Hunting the Elusive

Well, Reitaisai is once again nearly upon us, so I thought it’d probably be a good idea to follow up on the previous release post for NEKO WORKs (sayori) by having a look at the release for Comiket 77, a Touhou full-colour fanbook called Eastern Side. Now, the NEKO WORKs denotes sayori, while NEKO WORKi refers to ideolo, another Chinese artist who collaborated on this book. All pictures are clearly marked as either by sayori or ideolo, in case stylistically, it’s not too hard to tell the difference. I will note that NEKO WORKs, that is, sayori by herself, will be releasing another full colour Touhou book for Reitaisai, called Eastern Garden01. [Release][PNG]

Actually, at the time I am writing this post, my views on the Touhou illustration fandom has been transformed quite a bit by something which articulated a sentiment I have held subconsciously for a while now (more on that in a later post).

This book, as can be seen from the covers, uses a fairly bright palette. Stylistically, it is firmly in the moe territory. But then that is to be supposed from NEKO WORKs.

I think Eastern Side is an interesting way to farther explore sayori’s capabilities, beyond her gothic lolita tendencies. How does she perform on normal fan illustrations? How does her style translate over to non-original characters?

ideolo (or NEKO WORKi) has a number of styles, which are seen here. The one above is one I would class as almost like a tapestry type art. It has a very complex look, the whole illustration is filled with elements, leaving little blank space, and shading is somewhat simpler, giving a clean look despite the clutter. Despite there being layers, there is very little depth in this style.

Note that the points above are purely technical, and is not a criticism of ideolo’s style. Rather, the lack of dimensionality, shading type and cluttering all contribute to the feel of the images, which overall is pretty good.

sayori here renders various Touhou personalities on stage. There are actually some of my favourite pictures in this book, perhaps because they take the characters out of their normal context and costumes. These were used by TAMUSIC.

Another two by ideolo. The one on the left is more of a normal style with more depth, while the one on the right is another tapestry type.

These two are more previous works by sayori (in fact, I think the entire book is a collection of previous works, which is good enough, since I don’t have the energy to proactively chase the works of more than a few artists). The one on the left is for ISW, one of the wallpaper illustrations.

It’s actually quite interesting the way the character designs by ideolo fluctuates, as is very visible with these two pictures.

Regardless of the angle, sayori, those seriously look like they’re about to fly off. Love the shading of the sky in both images though, and the thought put into the harmony of the colours with the flowers with the character.

A punk rendering of Touhou characters, and I really like the design of the banner above.

An interesting comparison between ideolo and sayori here. Same character, same simple line-art style, pretty similar palettes, but the treatment of Alice is so different!

Nice symmetry with this one.

A rather strange selection to close off Eastern Side on. I think (and hope) that these are from sayori’s earlier days, because quality- and style-wise, they are very different to what was showcased earlier in the book.

So, with Eastern Side, we got to see more of what NEKO WORKs is capable of, and we also got a good taste of ideolo (whom I must have covered in some minor form or another prior to this). Overall, it’s a very cute book, and the styles of the artists actually complement each other pretty well. It’s pretty difficult to tell the covers were illustrated by two different people (each handled one character on each of the covers).