrations. Staple-bound, it was fairly easy to scan, though screening noise levels are comparable to magazines.

Obviously, given the title, most if not all the pictures have something to do with plants or nature. The first illustration is an autumn scene featuring the We are Peanuts schoolgirls that Tiv is so good at drawing. Given, the situation is a bit improbable (as in, why would someone climb a tree to get a paper airplane?), but what can I say, I really like autumn colours.

The illustration on the facing page is the same girl with her cohort of friends in a greenhouse situation. One thing to be said about Tiv is that her drawings of eyes are not very detailed, lacking the depth and lustre of a number of other artists I like, but somehow it all works together with the facial structure and palette.

Unusual to feature a near-monochrome page? One thing to really take away from a reading of a Tiv book is her absolute attention to detail. She actually does some research into incidental parts of her pictures, for example in this case finding out the type of trees and cacti she would use in the illustrations and properly drawing them.

Given one of Atelier Tiv’s domain is “planova”, and the tetramoon series, one recognises a preoccupation with the starry moonlit night sky. This theme runs through a number of her pictures, including the Tanabata one quite recently.

No, it wasn’t immediately apparent to me too, but those are cacti in the background. Both this and the illustration prior were drawn by Tiv for her friends’ doujin releases. This one was done for H2SO4.

The middle of the book is a page spread, a larger version of that featured on the front page. Again, note the attention to detail on Tiv’s part, in terms of the fashion of the girls. Dress Code addresses this in more depth, but school-girl checkers, skirts and stockings seem to be the standard repertoire.

The left-most girl is Nina Klatt, a half of the Klatt twins (the other is Serha Klatt) who feature in Ladymade Star from DJ Max. You tell them apart based on the side they wear the earrings. Nina wears the stud on her left ear, dangly on her right. Serha is reversed.

Incidentally, this picture Cotton Girls is based loosely (feel-wise) on So Nyeo Shi Dae (SNSD, Girls’ Generation), according to the explanatory blurb. Did Tiv take any inspiration from their fashion?

The copy of the book I scanned wasn’t perfect, so forgive the creases at the side of the pages. What we have after another simple colour picture are sketches.

Some of these are very outstanding, and I think one or two might have actually been executed in colour later on (unsure of this, need to verify when I have time), but from the foundations you see here, it’s quite possible that the finished creations would have caused such a cataclysm of beauty that world peace would have ensued.

So, we’ve come a long way since the original Atelier Tiv discovery post of 26 September 2008 (linked above, Ladymade Star). The project to increase the material and recognition of this artist continues, and Botanical Times, if I may say so myself, is a pretty big step forward. Given the elusive nature of this artist’s stuff, I’m actually pretty stoked to have this book in my hands, and it does not disappoint.