Hunting the Elusive

palette ~人々が愛した幻想郷~ (palette ~ Hitobito ga aishita gensoukyou) is a collaboration between kimino-museum (君の美術館) and I believe a number of other artists, who feature on the second, “Omnibus-side” CD). It was released during Comiket 77. The CDs, as with most doujin album releases, are various renditions of Touhou tunes, both vocal and instrumental. However, notably for us, palette has quite an epic presentation, and also collects 18 pieces of Touhou art from a variety of artists, some of which is ridiculously good (though most if not all of the pieces have very good character renderings anyway). [Release][PNG]

Firstly, the presentation. palette ~人々が愛した幻想郷~ comes in a fairly large cardboard box, almost like the size of a stack of two and a half DVD cases. Sliding out from the top is a leather-bound binder with embossed gold decorations.

The cardboard box itself has two illustrations, by, I think, HINA.

As you can see, the binder is actually a real binder with ring clips, which hold quite a substantial stack of cards. These are the illustrations, as well as liner notes/lyrics and such. The CDs are given relatively low priority treatment, being slotted in each of the covers.

For this release, since we are focused on the pictorial assets, I have decided to just scan the cards for the illustrations, so I have left the stuff with liner notes and lyrics out, as well as the music CDs and such.

Our first illustrator is sugilight’s sugi. Great colours, stylistically, I think this artist is quite established, although there are signs of instability with oblique perspective angles for faces.

The second illustrator is Tsurukame, who does quite complex pictures which tend to be quite busy. However, I am not a big fan of the character styles.

Third illustrator, Fukahire, for some reason reminds me a bit of Kishida Mel in terms of the facial illustrations. We also see some oil-painting-realistic shading.

Fourth illustrator is one whose images we have seen on the covers of previous doujin album releases. Shiori utilises textures, a very dark watercolour style, and can be both roughshod (hand/arms) and extremely detailed (hair).

A more simple feel from Satsuki. Quite solid colours but note the detailed, almost lineless shading used to create folds and contours.

And of course we have a very good foreign artist who has made inroads into Japan, Archlich, with two excellent pieces, one of Aya, the other of Alice. The unusual sky and cloud effect and framing for the Aya one is fantastic, while the interplay of light in the Alice picture (which catch on the strings she uses to control the dolls) is also very impressive.

Our second-last artist is HINA, who did the cover art. I like the faded palette this artist utilises, which endows a sort of vintage look. It is also an interesting approach to the eyes of the characters, which may sometimes look “dead”.

Last artist is Iwamoto Jaimes, whose illustrations are perhaps simpler than many of the others we see here, but the character style remains quite appealing.

I will note here that the box and cards are printed on quite a stiff paper stock, with a satin-type finish which reduces gloss. As a result, this changes the way the scanner picks up the colours. Additionally, the print quality and resolution is very high, with no screening effect, but rather some grain noise which was easily removed. However, due to the finish on the cards, there was noticeable softening in the scans as opposed to the physical product, so I brought back some of the detail via a high pass method.

Overall, I was really looking forward to receiving my copy of palette ~人々が愛した幻想郷~, and I must say, after looking through it and listening to the CDs, I am not disappointed. Of course, the punched holes in the cards somewhat mar some of the more complex illustrations, but I feel overall that the coordinators chose their (some lesser-known) artists very wisely, with the illustrations giving the set a very classy and “artistic” feel.

Of course the leather binder thing doesn’t hurt either. However, for long-term archival, I do recommend removing the cards and storing them that way, because if the clip rings rust, you’ll be punching yourself.